Companies trying to digitally transform their business processes are challenged by a rising tide of information chaos and confusion. This scenario is creating a demand for new information management practices that extend beyond traditional enterprise content management.

These and other trends are presenting business leaders with complex challenges, according to a new AIIM Industry Watch survey report sponsored by Canon Business Process Services (Canon). The report, "Digitalizing" Core Business Processes, was designed to examine how organizations view process automation and to determine whether their current efforts are enough to achieve true digital transformation. The term "digitalizing" according to the report suggests going beyond digitizing the steps in a workflow. It is more about redesigning the business as a digital business, not just improving processes that the enterprise currently has in place.

AIIM's research led to three core findings:

1. True digital transformation requires more than just digitizing back end processes.

2. Many enterprises have yet to do the very basic work of process automation, putting them at a severe disadvantage in their efforts to embrace digital transformation.

3. New technologies like robotic process automation, blockchain technology and intelligent capture open up new opportunities to improve processes as well as totally rethink them.

In one finding, respondents were asked to rank the importance of process automation to their organization. A majority (75%) specified that process automation was important (17%) or very important (58%), making it more of a requirement than a "nice-to-have."

Besides providing insight on these and other findings, the survey report sheds light on how four key information management practices are critical to digital transformation success. These practices include: digitalizing core organizational processes; modernizing the information toolkit; automating compliance and governance; and leveraging analytics and machine learning.