Utah State University strengthens workflows with Box AI
CIO Eric Hawley has seen the rise of Intelligent Content Management at Utah State University. Having spent his entire career there (including the three degrees he earned), Hawley originally enlisted Box for cloud file storage back in the early days of the partnership.
“A terrible, dark time” is how Hawley describes the state of unstructured data before enlisting Box. While joking, there’s some truth to his depiction of legacy file mapping.
Now, 15 years after partnering with Box, the Utah State CIO is taking full advantage of Box tools to enable AI-powered workflows. In this way, the university gains the most value from its content while keeping data secure.
“Simply storing files is not useful,” Hawley says. “Files need to be used.”
Trustworthy AI makes things faster and simpler
Hawley sees AI as a tool to make work faster and simpler. He says, “We’re overwhelmed as humans with everything we need to keep track of. AI is a tool to help us… cut through the mess to get done what we need to get done and find what we need to find faster.”
But, he adds, “To use AI you have to trust AI.”
That means knowing what information AI is training on so the output is reliable — and so all data is kept safe and adheres to industry and PII regulations. That’s one of the reasons Hawley trusts Box AI. He expands on this thought: “As a university, we create data — research, new knowledge, information. It’s important that AI is reflecting and representing what we’re doing, including the sources it’s coming from.”
Security must be intentional
“Security does not happen magically or automatically,” he warns. How data is handled, tagged, and classified are all important to content security. Hawley appreciates that Box has laid a solid foundation for the ease that AI can bring and the due diligence that has gone into creating Box AI in the first place.
Utah State also leans on Box Shield and Box Governance to put the right security fences in place, enabling easy ways to classify, tag, and evaluate data. This system does not rely 100% on human handling, either: “Box AI has the capability of going back into those systems to verify we got stuff right… and help us fix unintentional human holes that often create security risks.”
Workflow really matters to business
Getting back to that idea of putting files to use, Hawley proclaims, “Businesses live and die based on the efficiency of their processes and workflows.”
He’s excited about Box Forms, which will enable the university to initiate workflows with custom forms that don’t require any coding. For instance, Utah State could customize Box Forms to handle incoming employment applications and then trigger a specific sequence of onboarding activities.
Metadata extraction is another Box tool that will help Utah State’s IT team take the onus off human employees to enter data manually. Hawley says, “I’m excited about the holistic combination of all of them” — Box tools, that is. “I think it finally allows for a set of ingredients to cook up a great process.”
View the full conversation below.