AIIM Forum Europe 2024: Unstructured Data’s Role in Driving Data Euphoria

As information management professionals, we are front and centre of AI transformation, yet many organisations have overlooked a crucial aspect in the race to take advantage of AI – the quality and readiness of information to fuel their initiatives. With Gartner’s prediction that this could result in at least one third of AI programmes failing by the end of 2025, there was no better time for our industry to gather at the AIIM Forum Europe to define and discuss how these challenges can be addressed.

For the first time in a while, I was able to attend as a delegate with ears open and mouth closed, allowing me to listen to the informative sessions outlining where organisations are on their AI journey and how high-quality data governance practices can be the catalyst to success. As it should, the sessions got me thinking and I asked myself – is data governance the correct phrase? Should we be rejigging the term in an AI world?

My first thought when I hear the phrase data governance is always compliance, risk, data protection and privacy, often ringfencing the discussion, which is fine in the context of data governance in its regular guise. However, when I’m discussing this in the context of AI, there’s a lot more to the story than traditional data governance.

Protecting your sensitive assets is of course of paramount importance, as is the plethora of value that sits across your datasets. Your information corpus includes a diverse set of data, including hidden content that could be of significant value to AI but is not being harnessed by your business. I always refer to a 123.jpg that could be either a Christmas party photo, or it could be a valuable entity that could transform your AI outcomes. Is this data governance in itself? Possibly… But should the phrase be adapted to resonate with those leading the AI push?

I’m not sure I have the answer yet as to what this should be referred to – does it sit under the umbrella of observability? Is it data enablement or management? Perhaps a state of “data euphoria” at having your estate under control to maximise AI? Whatever it is, as information managers it is now our time to have a profound impact on business results… We’re back at the top table!

This leads nicely onto my wider takeaways from the AIIM Forum Europe, where I learnt a huge amount:

1. There’s a re-declaration of the importance of unstructured data.

Information Management is back at the top table – I would argue we never left and that there are always initiatives requiring “data euphoria”, from GDPR to the impact information has on digital transformation. There’s unstructured data everywhere in your business, from M365 to line-of-business apps, to legacy EDRMS and the time is now to prepare and manage this information to not only maximise results in your AI journey, but also impact other business initiatives.

2. You can’t do it all at once. Define your required datasets and prepare.

In the opening roundtable, Tori Miller Liu, Caroline Carruthers and Joanna Drake discussed data being our oil and fuelling your car just for your specific journey (paraphrasing). This stood out to me – we need to meticulously prepare and understand our data, it will have a huge impact on business activity but it can’t all be done at once and it is important that we have the right information for the correct use cases. I outline a contracts example in my LinkedIn post here, which also references the Gartner article I mentioned above.

3 Digital decarbonisation is here to stay.

As I listened to Ren Leming’s closing session, he referred to dark data being unknown, unused, unwanted and bad for planet and pocket – I couldn’t agree with this more. 55% of data is dark and 65% of data stored is only used once. As digital sustainability becomes more and more important in all walks of life, it’s time to look at our data posture on this topic. And do you know what? Preparing your information, as discussed above in the context for AI, can also have a momentous impact on your carbon footprint – keep what you need to keep and dispose of what is no longer needed. Get a grasp of over/under retention, manage ROT and create a lean data strategy!

Cleansing your information will touch on many different business areas, which justifies the position of information management at the top table. Dispose of the rubbish and avoid the “rubbish in, rubbish out” concept with all your business processes, including AI.

My final note – it’s time to embrace the power of unstructured data in driving data euphoria. At EncompaaS, we’re here to guide you on your journey to AI success.