I attended my first AIIM Conference in 1998. That’s when the acronym stood for Association of Information and Image Management and there were thousands of attendees, showcasing document imaging, document capture and scanning technologies.  Kodak was a huge player as was FileNet and IBM. Datacap was just raising its profile as a document capture vendor and the show was an important milestone for the fledgling start-up.

What a long strange trip it’s been. 25 years later, AIIM now stands for the Association for Intelligent Information Management, the Imaging part having faded in importance. AIIM has a new leader in Tori Miller Liu, and there was a feeling of optimism about the future throughout the three-day conference. 

As a key sponsor of AIIM, IBM used the stage time we received to share our Hybrid Cloud expertise and showcase some of our leading customers, who are doing great things with Business Automation technology.

Lauren Mayes, who leads IBM’s Content Services Product Management team, delivered the mainstage keynote, “Migrating ECM to the Cloud – Strategies to Survive the Journey.”  Based on the input we receive right here on the Business Automation Community, Lauren’s talk directly addressed questions like “Where do we start?” and “How can we control cloud costs?” She shared the step-by-step approach to cloud migrations developed over almost a decade of moving customers to the cloud and recounted the experiences of some IBM customers, with the cost savings they earned.

                    Lauren Mayes delivers the keynote on Migrating ECM to the Cloud.

AIIM has a neat session type they call a Fireside Chat, where customers simply tell a story about what they accomplished in Intelligent Information Management.  Two important stories were shared this year, first by Ryan Dennings of Auto-owners Insurance, about the intelligent search capability that his team built for their life insurance business. He described his phased approach to making all in-coming documents searchable, then moving on to a backfile conversion of previously stored documents, saving his knowledge workers hours of time manually searching for information.  He told a similar story last year at the Midwest User Group event, which you can see below.

The second Fireside Chat featured Peter den Ouden and Ronald Heerema of the Dutch Tax Office (DTO), one of IBM's largest users of Business Automation software. The citizens of Holland are among the most digital savvy in the world and the Dutch Tax Office, which oversees income tax, customs and the country’s social services, is actively building out automated processes as fast as it can. One such application automated the process of assessing and paying tax on imported cars, using IBM Datacap, BAW, and Content Services, among other enabling technologies. When it was all manual, the process took weeks and involved hundreds of people processing paper forms. After the system went live in 2022, citizens can have their car inspected at a DMV, submit the form on an iPad, have the tax assessed, pay it with a credit card, and drive away in their new car. All in a matter of minutes. Both Fireside Chats ended with a lively Q&A session, where the audience could ask their questions, technical and otherwise.

               Ronald Heerema (L) and Peter den Ouden (R) of Dutch Tax in the Fireside Chat 

With artificial intelligence in the headlines every day now, I was glad to see AIIM address A.I. in a panel discussion that ranged from the value of ChatGPT to business (not much yet), the growing role of A.I. to records managers (it’s coming!) and the A.I. that’s already embedded in Information Management tools (like machine learning for classification in Automation Document Processing).  Moderated by Alan Pelz-Sharp of Deep Analysis, IBM’s Matt Warta, Program Director BA Product Management, represented the IBM position on ethical and transparent A.I. and shared the conversations he’s having with IBM customers.

                                           Matt Warta on the mainstage at AIIM

Finally, New Orleans in April is a great town for a Conference, with abundant music, amazing food and pleasant spring weather.  It was the week before JazzFest, one of the biggest parties in the world and all over town, famous names were popping up for impromptu jams. For example, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin showed up at Preservation Hall in the French Quarter to sing some blues!

IBM contributed to the party atmosphere with a rooftop reception at the Virgin Hotel in the Warehouse District, where we served Big Blue Hurricanes and offered up fresh oysters and local comfort food as the sun set behind the Superdome. We were joined by more than 100 friends from companies like NY Life, Citigroup, Costco, enChoice, Pyramid Solutions, CSX, InfoSource, Gartner, Florida Blue and the Federal Reserve, among many others. Live music was provided by up-and-coming jazz pianist Chris Corneil, who had folks singing along to some great 70s R&B. It was a highlight in a week of highlights and a great way to connect with the people who are on the front lines of Business Automation.

                 David Jenness enjoying a Big Blue Hurricane at the IBM Reception