Trends '24: Archiving and document management

Neu-Isenburg, December 13, 2023 - The changes identified in the DSAG Investment Report 2023 gave the SAP community an initial indication of the trends to expect in the coming year: Top of the list alongside cybersecurity: AI, automation and sustainability. For document and archiving management, this results in the following predictions: 

1. the AI traffic lights are green 

AI will gradually conquer other areas and thus also find its way more intensively into archiving. As things stand today, it will not make sense to have a dedicated AI for every application in the company. For this reason, the AI solutions of the major providers, such as SAP, will become more professional. Surrounding systems, such as archiving and document management platforms, should therefore see themselves as important suppliers for these systems, from whose further development they will also benefit. Delivering data cleanly and providing flexible and cloud-native interfaces - this should be the focus of future-oriented document management solutions. And AI brings another advantage to the topic of archiving: hidden archiving obligations, for example in SharePoint, or due to GDPR relevance, can be more easily identified, classified and ultimately implemented. 

2. automation of IT 

Cloud-native approaches and container solutions will continue to grow. As a result, the degree of automation of the entire IT and therefore also of archiving will increase - all by itself. This has the advantage that administrators have less work to do to develop and implement archiving concepts that comply with guidelines, because the greater the degree of automation, the fewer "annoying" manual, error-prone archiving processes. This in turn relieves the burden on IT and users and also improves the image of archiving. 

3. ESG increases the sustainability level of companies 

The climate protection requirements adopted by the EU in the form of the ESG will take effect for the first time in 2024. Initially, only large companies will be affected by the reporting obligations, but suppliers are already indirectly involved and SMEs will also see new sustainability concepts on the agenda in the coming years. The aim is to gradually improve sustainability in companies. In the context of archiving, any kind of quality check of the software with regard to the footprint is desired! How does the supplier work, how does the solution work, what resources are required for implementation and operation? In particular, "cleaning out" the archived documents can be part of a forward-looking ESG concept for archiving.