The SharePoint Impact: Trends In Electronic Document Management

By Scott Swidersky, president, DocPoint Solutions

New trends dominate today's document capture space, prompted in part by technology maturation. Improved OCR reliability scores are driving development of "smarter" software applications that quite literally are transforming our ability to reliably extract information from structured, unstructured and semi-structured documents. Intelligent recognition will continue to be a major focus over the near term, not only changing our ability to search for and retrieve information but also spawning entirely new business lines. Out of necessity, businesses will focus more on the system of record—or electronic content management (ECM) solution—where their electronic documents reside. For years, a band of "traditional suspects" has dominated the ECM space, but newer offerings, especially Microsoft SharePoint, are becoming true players, assisted by third-party toolset development that augments the platform's basic features and functionality. As companies assess and reassess ECM decisions, factors such as flexibility, compatibility, familiarity, ease of implementation and cost are adding to the growing body of evidence that SharePoint is no longer just a collaborative device. It is a true document and records management platform.