Every year, Nucleus Research releases its Value Matrix for enterprise software, describing and rating each provider in it. These types of guides are hugely useful for organisations looking for an ECM solution and wanting to compare the main vendors. For those familiar with Gartner's Magic Quadrant and the Forrester Waves, this is a similar type of report.

Nuclues itself, however, describes its reports as different:

"Our research is not designed to tell clients what they want to hear, but instead what they NEED to know to make the most informed technology decisions. The numbers don't lie and provide the best foundation to assessing and understanding technology choices."

This week, the Nuclues Research ECM Technology Matrix 2019 was published and there M-Files is listed as leader named for Enterprise Content Management bidders. It is the sixth year in a row that M-Files has received the award. Moreover, M-Files was rated highest for functionalities and usability.

The report says "M-Files position in the Leader quadrant is supported by its strong technology, user-centric functionality and robust usability. Nucleus expects M-Files to continue to set the standard for innovative content management functionalities for the foreseeable future."

Download Nuclues ECM technology value matrix 2019:

There are some other great words written about M-Files that we are happy to share:

Solutions mainly differentiate on innovation

Last year, the data security market for ECM solutions was identified as one of the main areas of concern, given GDPR and the various data breaches that took place.

In 2019, however, Nucleus says user feedback was "radically different" from 2018. Users now expect an ECM solution to include robust security measures and shift their focus to vendors with innovative functionality in AI & machine learning, automation, integration, capture and collaboration.

User expectations investments in 4 focus areas

Nucleus puts it short and bonding:

"Traditional monolithic content management vendors will continue to shrink as buyers look for usability, functionality and innovation (rather than reputation) when selecting content and collaboration platforms.

The report further outlines four key areas where users expect the most innovative ECM vendors to invest:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

AI and ML are central to an advanced content management solution. AI technology is still paving the way for some ECM platforms by "enabling greater automation and eliminating manual repetitive tasks". Forward-thinking content services platform vendors are figuring out where AI and ML will eventually fit into their solution and are investing in these technologies.

Capture

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) converts paper and digital documents into searchable, editable data, extracting value from unstructured data. Standard OCR functionality has become commonplace in most ECM systems, but the future of capture is the ability to capture handwritten characters and "interpret text that is not neatly arranged in rows and paragraphs", according to Nucleus.

Integration

On average, organisations have more than four shielded information repositories. Nucleus says: "This electronic disconnection is inefficient and costs companies money due to lost time and opportunities. Users are looking for integrations that merge data from different sources into one cohesive multifunctional system."

Collaboration

Remote workers are becoming more normal as companies strive to grow talent recruitment outside their physical environments. Users expect ECM vendors to focus on making real-time collaboration simpler and more efficient.

It is no wonder that M-Files is leading the way, especially with these four cornerstones of innovation that users insist on. M-Files has already made and will continue to make significant investments on these fronts. The innovative Finnish company has said it will invest as much as 40 per cent of its profits in further innovation of M-Files next year.

In the realm of AI and ML, M-Files uses these technologies to use document content to represent metadata, making information easier to classify and find. In terms of integration, M-Files leads the market with its Intelligent Metadata Layer, which links to other repositories (repositories of information and documents) and allows users to find content, regardless of where it is stored, in a single interface.