Accelerating AI adoption by unifying digital and physical assets

Time to consider the hidden value of your assets

What percentage of your enterprise’s assets contribute to your bottom line? What’s gathering dust, creating physical or digital clutter, and generally sliding through its useful “life” undiscovered and ungoverned could be used to explore new artificial intelligence (AI) frontiers leading to innovation. Assets are almost anything that inherently holds value: physical mail, email, and chats; paper and database records; audio and video reels; photographs; recorded media; film props; fine art and other collectibles; IT equipment; IoT devices; and whatever else might be used for AI training purposes or otherwise leveraged by evolving AI-centric use cases.

In emerging AI frontiers such as AI-driven automation, generative AI, and immersive experiences, progressive enterprises blend physical and digital realms to reshape our perception of and interaction with the world around us. Organisations venturing into these areas are discovering the value in data previously locked in analogue (or physical) formats that can be used to train traditional and emerging AI models, build immersive experiences, and even protect and optimise the value of assets across their lifecycles.

Why and how information and data management strategies must evolve

Unfortunately, many enterprises are ill-prepared to leverage these types of assets due to poor visibility and control, confusion about what to keep (and for how long) and what to digitise, how to use technology to extract data and metadata from unstructured information, how to set policy to protect and manage data, and so on. They don’t know what they have, and they rarely consolidate the management of physical and digital assets. Some still use spreadsheets to track physical assets.

As we realise that every thing—every asset that is relevant, authentic, and accurate—inherently holds and is “information” that can contribute to or benefit from AI use cases, we must also realise this: We must evolve our information and data management strategies to protect, manage, and optimise assets in an increasingly complex regulatory and security environment from creation to responsible end-of-life. This is where a unified asset strategy comes into play—to help enterprises prepare for emerging AI-centric use cases that integrate and leverage digital and physical assets and protect those assets to reduce risk and maximise return.

A holistic framework for optimising and protecting assets

Unlike traditional digital and physical asset management, a unified asset strategy is a holistic, systematic framework for maximising the value of any asset.