Unstructured data denotes to information that either does not have a well-defined or organized data model. Unstructured information is characteristically text-heavy, but may contain data such as amounts, percentage’s, dates, numbers, and facts as well, for example: contracts terms, loan amounts and terms, correspondences, proposals, legal descriptions, vesting information, etc.
Some experts estimate that up to 80 percent of the data in any organization is unstructured. Moreover, the amount of this data in enterprises is growing substantially, often many times faster than structured databases are growing.
In many organizations, the unstructured data includes information that could assist them making better decisions and in many cases it is critical to the business process. Just imagine how much content has been created just in the mortgage industry, for every property there are literally dozens of pages describing each location. Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to analyze and extract this unstructured data as it is typically highly variable in nature.
This challenge for document management solutions has created a market for data entry shops to analyze, classify, index and store this information into more structured database driven DMS solutions. With offshoring offering reasonable price-effective solutions, many companies have settled as this to be the only practical solution. However, is this the most affordable, scalable, secure and flexible option?
Some forward-thinking organizations have turned to the few software solutions available specifically designed to search unstructured data and extract relevant content, but how much success have they seen and where are the big wins?
During AIIM 2015, the Axis Technical Group will facilitate a discussion around the challenges and invite our guests to share their experiences addressing and solving this critical topic in regards to information management.
Post #AIIM2015 we’ll share those findings.