Why AI document management is transformative for knowledge workers.

For many years we have been managing our work through an increasing number of documents shared and stored across an expanding number of devices and systems. The islands of information this has created are a primary contributor to the statistics we see about knowledge worker time invested in searching for and sharing documents. A 2018 McKinsey study estimated that knowledge workers lose 50% of their time every week on data-related tasks, with 30% spent searching for, governing, and preparing data and 20% on duplicating work due to difficulty finding existing information. Recent breakthroughs in natural language processing driven by the astonishing success of generative AI, specifically, Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT and Bard. AI will dramatically change this. Using AI to manage documents makes the information in every document available to anyone in the company in seconds. AI document management is about to bring improvements in productivity to knowledge workers like we have never seen.

How does AI make Document Management easier?

The search for information and managing content has been a significant pain point for knowledge workers for a long time. Document management applications have been used for decades with various levels of success. While there are benefits, without AI, document management has had significant historical complaints:

• Complexity and user unfriendliness:

  • Steep learning curves: poor design and user interfaces create long user learning curves

  • Poor search functionality: finding documents can be difficult, defeating the purpose of the system

  • Lack of customization: inflexible systems that cannot cater to the work

• Inefficient document organization and accessibility:

  • Poor file structure: folder hierarchies and confusing naming conventions

  • Version control issues: tracking changes through the life cycle of documents

  • Limited access and collaboration: whether system use is low because it is difficult to use or too expensive for widespread use, either way it will not deliver its potential value

AI document management is not like the document management applications of the past. Those systems were not capable of searching within every document in their system to find the exact text to answer the user’s question. They also could not present the text next to the user’s question and open the document within seconds. AI document management is user friendly, requires very little training and the search capabilities are so strong it turns every document into a source for answers to any question.

What features and capabilities should AI Document Management systems offer?

It is important that an AI Document Management system be based on machine learning, transformers, and natural language processing capabilities. In the past few years, the breakthroughs from major companies like Microsoft, Google and Open AI offer game changing capabilities. The data science from these and many more AI modeling and tool companies is the key to the powerful search and potential for AI document management.  At a minimum, the following capabilities should be part of any AI document management system:

• Search

  • AI can understand the meaning and context of queries, not just keywords.

  • It can retrieve documents even if they don't include the exact search terms but cover the relevant topic

  • AI algorithms learn from user behavior and feedback, continually refining their search algorithms and personalizing results for individual users

  • AI can provide summaries of relevant documents or extract key information to save users time and effort

• Collaboration

  • Simultaneous editing and access to documents for team members, fostering real-time collaboration

  • Track changes and prevent conflicts, ensuring everyone accesses the latest version and streamlines collaborative workflows

• Security

  • Conditional access based on user logins and permissions that allows organizations to manage and control access to all content

  • For data at rest, use encryption so data and users are safe from malicious attacks.  We suggest, 256-bit AES encryption (Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256 or equivalent

  • For the hardware, FIPS 140-2 compliant (FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard), 140-2 is the benchmark for validating the effectiveness of cryptographic hardware

  • For secured connections implement industry standard SSL

• Cloud based Scalability

  • Resources (computing power, storage, network capacity) adapt on demand to meet changing user needs and workloads

  • Results in resilient, agile, and cost-effective applications that can adapt to their ever-changing needs

Are your best employees burdened with the tedious task of managing countless documents? The average knowledge worker spends hundreds of hours a year sifting through piles of paper and server folders, manually categorizing and organizing files, trying to keep up with the ever-growing mountain of paperwork. It’s an exhausting and time-consuming process that can be easily solved with AI document management.

Is AI Document Management also Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management has long been considered the most important responsibility of organizational leadership.  The challenge has been the lack of a system that allows knowledge to be easily and broadly shared.  Yet according to a study by the Project Management Institute, 90% of employees believe they need better knowledge sharing.  The written text and content in many organizational documents are the result of much thought, experience, learnings, and research by one or more knowledge workers.  When an AI document management system allows users instant access to all the text and content created from the knowledge and wisdom of all their employees, this is a breakthrough for knowledge management.  AI Document Management is also AI Knowledge Management.