Digital content lifecycle

For businesses to gain tangible value out of the rising tide of digital transformation they need to consider the entire content lifecycle in their organisations. In many cases the use of paper is predicated on the fact that employees need to view and make decisions on the information captured on the document.

Digital transformation provides the opportunity to critically review these practices and the disruptive power of digitalisation to transform these for enhanced efficiency and a competitive advantage. The digital content lifecycle shown below is a view of how business should think about the various stages of the digital document.

The most critical part of any digital transformation is origination which can happen in pure digital form, or paper-based and then digitalised through a scan and OCR process.

Following origination, securing the document is critical. The format can vary from encryption to rights management and distributed protection. In addition, a document may need to be signed and guided through a set of workflows as it moves through the business process.

Once content has been produced it can be digitally linked to other related content for context and further enrichment. Organisations benefit from making sense of their data, helping them make better, more insightful decisions.

Storing, retrieving and using content is critical to any business process, but doing so in a digital form provides additional benefits. Data can be accessed and worked with in real time from almost any device, greatly improving efficiency. Further, if content is securely stored digitally it greatly reduces the risk related to a single original physical version of a document, making compliance and risk more manageable.

Archiving of digital documents is more efficient and cost effective than traditional means and includes security, redundancy and compliance built into the digital archiving platform.

The retention and ultimate destruction of content is important for compliance and risk officers, especially with regulations such as GDPR being implemented in many parts of the world. A well implemented digital content lifecycle enables clients to make informed decisions about the timing and implications of the destruction of content.