Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Hyland exec discusses the state of cloud solutions in APAC

Ed McQuiston sits at the heart of a sweeping transformation in the world of enterprise content management.

As Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Hyland, a leading US-based software vendor, McQuiston is overseeing not just the evolution of the company's flagship platform, OnBase, but also a string of strategic acquisitions aimed at positioning Hyland as the global leader in content services.

Speaking on the 10-Minute IT Jam, McQuiston highlighted the company's move over the past year to a fully cloud-based platform, describing it as a major step forward. "We've been offering a hosted version of our product for many years," he said, "but one of the things that we've looked to evolve is through this foundation concept - to have our releases and release schedule behave more like a more typical SaaS provider." The aim, he explained, is to allow "enhancements and improvements much more quickly" and provide a "more sustainable upgrade path for our customers".

The OnBase Foundation, as McQuiston described it, is not just a technical upgrade, but an overhaul of how content management software is delivered and experienced. OnBase is used across a multitude of verticals, from healthcare to financial services, incorporating everything from document ingestion and advanced OCR to business process management and low-code app development. "It really involves ingesting any variety of content, whether it begins digitally or is something scanned in - a PDF, an Office file, an email, anything in between," he said.

This content is then routed through custom business processes or new low-code applications, replacing spreadsheets and legacy apps with more modern solutions tailored to customers' needs. "We replicate that same kind of thing in banks through their core systems, through AP systems, and so we've got literally millions of users out there, a lot of which don't even know they're OnBase users because they're leveraging our capability set from those cores," McQuiston explained.

But Hyland's ambitions do not end with technical updates to their core platform. Over the last year, the company has made several significant acquisitions, including Learning Machine, Another Monday, and UK-based Alfresco.

"We have a history as a company of doing acquisitions where we believe they make sense," McQuiston said, noting the company's strategic rationale. Learning Machine brought blockchain-based digital credentials into the fold, a technology McQuiston said will soon become "a requirement from organisations... to have certified content". Another Monday expanded Hyland's reach into robotic process automation (RPA), enabling the company to further automate business workflows, from case management to OCR. "There are elements within those lifecycles where robotic process automation could be applied to enhance the level of automation that they're already getting with the Hyland tools," he added.

Perhaps most notably for the Asia-Pacific region, the acquisition of Alfresco, a long-time competitor, was singled out by McQuiston as a game-changer. "We saw an opportunity to fuse those two companies together to expand the reach and the bandwidth," he said, pointing to Alfresco's strong presence in the EMEA region and its cloud-native, open-source technology as key assets that complement Hyland's own capabilities and strategy.

With the integration of these acquisitions underway, Hyland is now setting its sights squarely on global expansion. "We have a very clearly stated, internal goal of being the leading content services provider globally and that is our singular aim," McQuiston stated.

Turning to the Asia-Pacific region, McQuiston acknowledged that while Hyland already boasts several key customers, there is much room for growth. "We are certainly not the industry-leading organisation that's kind of known to everyone in those geographies," he said. "For us, it's about continuing to expand our customer penetration, our brand, to be better known across the region."

Events like the 10-Minute IT Jam, he stressed, serve as important opportunities to increase visibility. "Our value proposition is no less vital or valuable to customers in APAC, we just may not be as known. As we're able to have success and leverage that success, we know that we really can become the dominant player in the APAC region as we are domestically in the US."

Asked about the pace of digital transformation in APAC, and whether it matches developments elsewhere, McQuiston was candid. "APAC acts almost like three very distinct regions," he said. In Japan, the company has a long-established presence, primarily focused on core content storage and workflow solutions, though recent developments such as e-invoicing are prompting a broader embrace of digital transformation.

In Singapore, Hyland's footprint is particularly strong in healthcare, working with large hospital clusters to deliver clinical content solutions. "We're providing clinical solutions to those hospital organisations that are serving the citizens of Singapore," he explained. Meanwhile, Australia presents a broader commercial base, with customers in manufacturing, insurance, retail, and financial services, serviced both directly by Hyland and through a growing partner network.

Reflecting on the global impact of the pandemic, McQuiston said it had dramatically accelerated digital transformation efforts everywhere. "It has forced a reckoning if you will by organisations, to be able to serve their customers in a new and different way," he observed. "It has set aside what might have been internal obstacles in the past in favour of a need to go to market and reach customers in a different, digital, touchless way than they had before."

For Hyland, this new landscape presents more opportunity than challenge. "We're fortunate to be in a position where the tools that we offer fit very well for customers that are needing to accelerate that path," McQuiston said. "Those are exactly some of the stories that I'm going to tell in my discussion."