What is CSP Software? – Content Services Platforms

Blog|Document Management and Workflow - ECM - CSP |   5 min. |

Discover the 9 key functions of CSP Software

Content Service Platforms (CSP) are Software tools that manage enterprise content digitally with the goal of making more effective use of data and achieving better organised access and maintenance of data.

Therefore, a CSP Software facilitates decision making by leaders through the consumption of business information that the platform stores in a fast and agile way.

Their market is constantly evolving and is currently focused on process automation and information management. But where they have made a difference is in the areas of content intelligence, productivity, security and federation.

Today’s Content Service Platforms (CSPs) are the evolution of a family of software that has been called by many names over the years: first Document Management, then Enterprise Content Management (ECM Software) and finally Content Service Platforms (CSPs).

Although many of the purposes have remained constant, aspects such as cloud-compatible architecture and integration with other tools have become more important over the years, to the point of changing the name of this category of software.

 

The characteristics of CSP software are as follows:

  • Scalable cloud architecture: The ability for data to reside in whole or in part on provider servers accessible from the Internet and to be transferred to local environments when needed. CSP software provides full connectivity to a broad ecosystem of storage providers, partners and customers.
  • Protection: The ability to configure flexible and intelligent information governance, access, security and privacy controls. This is essential for operating in today’s increasingly threatening and demanding regulatory environment.
  • Fast results: This is about the speed to deliver business value through pre-built applications designed to solve specific use cases. These modules must be able to be used quickly and without prior parameterisation, and then be enhanced with progressive refinements.
  • User at the centre: A user-centric user experience to drive adoption and realise the expected benefits of this technology, thanks to integrated mobility and cross-device consistency.
  • Intelligence: Automatic learning and deep neural networks have enabled innovations for content-rich systems, specifically in classification, productivity and automation.

 

How to choose the right CSP?

CSP is a fairly broad term. Many platforms fall into this category, from Microsoft 365 to vertical CSPs for very specific industries. When choosing CSP software, you should consider the use case and critical capabilities of it to see if it really fits your business needs.

Content Services Platforms by use case:

  • Digital business transformation
  • Cloud office content services
  • Content consolidation
  • Information governance
  • Content and process automation

At Docuo we focus on the Content and Process Automation use case, which is based on automatically creating and managing company documents and workflows, thus saving unnecessary time and effort.

So if this is your use case, we recommend you to try our Content Services Platform for 30 days free.

 

 

9 key features

Once you are clear about your use case, we recommend that you check that the CSP software you have chosen meets the critical capabilities selected by Gartner:

 

1. Records management

Documents, archives and records management are the features that enable a company to maintain the business organisation and comply with regulatory standards. It should also include certification to international standards and formal controls for long-term retention of content.

 

2. Content intelligence

The set of capabilities that enable content to be classified, digitally visualised and queried in natural language for more effective content exploration without the need for excessive manual intervention.

 

3. Productivity intelligence

It relies on graph technology to identify similar work processes and create patterns so that the tool can proactively suggest or push content to users. In addition, advanced capabilities allow content to be linked across files, sites and conversations based on themes or commonalities automatically.

 

4. Process automation

The main feature of workflows is to assign tasks to different users at different points in the process automatically, and to set up notifications of task status changes automatically. More advanced features allow authorised users to create user flows and user interfaces, via forms, for end users to use during their business processes.

 

5. Security intelligence

Security and privacy controls provide the enterprise with role-based access across a variety of endpoints. Advanced capabilities proactively identify, classify and control sensitive content.

 

6. Open APIs

REST APIs expose content services for developers to call as part of application development efforts. In addition, developer documentation and low-code functionality are considered part of this capability.

 

7. Federation

The ability to extend content services, such as security, search and file management, to external content systems through pre-configured connectors. Connectors to Microsoft SharePoint for document consolidation and Active Directory for user authentication are some examples of this capability.

 

8. NWN Connectors

The New Workplace Core (NWN) connectors cover the breadth and depth of CSP integration into productivity applications. These include workflow collaboration, meeting solutions such as Microsoft Teams, email and calendaring, collaborative work management and content collaboration tools.

 

9. Business App connectors

Business application connectors focus on the breadth and depth of CSP integration with line-of-enterprise applications. These include enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and human resources.

 

Now that you know the key functions and use cases to take into account when choosing a CSP Software, we recommend you Docuo, the Document Management that is not only useful for the use case of content and process automation, but also adapts to the needs of each company.

Contact us to tell us exactly what you are looking for in a CSP and we will help you to configure it to your needs.