MAIDENHEAD, England,
December 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --
SDL's Five
Future States of Content Highlights Disruptive
Trends to Watch in 2018
SDL, a leader in global content creation, management,
translation and delivery, today announced its Five Future States of
Content, a series of disruptive content trends for brands to watch
in 2018. With content at the heart of every customer journey, SDL
predicts content will hit a new dimension of organizational
importance, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning
(ML) playing a leading role in automating content creation,
translation, organization and delivery.
Self-creating and organizing content may seem like something out
of a science fiction movie but advances in AI and ML make this, and
other exciting advancements, a reality for brands now and in 2018.
SDL's Five Future States of Content report looks at where AI and ML
are set to make the greatest impact in the way content is securely
created, managed, translated and delivered to global audiences. The
Five Future States of Content (register here for report available
in January) include:
1. The demand for content is too
high to keep pace with: Content will
create itself
In his book "The Grand Design," world famous physicist
Stephen Hawking argues that the
universe can create itself out of nothing. But can the same be said
about content? Thousands of writers would be needed 24/7 to create
all the content required to power future digital experiences.
Breakthroughs in AI and ML mean that in 2018 it will become
possible for brands to automatically generate finely-tuned content
from information stored in a variety of repositories across their
business - giving every customer their own, truly unique
experience.
2. The amount of content is too overwhelming to manage:
Content will organize itself
Creating content is only one of the many applications that
Machine Learning is capable of. Brands will begin to use Machine
Learning to create taxonomies of all their company's content,
summarizing and tagging it to facilitate better search results
through content management systems, improving metadata and
optimizing SEO, and enabling other enterprise systems to
automatically discover existing content. This will maximize reuse
and return on already invested content creation efforts and help
form the next frontier of digital experiences.
3. The waterfall methodology has dried up:
Content will be agile
With the future of content creation and organization being
accelerated by AI, content will need to be structured and formatted
so that it is machine ready. SDL predicts that the old waterfall
approach to creating and delivering content will become obsolete in
favor of a continuous global content operating model. We'll see
more companies adopt this approach in 2018, enhancing global
content and localization teams with AI and ML capabilities, like
authoring tools and machine translation, to create and deliver
engaging content at an extreme scale in response to our fast-paced
society.
4. The customer decides before they ever talk
to your salesperson: Content will
become your best seller
Brands are already shifting their sales priorities to focus on
content creation rather than just selling. That's because
salespeople spend just one-third[i] of their day
actually talking to prospects, and content never stops talking. SDL
expects the creation, translation and delivery of content to become
as much of a priority to sales leaders as incentivizing and
training sales teams. SDL also predicts that the types of content
that sells will expand rapidly beyond the traditional marketing
materials into the realm of in-depth product information, a source
of information that companies leave mostly untapped today. Our own
research supports this trend: more than half (53%) of global
customers are now consulting manuals, FAQs and technical content to
learn more about a product before purchasing.
5. Content is your biggest security
risk: Content will be
secured
Upcoming legislation, including Europe's General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR), means that businesses will need absolute control of
customer information. They will need to provide transparency, a
full audit trail and complete data custody come May 2018. But companies outside Europe are failing to prepare, and we expect
some big brands to be quickly hit with fines of up to 4% of
revenues. In order to organize and secure high volumes of data in
2018, brands will turn to on-premise ML technologies to translate,
analyze and automate their content supply chains.
"Content that creates itself, organizes itself, and scales
globally with ease all sounds like the stuff of imagination," said
Peggy Chen, CMO, SDL. "But the rules
of content and marketing are changing in 2018, and the emergence of
new AI and Machine Learning technologies are powering this seismic
shift. Smart companies know that this is the future they must
prepare for if they're going to thrive in the years ahead."
SDL's Five Future States of Content are based on 15 years of
research and development into Machine Learning, translation and
content management technologies, over 45 patents and 200+
peer-reviewed industry papers - providing unparalleled insight into
the ways ML and AI are set to transform content creation and
delivery in 2018. Pre-register here for the Five Future
States ebook available January 1,
2018.
About SDL
SDL (LSE: SDL) is the global innovator in language translation
technology, services and content management. Over the past 25 years
we've helped companies deliver transformative business results by
enabling powerful, nuanced digital experiences with customers
around the world. Are you in the know? Find out why 78 out of the
top 100 global brands work with us at SDL.com and follow us on
LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Media Contacts:
SDL
Maria Hudson / Denis Davies
Corporate Communications
mhudson@sdl.com / Ddavies@sdl.com
+44(0)1628-410129
i. How Salespeople Learn (June
2017)