The pace and complexity of work is reshaping how organisations operate, according to M-Files CEO Jay Bhatt.
In a recent interview, he said work now spans more systems, teams and external partners, and “rarely follows a clean, linear path.” At the same time, leaders are under pressure to move faster, stay compliant and make decisions in real time, even though many operating models were designed for a simpler era.
That mismatch is one reason performance can feel stuck even as firms pour money into automation and AI. Bhatt argues that technology doesn’t automatically remove complexity and, in some cases, it makes the underlying problems more visible. When information is fragmented or hard to trust, teams lose time hunting for documents, reconciling versions and validating decisions. That drag creates operational friction that multiplies across departments, limiting the upside of even the most modern tools.
Bhatt describes documents as the “DNA” of modern business because they contain the substance of how organisations run. He said, “Contracts, policies, project files, and client records aren’t just byproducts of work – they are the work. They underpin operations, compliance, and accountability. When documents aren’t managed well, everything built on top of them becomes slower and more fragile.”
Treating documents as static files is where things start to break, he says, because teams lose context. People can’t easily see why a decision was made, who owns an action, or how a piece of work connects to wider processes.
That leads to delays and rework, but it also introduces risk as confidence erodes in both the information and the systems supposed to manage it. Eventually, staff default to workarounds, manual checks and knowledge that lives in people’s heads.
AI has become the headline act in enterprise transformation, but Bhatt believes impact is elusive because AI is only as good as the information beneath it. In many organisations, information is scattered across systems, managed inconsistently and governed unevenly. Without a strong foundation, AI produces outputs that are difficult to trust or explain, which can turn supposed acceleration into doubt — and stall initiatives after early experimentation.
M-Files promotes a “context-first” approach, which Bhatt says starts with how information is used rather than where it is stored. The idea is to connect documents automatically to the work they support — clients, projects, obligations and decisions — so teams spend less time searching, reconciling and second-guessing.
He added, “For teams, that means less time searching, reconciling, or second-guessing. For leaders, it provides an enterprise knowledge graph that increases visibility and confidence.
“You can see how work is progressing, where risk is building, and whether policies are being followed without relying on manual updates or institutional memory. And critically, this must happen in the tools people already use every day – like Microsoft 365 – otherwise adoption becomes the bottleneck. That’s how you reduce operational friction at scale.”
Looking ahead, Bhatt argues the key mindset shift is to treat operational friction as a strategic problem — and context as the antidote. Capturing context across the organisation supports speed, compliance and AI readiness at the same time.
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