If there’s one thing both the public sector and healthcare world have in common, it’s their heavy reliance on documents.
Whether it’s a medical record, a public benefits application, or a legal contract, information flows through these organizations in unstructured formats. Unfortunately, this reliance can be a heavy burden, leaving many organizations drowning in documents and disconnected legacy systems.
The cost of this disconnect is staggering. In the U.S. healthcare sector alone, research suggests that 20–25% of annual spending, or nearly $1 trillion, is wasted due to administrative complexity and inefficiencies. And when we look closer at this stat, a significant portion of this waste is directly tied to poor information flow and manual document handling.
The good news is experts have suggested that by utilizing their data and content more effectively, there’s potential for up to quarter of that waste to be recovered.
As a result, we’re seeing many organizations that are starting to prioritize connecting their ECM systems to their core processes using content-centric automation. This approach transforms Enterprise Content Management (ECM) from a passive document graveyard into an active, intelligent engine that feeds core workflows with clean, structured information in real time.
By combining ECM, Intelligent Automation (IA), and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), organizations can finally connect their content directly to critical processes like claims, records, and case management.
How to Connect ECM to Your Core Processes in Government and Healthcare
Why Traditional ECM Alone is No Longer Enough
For years, traditional ECM was viewed as a digital filing cabinet where you would capture, store, manage, and retrieve documents. While these systems were undoubtedly an improvement over physical paper files, their impact on end-to-end business transformation is limited.
Many organizations have fallen into the trap of habitually moving every piece of content to the cloud or scanning paper into repositories. The trouble is, if a document is stored in the cloud but isn’t integrated into a workflow, sure, it’s been saved, but staff will still have to spend significant time manually indexing, re-keying data, and routing the file via folders or email. So in reality, this tactic is just a quick fix that doesn’t address the underlying problem, it only replicates analog inefficiencies in a digital format.
Today, we’re seeing a clear shift toward intelligent ECM or content services platforms. These modern platforms go beyond simple storage to emphasize ECM process automation, analytics, and deep integration with business systems. The goal has shifted beyond just document storage to making the content an active participant in the workflow.
What is Content-Centric Automation?
Content-centric automation is an operating model where documents become the primary input for end-to-end digital workflows. Instead of requiring clean, pre-structured data to trigger a process, this model allows the documents themselves to initiate and drive actions.
This model relies on three essential technology pillars:
- ECM: The governed backbone that centralizes, secures, and manages the lifecycle of content.
- Intelligent Automation: The orchestration layer that coordinates tasks, rules, and decisions across different teams and systems.
- Intelligent Document Processing (IDP): The AI engine that converts messy, unstructured documents into structured data that systems can actually use.
Here’s an example: Say you have a public benefits application or a healthcare claim. In a content-centric model, the moment this document is received, IDP identifies the document type, extracts the applicant’s information, and validates it against core records. Intelligent automation then routes the application to the correct department for approval, while ECM ensures the document is securely stored and meets all compliance retention schedules. This entire journey can happen with minimal manual intervention, turning documents from a liability into a strategic asset.
The Role of ECM: From Repository to Process Hub
Modern ECM is the foundation of content-centric intelligent automation, having evolved from a back-office archive into a strategic layer that integrates directly with line-of-business systems like Electronic Health Records (EHRs), claims engines, ERPs, and CRMs.
In a content-centric environment, ECM provides:
- Centralized Security: Role-based access and encryption for sensitive patient, constituent, and provider data.
- Advanced Search and Metadata: The ability to find information instantly through full-text search and structured data fields.
- Lifecycle Governance: Automated enforcement of retention schedules, legal holds, and audit trails, and is critical for staying compliant with HIPAA, CMS rules, and public records laws.
Across government and healthcare, organizations that adopt intelligent, content‑centric ECM enjoy common benefits like faster access to patient, claims, and citizen records, shorter processing times for requests and applications, and significant reductions in manual document handling.
The Role of Intelligent Automation: Orchestrating Work
If ECM is the backbone, Intelligent Automation (IA) is the brain that coordinates the work. IA brings together workflows, business rules, and integration tools to streamline multi-step processes around documents.
In healthcare, IA is frequently used to automate administrative friction points such as prior authorizations, scheduling, and billing. In the public sector, it underpins digital service initiatives like licensing, permitting, and benefits determination. This reduces the administrative burden on staff, allowing clinicians to focus on patients and government employees to focus on high-value constituent service.
Another player in the mix is agentic automation, which introduces digital agents that can autonomously handle complex, cross-system workflows while collaborating with humans. This is particularly powerful for government processes where a single document might trigger actions across multiple departments and data sources.
The Role of IDP: Making Documents Machine-Ready
The “connective tissue” of this stack is Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). IDP uses AI, machine learning, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to understand document types and extract key data fields.
This technology is essential for handling the variability of the real world, like handwritten applications or inconsistently formatted medical records. IDP validates the data against business rules and master systems to support straight-through processing.
- Speed and Scalability: During surge events (like open enrollment or disaster assistance), IDP can automate most of the initial document handling and data extraction.
- Case Assembly: In document-heavy processes, IDP can automatically extract a case ID and file new incoming documents into the correct digital folder within the ECM.
Deep-Dive Use Cases: Transformation in Action
Content-centric automation delivers specific, high-value outcomes across several key areas of government and healthcare:
Claims and Benefit Processing
This is one of the most impactful areas for automation. For example, a health insurer can use IDP to extract diagnosis codes and patient data from incoming mail or portals. IA then routes the claim through adjudication based on specific policy rules, while ECM maintains the record for future audits. As a result, you can enjoy faster settlements and significantly reduced error rates.
Patient and Constituent Onboarding
Onboarding is often a fragmented process involving IDs, consent forms, and insurance cards. Content-centric automation captures these documents at the point of intake, digitizes them, and auto-populates the EHR or case management system. This accelerates time-to-service, ensuring patients get care and citizens get benefits without waiting for manual paper processing.
Case Management
Whether in social services or clinical appeals, case management requires a longitudinal view of a person. Content-centric automation creates digital case folders that aggregate all documents, data, and workflow history, and new documents are automatically associated with existing cases, enabling better collaboration among clinicians, social workers, and administrators.
Records, Audits, and Compliance
As you know all too well, operating in a highly regulated environment means that auditability is non-negotiable. Content-centric automation supports this, as when you build security and retention into an automated process, you can ensure they are always audit-ready. Once you’ve achieved this, you can dramatically simplify anything from a public records request to a CMS investigation or otherwise, as documents can be retrieved rapidly with a complete history of who accessed them and when.
Implementation Approach: Process-First, Platform-Enabled
The most common mistake in automation is digitizing an inefficient process. At Naviant, we take a process-first consulting approach, which involves mapping and redesigning the workflow before layering on technology. This ensures that you aren’t just doing the wrong things faster.
A pragmatic roadmap for content-centric automation follows a phased approach:
- Discovery and Diagnostics: Map document-intensive flows and identify where the biggest bottlenecks occur.
- Targeted Pilot: Select one high-volume use case, such as a specific type of claim or onboarding journey, and stand up an integrated IDP, ECM, and workflow solution.
- Measure and Iterate: Quantify the results in cycle time and manual touchpoints.
- Scale and Standardize: Extend the successful patterns across other departments and programs.
Business Outcomes and KPIs
Moving to a content-centric model is not just about technology; it is about measurable business value. By connecting ECM to core processes, organizations can expect:
- Waste Reduction: Addressing the nearly $1 trillion in administrative waste in healthcare.
- Massive efficiency gains: Organizations that implement intelligent, content centric automation frequently report steep reductions in manual data handling and noticeably faster access to the information teams need.
- Accelerated processing: In both healthcare and insurance, content driven workflows can cut down on claims and request processing times.
- Improved Human Experience: Reduced administrative burden helps prevent staff burnout while providing faster, more transparent service to patients and citizens.
Transforming Liabilities into Assets
In the modern government and healthcare landscape, documents should no longer be a bottleneck. By integrating ECM, IA, and IDP into a unified content-centric automation strategy, you can turn your unstructured data into a strategic asset.
This transition is an evolution, not a “rip-and-replace” project. With the right partner and a process-first mindset, you can streamline your most critical workflows, ensure ironclad compliance, and deliver the digital-first experience that your constituents and patients expect.
If you’d like to learn more about how to get started, drop a question or comment in the chat below. We’d love to hear from you.
