DM1803

TECHNOLOGY: INTERNET OF THINGS Dm
"JUST AS MPS IS ABOUT MORE THAN CONNECTING PEOPLE TO PRINTERS AND GATHERING
DATA, THE INTERNET OF THINGS IS ABOUT MORE THAN CONNECTING THINGS AND
GATHERING DATA. FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS TO BE A DISRUPTIVE FORCE,
ORGANISATIONS NEED LOOK AT THESE CONNECTIONS AND SEE HOW THE ACTIVITIES
AMONG THEM ARE INTERRELATED BOTH PHYSICALLY AND DIGITALLY. THAT WAY, THEY
CREATE NEW WAYS TO BOOST COMPANY-WIDE INTELLIGENCE AND COLLABORATION."
their exposure to security vulnerabilities,
inside and outside the enterprise. This
means assessing connection points and
identifying potential security deficiencies
needs to be a priority. Devices, people and
documents should provide identities that
can be utilised by workflows for tracking,
accounting and security.
Analyse and act on data gathered: MPS
software captures usage data from devices
and workflows and analyses the
information for trends and possible
process improvements. Software designed
as a centralised hub either on an internal
server or in the cloud is as much a part of
an Internet of Things solution as the
sensors that collect and transit data. Look
for an application platform that can
integrate and manage the data, increase
collaboration and employ analytical
reporting to help understand conditions
and behaviours, and find ways to make
improvements.
Always factor in the personal experience:
The Internet of Things must be inclusive of
the personal experience. In the end, all
workflows - although designed for a
business purpose - are used for the benefit
of the individual knowledge worker. While
MPS looks at all devices as a whole so
companies gain a bigger picture view of
operations, the transition to Managed
Document Service creates a level of
granularity down to the document.
Let us not forget that the intelligence that
devices and software on the Internet of
Things provide should allow maximum
simplicity and speed of process for the
individual. In today's document connected
world, there are multiple points of
interaction that include multifunction
devices, desktop and laptop computers,
and mobile devices from tablets to
smart phones.
Just as MPS is about more than
connecting people to printers and
gathering data, the Internet of Things is
about more than connecting things and
gathering data. For the Internet of Things
to be a disruptive force, organisations need
look at these connections and see how the
activities among them are interrelated
both physically and digitally. That way, they
create new ways to boost company-wide
intelligence and collaboration.
TOWARD AN IOT FUTURE
Looking further ahead to what the future
holds not just for MPS, but document
workflows in general, the evolution of
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine
learning has the potential to dramatically
improve how businesses process the
massive volume of documents in their
organisations. Machine learning
technologies have already brought greater
automation to document classification
processes, and this has aided businesses
by helping them to manage documents
more efficiently.
Machine learning, meanwhile, refers to a
field of computer science that enables
computers to "learn", without being
programmed. It is a technology that
facilitates the analysis of document
structure and contents to classify
documents according to their shared
similarities and characteristics. By way of
example, machine learning tools can
detect document types by identifying
terminology such as "invoice" as well as
more subtle language, such as "total due"
and "due date."
As AI technologies - of which machine
learning is a segment - improve, businesses
will benefit from document capture
software's growing ability to "read" and
understand free-form text by incorporating
natural language processing (NLP). NLP is a
technology that enables computers to
understand and interpret human
language. This will enable documents to
be processed with limited manual
intervention, which has the knock-on
benefit of boosting productivity as staff
spend less time on routine admin tasks.
Today, machine learning is advanced to
the point where it can identify specific
words in documents, such as
"confidential," and working on that
understanding, assign a higher level of risk
and thus security for these documents. For
example, document capture software can
identify high-risk terms and then restrict
document access or redact or encrypt the
file. This aims to prevent scenarios whereby
documents are emailed to personal email
addresses while also requiring privileged
user authentication before the documents
can be printed or opened.
AI will go further still, by intelligently
extracting relevant information from
massive amounts of data and ensuring
only appropriate parties see the content
that is pertinent to them.
Overall, MPS combined with the progress
made in the fields of AI and machine
learning could provide valuable lessons for
those companies and individuals who are
bringing the IoT into the mainstream.
More info: www.nuance.com
www.document-manager.com
March/April 2018
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