Laurence Hart – Every day, business employees use a variety of systems — including ERP, case management systems and email — to get work done. While users create many documents and spreadsheets, they are often thought of as specific business objects, such as proposals, budgets and articles. You should think about the future of content services in the same light.

You interact with documents and folders when using a content services platform (CSP) in its default configuration. However, to provide full value, CSPs need to better reflect business needs and organizations need to move beyond the concept of content services and think about business object services.

Consider a mortgage application. Every application includes information provided by the applicant, the financial institution and various external sources, and it is collectively considered a business object.

As a mortgage processor, you don’t want to search for 2018 Pay Stubs.pdf. Instead, you want to locate the applicant’s proof of income from 2018. In fact, there are likely multiple documents that show different sources of income over several years that you might want to search for, retrieve and review together. You want to know when documents were submitted, what actions were taken and the current status of the application. If it is a closed application, you’ll also want to know what the applicant chose and why.

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