The explosion in interest around AI and automation was a notable trend of 2023. But despite the promise, many businesses are still struggling to get the results they want, leaving innovative solutions under-used and under-optimised
On 21st March 2024, we held a webinar exploring some of the key automation solutions we see emerging and developing in the coming years. From offering businesses streamlined content production to smarter and more integrated reporting, this webinar looked at the five key themes holding the most promise to businesses in the foreseeable future: ingestion, creation, generation, integration and automation.
The webinar was hosted by Black Sun’s Chief Digital Officer, Richard Dixon; Chief Technology Officer, Mirko Savarese; Head of Technology Development, Erwin Blomeyer; and Head of Application Development, Akhil Grover.
Here’s a summary of what we covered.
The first theme the webinar explored was content ingestion – the process of editing and preparing content for reuse across multiple channels.
In a digital landscape where a seamless omnichannel experience can be the difference between winning new customers and missing out, content creators need to work quickly across a number of different digital channels, whilst ensuring the accuracy and consistency of all content. Typically, this means working in a single document, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word, before copy and pasting this content into different content management systems (CMS) and optimising them for publication. But this manual process takes time and switching between different CMS platforms increases the chance of unintended changes or errors when publishing.
Thankfully, smarter solutions, such as Adobe’s Experience Manager (AEM), are streamlining the creation to publication process. Available as a browser plug-in, authors can quickly edit web content by simply clicking on the plug-in’s ‘Edit’ function at the top of the page. This then opens up the user’s choice of working document, where edits and changes can be made, before the new changes are uploaded via the cloud.
Once published, AEM converts the copy into HTML and uploads it to the page via the cloud, allowing web teams a faster and easier way of publishing new content or updating existing content, automatically tagging, categorizing, and optimizing content for maximum impact.
The potential of AI for streamlined content production is one of its most talked-about uses. Not only can it help produce timely and accurate communications, it can also free up often time-poor content creators to focus their efforts on more creative tasks elsewhere.
Written communications AI platforms, such as Jasper AI, are one way businesses can deliver simple types of stakeholder communications easily and quickly. Through prompting, or by working from pre-designed templates, teams can generate social media posts, emails, newsletters and press releases in just a few clicks and often with only minor editing.
With faster outbound comms freeing up your teams, they can focus on more creative or strategic content, such as annual reports, which still need the careful attention and rigorous expertise of content specialists. Although, however your business automates simple communications, it’s always worth remembering that any AI-generated content should always be carefully reviewed and verified before being published.
It isn’t just written communications where AI and automation offer promise. Text-to-image and video platforms, such as Adobe Firefly, are helping businesses create fast and engaging visual communications in just a few clicks.
Through simple text prompts, users can generate and adjust images and videos based on their specific needs. Designers can edit everything from aspect ratios to lighting intensities and even animation styles in minutes, saving time and resources when it comes to perfecting visual content production.
For stakeholders looking for the most relevant sections of annual or financial reports, it can sometimes be a laborious and time-consuming process searching through pages to find the information they need. But thanks to the integration of chatbots and virtual assistants with significant amounts of data, users can now access key and up-to-date information simply by asking.
Where some current chatbots trawl through vast amounts of data in search of an accurate query response, subsequently increasing the chances of misinformation or hallucination, at Black Sun, we are designing a chatbot solution that draws its answers from a provided knowledge base.
Using a provided knowledge base alone, chatbots can search and access information provided in content formats such as an annual report, and easily present it back to users in a fast and accessible way. Instead of downloading and reading through an annual report to learn about a company’s financial performance, a user could instead ask a dedicated chatbot on the company’s website to provide this information. This could not only save users a lot of time – but have huge impacts on the way companies provide key information to stakeholders.
Ensuring stakeholders find accurate and reliable information across all your channels can involve manually updating a lot of data. But with integrated reporting software, like Workiva, businesses can automate this process by linking annual reports to key channels via API.
Workiva is a data collaboration solution that allows teams to work together in a single platform to connect data and reporting. It connects different data sources together ensuring all your teams have access to up-to-date and accurate data, streamlining the data collection process.
At Black Sun, we are working on a solution that will take this further. With your business’ key reporting data in one place, our solution will use an innovative API to publish this data across your digital channels, ensuring all your stakeholders have access to the information that matters most and giving your business fully connected reporting.
To talk to us about how we can support you with your AI and content creation needs and revolutionise the way you work, or to request a copy of the full ‘Prepare for Revolution’ webinar email our Head of Business Development, Naomi, here.
Black Sun Global is an international stakeholder engagement agency that’s been helping global brands drive change for more than 30 years. At the forefront of corporate communications, we offer integrated solutions, covering strategy, reporting, ESG advisory and digital activation – all powered by insights, technology, and market-leading expertise.
By addressing stakeholder interests, we turn one-way communications into engaging two-way dialogues that deepen relationships, fuel innovation, and drive more sustainable business practices.
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