Fundamentally transactional - The business of documents

An interesting point came up with a colleague today, where they noted that they we do not know what the future of documentation looks like and I kind of disagreed. The reason is that while a company might still be looking at their information such as Excels, Words and PDFs as documents, they actually aren't - all they are, are pieces of digital information. They don't reside anywhere physically - at least for the most part and in most cases.

This does depend on other factors and in some locations, paper is still widely used. However, the future is quite clear, where instead of sharing sheets of paper, we are sharing code translated into a representation of a sheet of paper. Not only that, what we are also doing is providing a location for that information, which could be stored in any number of ways, across various repositories and of course, multiple versions and copies of the same document.

It is pretty obvious what the future of documentation is - for those familiar with blockchains. But, it seems that even amongst document management system specialists, the vast majority of people are completely unaware of what they are actually dealing with. They are yet to realize that what they are wanting to do, is already being done, it just isn't being leveraged for their specific needs.

The management of information across traceability, immutability, compliance and all kinds of other business processes is of growing importance and it is already vital. As it expands, the future is all about data management and analysis, as well as automation of processes and bringing context to data efficiently, effectively and across multiple gateways and interfaces. The only way for an organization to do this, is making their information the core of their business in "centralized" manner, so that all information is accessible through filters and permissions.

Essentially, they need a blockchain.

When people think of blockchains, they think of decentralization of information, but that is not actually the case. The blockchain is actually centralized from an informational standpoint, where one instance of it contains all relevant information. The decentralization is in the verification process and the replication of that information across multiple points, so that failure of one node, doesn't compromise the integrity of the chain, and as long as one node survives, more are able to clone the information to decentralize it again.

Of course, not all information is desirable to have immutable, where for example tax records that need to be kept for an extended period of time, get deleted as soon as that time period ends. However, keeping track of all of this information when it is spread across multiple repositories is a nightmare, let alone filtering to find and ensure and trust deletion of information. What essentially needs to happen is that all records of locations of information need to be centralized, but be able to be added to and drawn from multiple locations.

We do this daily of course on Hive for example, where there are 28,800 transaction in a day (every three seconds) that commit various information to the blockchain. The various interfaces and experiences than call upon this centralized "storage" of information to translate it into something that makes sense for the usecase.

For instance, pulling the information required for @Peakd to visualize this post, is at the same point on the blockchain that @LeoFinance will use. If I edit the post, they will both draw upon the new location to represent the post, in the way they want. Then, on the same blockchain, information held for my Splinterlands card assets are filtered for and visualized, depending on what I have done with them. This is done in a slightly different way at times through JSONs, but the collection, storage and retrieval is essentially the same. Anyone can revisualize this post, where for example, someone might want to make a "word cloud" from it instead, or push it straight into a PDF format for publishing.

A business uses information in the same way, but they don't see their information in the same way, nor do they store their data in the same way. Instead of storing at a certain point in time, they store in various locations and instead of filtering based on context and relevance, they group based on type of information - compartmentalizing and creating walls and silos to information, rather than pooling information and filtering for contextual needs. Of course, there are some DMS systems that are "getting there" slowly, but they are few and far between.

But, aside from "boring" document management, what is interesting is the changing form of information, where while it has always been the case, the "transactional" status of it is coming to the fore. Businesses that are run predominantly on numbers, are starting to understand that the information they are using to facilitate their business, are transactions just like any monetary exchange and as such, have explicit values that can be monitored and applied. Even something such as the number of versions floating about across various repositories and the variance between contents of each has a value or, amplifies the chances of error. Content variance is a risk for business, especially in regulated industries, but they also impact on prospects and endusers, where the wrong information is used.

This shifting perspective of documentation into transaction will increasingly require smarter and more efficient systems to manage it, as the sheer volume makes human management impossible, not to mention the complexity of pulling multiple points of data in to a single source for usage. But, this also means that more and more people are required to make that data useful for the organization, which is why there is why data analysis skill is tipped to face a growing demand.

For me, this is all very interesting and it is another usecase slice that blockchain and blockchain processes and approaches are going to support in the future. Yes, it seems boring, but all of these slices add up to create a robust industry, that is able to interact with and support multiple industries. Just like interoperability is a growing part of the future of blockchain tech, industries do not act alone either and have to be interoperable with other industries. Because blockchain is about recording data into that single source of truth and then allowing it to be filtered and presented in endless ways, it makes sense that it is to become a foundation for information management systems and as such - core to business itself.

As they say - check the fundamentals.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]