By Susan Cotter, Senior Program Manager/Analyst

It’s been a few years since I attended an AIIM conference, so I was pleasantly surprised at AIIM 2019 when I was reminded of how pivotal an organization AIIM is within the information management industry. With a focus on digital transformation, attendees and technical service providers had plenty of opportunity to network, learn and share innovation.

In the opening keynote session, Peggy Winton, President and CEO of AIIM, described how the journey to digital transformation begins with intelligent information management and that the professionals in the room were the key to driving innovation. She also took the opportunity to announce a subtle, but appropriate, change to AIIM’s branding. Focused on the future, the acronym now stands for the Association of Intelligent Information Management. Luckily, this didn’t require changes to their logo!

This year, AIIM’s education tracks focused on three key areas: Service in Capture, Process and Analytics.  The agenda included sessions by industry experts and vendors and also included a number of roundtable discussions, allowing time for attendees to share and learn with their peers. AIIM also arranged “Brain Dates” which gave attendees an opportunity to take a deeper dive into various topics with industry experts or to suggest a subject of their own. This was well attended and proved to be a great way to supplement the overall learning experience.

A key takeaway from the conference was for intelligent information professionals to recognize the need to focus on incredible customer experience. Industry leaders affecting true digital transformation make it easy for their customers to do business with them. As Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology continues to mature, repetitive, mundane tasks can be automated in order to provide humans the opportunity to focus on more complex decision making with a focus on the overall customer experience.

Using Peggy’s keynote theme, the AIIM Conference 2019 is now in the rear view mirror but digital transformation is in our windshield. Automation and customer experience are driving success in intelligent information management.