In today’s digital workplace, data is generated faster than organizations can keep up, flowing in from emails, documents, chat messages, cloud drives, vendors, collaboration tools and more. While this information should be a strategic asset, it instead becomes a burden. The sheer volume, variety and speed of data creation can leave many drowning in digital clutter.
Managing this ever-growing pile of data is like trying to shut a giant digital junk drawer that’s overflowing, disorganized and nearly impossible to control.
At the core of this challenge is the fact that 90% of enterprise data is unstructured. That means it lives in inconsistent formats, scattered across disconnected systems, and it’s often difficult, if not impossible, to find or use effectively. This data is your organization’s ghost content.
What Is Ghost Content & Why It Matters to Your Organization
Ghost content refers to the data your organization technically owns but can’t find or use effectively—or may not even realize exists. It often hides in forgotten file shares, siloed legacy systems, outdated email threads, paper archives and even on personal desktops. It can also be locked away in unsupported formats or buried within outdated workflows, which makes it invisible to the business, school or municipality and inaccessible to the people who need it most.
When left unmanaged, ghost content quietly drains productivity, increases compliance risks and keeps valuable insights out of reach. Employees waste precious time searching for misplaced or mislabeled information and frequently end up recreating existing content, leading to duplicated efforts and increased chances of errors.
Beyond operational inefficiencies, ghost content risks serious compliance threats. Without proper visibility and governance, sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII) may be stored without the right access controls or audit trails, exposing organizations to legal liabilities and regulatory violations.
Data privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), along with state regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other retention mandates further raise the stakes, requiring businesses not only to protect their data, but also to know exactly where it lives and how it’s used.
The Three Categories of Ghost Content
Ghost content falls into three categories, each presenting unique challenges to discovery, access and usability.
1. Lost or Hard-to-Find Data
Critical business documents such as invoices, purchase orders and contracts often get buried due to inconsistent file naming or poor categorization. Paper records—like student transcripts, building permits or financial statements—locked away in physical storage also fall into this category, making them difficult to retrieve when needed.
2. Siloed Data
Customer records, vendor files, student profiles and financial data often live in isolated systems like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Student Information System (SIS) platforms, which rarely integrate smoothly due to differences in data formats and limited system interoperability. This siloing makes access difficult, often requiring manual effort or insider knowledge. Additionally, documents stored locally on desktops or shared drives, or in email inboxes, further limit visibility and prevent cross-departmental collaboration.
3. Unstructured Data
This includes meeting recordings (with clients, city councils, etc.), imaging files like building plans or healthcare scans, and freeform textual data such as emails and notes. While this information often contains rich insights, it often is underutilized because traditional tools can’t analyze them easily and manual processing is too slow and labor-intensive.
How to Turn Ghost Content into Actionable Intelligence
Here’s a simple rule: if you’re spending more than five minutes searching for a piece of data, it’s time to rethink your process.
The good news is solving the ghost content problem doesn’t require a massive system overhaul. With AI-powered tools, organizations can uncover, organize and unlock the value of hidden content already within their systems.
Modern platforms are transforming data management, enabling users across all departments—not just IT or data experts—to quickly find and utilize content more effectively. Take Laserfiche’s Smart Chat where users can ask natural language questions like “What are the key risks in this contract?” or “Summarize this quarter’s financial report,” and get clear answers in seconds rather than hours.
Tools like Laserfiche’s Smart Fields take data management a step further by automatically extracting, classifying, tagging and organizing information into searchable metadata. For example, Smart Fields can capture critical details from handwritten payment checks in multiple formats, enabling accurate income tracking by project, improving cash flow forecasting, creating searchable audit trails and simplifying dispute resolution. Smart Fields can also detect if a document contains PII and identify the type, for either human review or automatic redaction using Laserfiche Workflows.
AI-powered Document Summarization further accelerates productivity by condensing unstructured content such as meeting minutes or video transcriptions into quick, accurate summaries, freeing valuable time for more strategic initiatives. When you use Document Summarization and Smart Chat in conjunction with one another, text of any length, complexity or format quickly turns into actionable information.
As these tools continue to evolve, they do more than just improve efficiency. They pave the way for intelligent process automation across the entire organization. By converting ghost content into structured, actionable information, businesses can streamline operations, empower smarter decision-making and unlock new levels of innovation at scale.
The Path Ahead: Reclaiming the Power of Content
By uncovering ghost content and turning it into actionable information, organizations can move from data overload to insight-driven decision-making. With the right AI-powered tools, what once felt like digital chaos can become a strategic advantage to fuel automation, accelerate workflows and empower teams to focus on what truly matters.
Want to learn more about how to manage your ghost content to process data faster, generate content and extract insights for improved decision making? Read more now.
- Nearly half of employees are entering company-related information into public AI tools to complete their tasks and hiding their AI use, out of fear of seeming lazy, risky, or non-compliant
- 1 in 10 employees describe AI adoption in their workplace as “the Wild West,” unregulated, unclear, and out of control
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, August 13, 2025 — Laserfiche, the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation, today released new survey findings on AI adoption in the workplace, revealing that nearly half of Americans (49%) who use AI at work keep it to themselves, with 15% deliberately avoiding telling their manager.
As AI tools become more embedded in daily life, the survey reveals a workplace reality that is far less aligned. While many employees are eager to harness AI to boost productivity, inconsistent policies and cultural hesitation are fueling secrecy around AI adoption at work. Employees who are hiding their AI use worry it will be seen as lazy (16%), risky (15%), or out of step with company policy (16%).
A Mixed Workforce Mood
Employee sentiment around AI remains divided. While 21% are optimistic, and 22% say AI already helps them work faster or more efficiently, others are more cautious. Nineteen percent are skeptical, citing concerns about accuracy or misuse, and 13% are anxious or resistant, uneasy about the risks and consequences of incorporating AI into their workflows.
Younger generations are more optimistic about AI at work: 24% of Gen Z and 20% of Millennials say they see its potential but are still learning how to use it, compared to just 10% of Baby Boomers.
A New Frontier — with New Risk
Only one in three employees (36%) say their workplace has clear policies and approved AI tools in place. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 describe their organization’s AI environment as “the Wild West,” an unregulated space where people do what they want.
That lack of structure has consequences. Nearly half of employees (46%) admit to pasting company information into public AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, sometimes without knowing if the content is sensitive or confidential. Many turn to these tools in an attempt to gain a competitive edge (24%) or because their company’s own tools are too limited or hard to use (23%).
Older employees are significantly more cautious about using unofficial AI tools at work: 69% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, and 35% of Gen X, avoid these tools, compared to just 21% of Millennials and 17% of Gen Z.
The Path Forward: Build Culture Before Crisis
These findings highlight a growing AI governance gap. Usage is outpacing policy, and fear is replacing transparency. To solve this, organizations must do more than roll out AI tools. They need to foster a culture where employees feel informed, supported, and aligned on how and when to use them.
“When employees feel like AI is their ‘dirty little secret,’ that’s not a tech problem, it’s a leadership one,” said Karl Chan, CEO of Laserfiche. “Many employees are eager to embrace AI to work but often resort to unofficial tools when company-approved options are too limited or difficult to use. Innovative organizations can meet employee needs and unlock new potential by implementing guidelines, and adopting IT-vetted, intuitive AI tools that help employees reach productivity goals.”
Methodology
The survey was conducted by Veridata Insights and commissioned by Laserfiche. It included 1,000 U.S.-based individuals aged 18 and over, census-balanced by age and gender.
About Laserfiche
Laserfiche is a leading enterprise platform that helps organizations digitally transform operations and manage their content with AI-powered solutions. Through scalable workflows, customizable forms, no-code templates and AI-enabled capabilities, the Laserfiche® document management platform accelerates how business gets done. Trusted by organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — Laserfiche empowers teams to boost productivity, foster collaboration, and deliver a superior customer experience at scale. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Laserfiche operates globally, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.
In today’s rapidly changing insurance landscape, insurers face mounting pressures from economic and environmental uncertainty, coupled with rising policyholder expectations. Navigating these challenges means they need to improve how they operate, enhance customer experience and manage compliance costs. A recent industry survey, however, revealed a problem: Many insurers aren’t set up to tackle these strategies effectively. In fact, over half of them cited data fragmentation as their top operational hurdle.
Insurance companies continue to rely on inefficient data collection such as paper-based forms and static PDFs, forcing policyholders into tedious, error-prone data submissions. These outdated processes lead to manual data entry, repeated follow-ups, and inconsistent service. As a result, customers churn and bring down net promoter scores (NPS). Meanwhile, policyholder data is scattered across line-of-business applications, forcing staff into a “swivel chair” routine as they search for crucial data. This disconnected approach not only delays decision-making but also creates significant operational inefficiencies.
At the same time, insurers are grappling with increasing volumes of data from connected devices like telematics, smart home systems, and wearables. While this influx of data represents a tremendous opportunity to tailor policies and set accurate premiums, many insurers lack the capabilities to capture business-critical metadata efficiently.
Harness Your Data: From Overwhelmed to Supercharged
So, what can insurers do to turn data into business intelligence? The answer lies in embracing an enterprise content management (ECM) system as a unified source of truth and data orchestration engine.
With an ECM as the data backbone, insurers can:
- Deliver a superior customer experience through intuitive forms for policyholders that automate and standardize data intake for staff, ultimately speeding up service delivery.
- Harness the power of data by breaking down silos and integrating data across core systems to gain a complete view of policyholders.
- Navigate a complex regulatory landscape using records retention schedules and security tools that strengthen the organization’s information governance practices.
Leading ECM systems also incorporate generative AI features with the potential to revolutionize the way insurers intake claims, policy updates, and service requests from multiple channels.
These strategies not only improve productivity and cut costs but also elevate the overall policyholder experience – a vital factor in today’s competitive market.
Ready to learn how to turn data into strategic actions with an ECM platform? Download our free whitepaper, “Connect the Dots and Unlock the Power of Data in Insurance,” to discover how AI-powered data management can unlock the full potential of your data and lead your organization into a more efficient, customer-centric, data-driven future.
From data to compliance, strategies for improving supply-chain efficiency.
Amid a prolonged workforce shortage, increasing order volume, SKU proliferation, pressure to speed up delivery times and lingering economic uncertainty, factories and warehouses are turning to AI-powered technologies to automate time-consuming tasks. But for all their investments in digital transformation, many supply-chain organizations are still performing essential tasks manually, leading to a high volume of paperwork, frequent data silos, manual approval processes and a lack of visibility. All those manual tasks tap the brakes on production countless times each day.
As generative AI (GenAI) rapidly gains a foothold in supply chain operations, leaders in the manufacturing and distribution industries are recognizing the power of automation and GenAI to drive process improvements, according to the 2025 MHI Annual Industry Report. With strategic digital implementation of GenAI, supply-chain companies can streamline laborious processes, automate data extraction and eliminate bottlenecks, driving significant operational gains across the organization. This eBook will explore how enterprise content management (ECM) solutions—such as Long Beach, Calif.-based SaaS provider Laserfiche®—can help manufacturers and distributors become more agile, efficient and responsive to the ever-changing dynamics of supply-chain operations.
The current state of data sources
The 2025 MHI Annual Industry Report shows that supply-chain executives understand the value of ECM solutions such as Laserfiche. The survey found that 51% of organizations are working to accelerate their digital transformation by harnessing the power of data, but without an ECM solution, that task is daunting. MHI’s report found that 44% of manufacturing leaders say the amount of data their companies collect has doubled in just the past two years, and they expect it to triple by 2030.
Spreadsheets remain ubiquitous, with 70% of manufacturers entering data manually and 68% still using spreadsheets to analyze data, according to the MHI report. The tedious nature of data entry is just one of the factors contributing to the manufacturing industry’s labor shortage, which is expected to reach 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, according to the report.
The amount of data associated with supply-chain operations is growing exponentially, and managing that data is essential, empowering manufacturing leaders to identify bottlenecks and make strategic decisions more quickly. Manual data management and data silos lead not only to wasted time and increased costs but also to complicated processes and frustration for workers and customers.
Through automated data structures, streamlined data extractions and data uniformity across documents, executives can make informed decisions as challenges arise, supporting critical business processes and driving ROI for their organizations. Clean data starts with evaluating how well existing software systems and business processes are integrated. The next step is to bridge the process gaps between applications such as enterprise resource planning, manufacturing execution and customer relationship management. A centralized repository platform such as Laserfiche can serve as the single trusted source for up-to-date information, and that accuracy improves strategic planning and decision-making.
Data silos make it all but impossible to drive efficiency and streamline business processes across multiple applications and business units. That lack of transparency also makes it harder to measure ROIs and improve margins over time. By eliminating fragmentation across information systems, organizations can work and communicate seamlessly across diverse functions such as sales, engineering and finance.
Low-code integrations with Laserfiche’s platform enable companies to bridge technology gaps between legacy systems and the latest cloud applications while extending the functionality of existing ERP and supply-chain management solutions. Integrating content through a middleware platform like Laserfiche allows for standardized data formats and metadata types, enabling people and systems to access accurate information consistently.
With reliable data available across the entire company, manufacturers and warehouses can move products faster and grow their margins. Supply-chain companies will gain visibility and control over their factory or warehouse floor, and they’ll harness the power of AI and predictive modeling to establish an edge over their competitors.
Supervisors can create customizable dashboards to monitor operations, and Laserfiche’s generative AI tools, Smart Fields and Smart Chat, can speed-up real-time data extraction from multiple document types with less manual effort, and improved accuracy and compliance.
Here are five ways Laserfiche’s ECM platform can optimize operations for supply-chain companies:
- Step 1: Streamlining supplier management and procurement cycles
- Step 2: Increasing efficiency in quality control
- Step 3: Establishing a culture of compliance
- Step 4: Improving the accuracy of maintenance reports
- Step 5: Streamlining the onboarding of new hires
Want to read more? Get the full ebook, 5 Steps to Boost Supply-Chain Operations, here.
Laserfiche is a Leader for the 10th consecutive year, ranks highest in usability.
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, JULY 23, 2025 — Laserfiche — the leading SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation — is a Leader in the Nucleus Research Technology Value Matrix for Content Services and Collaboration for the 10th year in a row. Among the vendors evaluated, Laserfiche ranks highest overall in usability. Download a copy of the report here.
“As a leader in this year’s Value Matrix, Laserfiche was rated highest in usability for its AI productivity tools, new administration hub, process automation and integration capabilities,” said Evelyn McMullen, research manager at Nucleus Research and author of the report.
CSC as a Strategic Advantage: AI-powered Information Management
Recently released Laserfiche AI-powered features are aimed at boosting productivity even further and enabling automation at scale. Smart Fields, an out-of-the-box intelligent capture tool, allows customers to extract data automatically using natural language instructions, no matter the source or format. Smart Chat provides an intuitive chat interface that enables users to quickly gain insights from their repository content.
“As AI matures at an accelerated pace, vendors in the CSC market have the unique advantage of managing both structured and unstructured data from across the entirety of an organization,” the report’s Market Overview states.
Laserfiche AI features alongside powerful workflow automation, information governance and records management tools create new opportunities for organizational efficiency. Customers across industries use Laserfiche to increase productivity, create competitive advantage and drive growth.
“Laserfiche gives us the forms and workflow processes as well as data integration that enable efficiency at scale,” said Airline Hydraulics Chief Technology Officer Todd Schnirel. “Our Laserfiche-powered process improvements have supported us in achieving a significant increase in net revenue while adding very little operating expense.”
“Being ranked a leader for 10 consecutive years is a testament to our product innovation,” said Thomas Phelps, senior vice president of corporate strategy and CIO at Laserfiche. “Our top ranking in usability reflects our core value of putting people first and our commitment to delivering intuitive solutions that empower users.”
To learn more about Laserfiche’s position in the Content Services and Collaboration market, download the report here.
About Laserfiche
Laserfiche is a leading enterprise platform that helps organizations digitally transform operations and manage their content with AI-powered solutions. Through scalable workflows, customizable forms, no-code templates and AI-enabled capabilities, the Laserfiche® document management platform accelerates how business gets done. Trusted by organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises — Laserfiche empowers teams to boost productivity, foster collaboration, and deliver a superior customer experience at scale. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Laserfiche operates globally, with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.