Bridging the Gap: Bringing Structure to Unstructured Data with AI

The value of data isn’t in its volume—it’s in how well it’s understood, managed and used.

While data was once a byproduct of daily operations, it’s now a critical asset that can inform decision-making, shape strategies, and even predict the future. Yet, most organisations are drowning in an overwhelming deluge of structured and unstructured content.

While structured data—organised neatly in databases—can be easily accessed and analysed, the real challenge lies in making sense of the messy, unstructured formats: emails, contracts, multimedia files, and more.

Without the right tools, these information silos can create more confusion than clarity, leaving organisations unable to see the full picture. This leads to wasted time, missed opportunities, and a growing risk landscape.

Why Unstructured Data is So Difficult to Manage

Unstructured data is different because it doesn’t have a predictable pattern. Consider the diversity of text in an email chain, the subtleties of legal documents, or the varied metadata in a collection of video files. These nuances are what make unstructured data so valuable and yet so hard to process. The inability to quickly identify what’s useful and what’s not can stall even the most advanced IT teams.

For example, a multinational insurer might have thousands of emails with customer complaints, product reviews, and feedback. While each message holds valuable data, manually sifting through them to identify trends or potential risks would take weeks.

Bringing Order to Chaos with AI

This is where artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to solve a real-world challenge. AI, when used in sophisticated information management solutions, has the ability to read between the lines, so to speak. Beyond email categorisation, it analyses context, allowing you to understand intent and uncover hidden patterns across fragmented data sources.

AI can give structure to unstructured data without stripping away its original meaning and value.

EncompaaS: Creating Order from Complexity

At EncompaaS, we close the gap between structured and unstructured data by using AI to intelligently find, enrich, organize and de-risk information across the entire organisation with speed and accuracy. Instead of letting valuable data sit in silos, EncompaaS brings it all together into a unified, high-quality layer that’s primed for strategic use—whether that’s meeting compliance needs or driving AI projects forward.

• Discover: EncompaaS maps your entire data landscape—cloud, on-prem, or hybrid—to show you exactly what structured, unstructured and semi-structured data you have and where it’s stored.

• Understand: AI and machine learning add structure and meaning to your data, enabling you to extract key metadata from documents so you understand its business purpose and relevance and can build a detailed profile of the content you have .

• Govern: Automated policies ensure compliance and security are baked into every step, managing data according to your business and regulatory requirements and reducing risk.

• Use: With a unified, high-quality data layer, EncompaaS powers advanced analytics, AI models, and strategic decision-making—all from a single source of truth.

By leveraging AI to analyse and understand petabytes of data, EncompaaS organises it in a meaningful way to drive better business outcomes.

For example, one government department we’re working with is using EncompaaS to connect multiple OpenText Content Manager instances and file shares, discovering tens of millions of business records. This helped them quickly identify sensitive information and respond to Requests for Information more efficiently, making a big difference in their operational agility.

In the private sector, a global insurer is using EncompaaS to tackle the challenge of managing redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) data across previously unmanaged file shares. This has helped reduce organisational risk while driving down storage costs.

The Business Impact of Unified Data Management

Bringing structured and unstructured data together into a single, centralised foundation is what transforms information into a real business asset. When you can see and use all your data in one place, you unlock three core benefits:

1. Reduced risk: Automated compliance policies ensure sensitive data—whether structured or unstructured—is managed correctly and compliantly, lowering the chance of fines and breaches.
   
2. Increased data value: A unified view transforms scattered content into actionable insights that drive better business decisions.
   
3. Accelerated AI adoption: High-quality data is the backbone of successful AI readiness. At EncompaaS, we turn messy, unstructured data into a trusted resource, moving AI initiatives from pilot to production faster.

Bringing Clarity to Complexity

Structured and unstructured data are two sides of the same coin. The real power of AI lies in its ability to reconcile their differences, transforming data into a unified asset that fuels innovation and growth. With the right strategy and solutions in place, organisations can break down their data silos, turn complexity into clarity and unlock the full potential of their data.