Stop Tuning the Internal Combustion Engine of Documents

For decades, engineers worked tirelessly to refine the internal combustion engine – squeezing out more power, improving fuel efficiency, and extending lifespan. Yet, in the end, the real leap forward didn’t come from perfecting that engine. It came from an entirely different paradigm: the electric vehicle.

We’re doing something similar with documents.

Many organisations spend enormous time and energy making documents “more digital” – turning them into PDFs, spreadsheets, or polished dashboards. These files may be beautifully formatted and easy for people to read, but they’re still built for humans first, machines second. And that creates a hidden cost: it limits how much we can automate.

Imagine if, instead of pouring effort into the perfect PDF or spreadsheet, we focused on collecting and maintaining the data that underpins those documents. Machines could process that data directly – automating workflows, surfacing insights, and triggering actions. And for humans? We could still generate a polished report at the end, one that looks just like the PDFs people are comfortable with today. The difference is that the document would become an output of the process, not its primary input.

The Fear of Changing Engines

Our hesitation to rethink how we work with documents is similar to society’s early reluctance to embrace electric vehicles. For years, EVs felt risky: untested, unfamiliar, unknown. But imagine the world reversed – if everyone drove EVs today and someone proposed the internal combustion engine. It would sound absurd: more moving parts to break, constant refuelling with flammable liquids, louder, dirtier, and less efficient.

We’re at a similar turning point with information management. Continuing to perfect PDFs and spreadsheets is like endlessly tuning the combustion engine. It’s time to look beyond — to build systems where data itself is the fuel and documents are simply how we choose to see the journey.

So what can you do?

If you’re shaping information strategy in your organisation, ask yourself:

• Are we building for human readability first and automation second?
• Are we storing data or just prettier, slightly more electronic versions of paper reports?
• Could our processes become faster, smarter, and more adaptable if documents were treated as outputs rather than inputs?

It’s time to stop tuning the old engine and start designing for the future.