| | June 201519CIOReviewThe Essentiality of Knowledge Management Systems and Demise of DMSBy Eugene Kesselman, CIO, Board Member, TranswesternWhen I was approached to write this article, the request came with the standard set of questions about Document Management Systems (DMS) commonly asked to CIOs of large enterprises. I quickly put together an outline to address these questions and started writing. Within a few paragraphs, however, I realized that DMS as we know it now falls squarely into the outdated "legacy" category and will soon cease to exist.Most DMS vendors are acutely aware of what I am about to say and some are already responding to what's happening by shifting their efforts in the right direction.Very few people in a company still search for "documents," and even fewer people care about taxonomy, retention, and document lifecycles. When someone in my organization says they need to look for a document, I understand they actually want to gain "knowledge" of what is inside a particular document. This is why any DMS system that still considers documents as files, folders, and tags is already an outdated "legacy" system.The last time my team analyzed what types of documents we are managing, we quickly discovered that we have absolutely no control over the file type, quality, and index-ability of the documents stored by our users. This discovery quickly led to the conclusion that our DMS system should be able to index and structure all types of files and content and, as mentioned above, provide insights into the content of each document.Metadata is a buzzword that only IT folks care about. I would bet that very few users know or care what metadata is or how it can benefit them.DMS systems that are unable to derive key metadata from the manner in which a file is being presented are also in the legacy category.As mentioned above, users are looking for information and not documents, and with just-in-time information services so critical now, such information has to be delivered to where the users not their desktops are located. Mobility of information is a significant area of innovation as well as the biggest area of concern when it comes to document protection. One could argue that cloud-based solutions effectively deliver information to users wherever they are, but we have to consider users' abilities to provide data protection and enforce the same CIO INSIGHT
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