Businesses today are dealing with an expo­nential growth of data. Not only are there vast amounts of paper documents that need to be converted into business-critical information, there is also an influx of dig­ital documents coming through in various formats – such as video, phone calls, chat logs, web ana­lytics and more – from multiple sources including social media, customer care centers, online and offline.

By 2020, IDC predicts digital data will exceed 44 trillion gigabytes. 90% of that data growth will be in the form of unstructured data. The organizations that can successfully transform data chaos into business opportu­nity will differentiate themselves from their competitors and win in the marketplace. The first step to resolving data chaos is digital transformation.

Companies today are looking for a digital transfor­mation to create efficiencies, improve decision-making and customer experience, and pave the way to new opportunities. Gartner rightly points out that success­ful digital transformation efforts require the ability to harness technology, which can be complex because new solutions need to meet business requirements and more importantly, integrate with existing solutions and appli­cations.

Given the scale and complexity of data, an integrated approach is required to be able to capture process and share information efficiently. Every business has unique information capture needs, and it can be complicated to turn documents into information to:

•Specialized document formats

•Disparate document input points scattered from central and remote offices to mobile capture

•Requirements to identify and index captured informa­tion and route it into the right databases and workflows

•Processes to add capture tasks to the workload of busy staff

For digital transformation initiatives to succeed, CIO’s need to figure out where the greatest opportuni­ties are to optimize the business and work with trusted partners to design and deploy the right solutions.

Across the organization, business functions that are powered by the combination of robust structure and de­fined data can become more quantifiable, predictive and prescriptive. Specifically:

•Marketing: Understanding and targeting customers

•Customer service: Improving customer responsiveness and interaction

•Sales: Increasing revenue and reducing the cost of sale

•Logistics: Understanding and optimizing business processes

•HR: Organizational and human capital quantification and performance optimization

•Manufacturing: Improving machine and device per­formance

•Finance: Optimizing financial management, reporting, and compliance

Here are a few basic requirements for a successful digital transformation:

•Robust products designed to integrate seamlessly with the existing business processes to handle the unique challenges

•Partners who understand niche business needs, with the expertise to deliver everything from cost-effective small-office solutions to high-volume commercial envi­ronments; from straightforward capture to specialized, optimized workflows.

•Services to keep information capture solutions running flawlessly

Successfully harnessing the power and promise of data, at scale, requires:

•A new ecosystem of consultants, system integrators, software companies and SaaS providers to deliver pow­erful solutions that meet the needs of each customer

•A new science for capturing, recognizing, and extract­ing information from data

•New technologies in the form of software, devices and cloud services for storing, sharing and integrating data with business processes and applications

In essence, the massive growth of data presents a tre­mendous opportunity for most companies to enhance –and even transform – their current businesses process­es. Successful information capture turns data chaos into useful information that can increase operational effi­ciency, lower operating costs, improve customer service, accelerate decision-making, and deliver better business results.