In the past, we've discussed the importance of adding quality metadata for several reasons. Of course, better metadata will improve all aspects of search performance. Also, the right identifiers and tags can provide you with business intelligence, audit support, ideas for extra revenue streams and more. The real gold mine is in converting unstructured data into structured data. Here's a quick one-minute primer on what exactly metadata is: Adding this additional information to describe your documents may seem like a big job, and that's certainly true if you don't use the best tools.

As a VP of Product Marketing, I lead a team that focuses on different product marketing activities at M-Files: product positioning, value proposition and customer communications. My team also employs subject-matter experts for different processes and industries. They work closely with product development, marketing and customer success teams to ensure that we address the specific customer needs for various industries and their respective regulations. We use and follow almost all marketing technologies from ABM to Sales Automation to analytics. Marketing organizations typically use M-Files for collaboration, data governance, digital asset management, content management, talent management, customer intelligence and workflow.

With all the information flying around in businesses today, M-Files has been helping businesses succeed by improving efficiency and maximizing the reusability of information by using M-Files' unique metadata-driven architecture, you can find the right document instantly with a simple keyword search. Recently, they have secured a EUR 27 million financing agreement which they plan to use for international growth, partner channel expansion along with accelerating their R&D. I was able to reach out to Miika Mäkitalo, CEO of M-Files to ask a few questions about what they plan to do with the funding. Miika: "M-Files will use this newly secured financing to fuel our continued international growth, partner channel expansions and accelerated R&D in Europe. As the need for intelligent information management solutions grows rapidly, we are expanding our global footprint and our offices in the UK, Germany, France, Australia and the U.S. M-Files grew revenue by almost 40 percent in 2017 over 2016, including strong growth in both direct sales and through our global partner network, now numbering more than 600 partners worldwide. This financing will continue to fuel that momentum. M-Files will also use this funding to advance our intelligent information management platform, so we can continue to redefine how companies around the world manage information and data."

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be a good thing for the digital workplace. Despite concerns about job redundancies and shifting enterprise priorities, recent research from global auditing company PwC suggests that, far from hindering employees or even making some jobs obsolete, AI will help workers achieve business objectives quicker and more effectively. To do that, however, organizations will need to invest in different types of AI. The research, part of PwC's Economic Outlook for 2018, predicted the main contributor to the UK's economic gains between 2017 and 2030 will come from consumer product enhancements stimulating consumer demand (8.4 percent). The research identified AI as a key factor in this growth, by driving a greater choice of products, increasing personalization and making those products more affordable over time.

The acquisition of Apprento by M-Files, along with its recently-announced partnership with ABBYY, a global provider of innovative language-based and artificial intelligence technologies, illustrates the company's focus on automating and simplifying the way business professionals manage information and related processes. "Business leaders, industry analysts and others who follow our industry all agree that traditional approaches and solutions for managing information are inadequate and that a new and more intelligent approach is required," said Miika Mäkitalo, CEO at M-Files. "Our acquisition of Apprento coupled with our recent partnership with ABBYY reinforces our commitment to deliver human-like intelligence to the massive volume of unstructured content that resides within disconnected systems and repositories in the typical enterprise." "By incorporating the Apprento Business Context Engine into the M-Files platform, we're delivering powerful artificial intelligence capabilities to current M-Files users as well as setting the foundation for the introduction of many more AI enhancements and tools in the near future," said Trevor Cookson, CEO at Apprento. "I'm honored to join the forward-thinking M-Files team and I'm looking forward to working with them to simplify and improve how people manage and interact with information."