LANGUAGE INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS FOR CUSTOMER-CENTERED EXPERIENCES WEBINAR: A RECAP
Intento CEO Konstantin Savenkov alongside two other panelists — Michal Antczak, PayPal; and Maarten Verwaest, Limecraft — took part in a webinar by LT-Innovate to discuss different facets of deploying language technology (aka linguistic AI) at the enterprise level, moderated by Bruno Herrmann.
On the one hand, best-of-breed language technologies are indispensable for a company competing at a global level, but on the other, implementing such technologies requires alignment across many business functions and processes, which doesn’t always come easy. The language technologies of today must generate value for customers and make this value tangible for business leaders. In other words, language intelligence must turn content assets into value drivers for the business.
Below is what the panelists had to say.
Synchronizing cost with value
Due to the novelty of language intelligence technologies, it’s not always obvious to the buyers how to access the value. Some of them focus on the immediate cost of acquisition, ignoring the total cost of ownership and failing to appreciate the long-term value. So the question to the panelists was:
What is the best way to demonstrate the value to the buyers?
The speakers agreed the following was particularly important:
· Ability to access the whole infrastructure and integrate at scale. As there are no two identical large enterprises, each enterprise solution requires custom tailoring to match the existing tools environment and business processes. The cost is only part of the question. The other part is how does the new technology integrate with the existing setup? It may be the case that the company will be able to get rid of its outdated systems, therefore optimizing the investment.
· Demonstrating ROI to a buyer is the number one priority. It might be difficult to do on a small sample during a formal pilot, so being able to roll out your system quickly and show real-life results will get you ahead of the game.
· Don’t forget to compare apples to apples. Many buyers still might not have clear differentiators between offerings, comparing off-the-shelf commodity services to added-value solutions and finding a big difference in price. Yes, there might be an X10 difference in price, but so is the difference in value. Hence with the new AI, it’s important to articulate where the value lies.
The procurement process for ASR and MT technologies –what are the barriers there?
· It is not a secret that linguistic professionals may oppose bringing MT in-house, especially in creative industries. And, understandably, that change is always difficult. That’s why it is vital to make the new technology available for everyone so that people could experiment and see for themselves what the tech can do. Often they’re pleased to find that a language solution brings together the best of both words — AI and human. If a linguistic professional sees that the tech saves 30–40% of their time, leaving the room for creativity, they will support it.
· Surprisingly, the buyer’s previous experience with MT plays a significant role. If someone tried MT five years ago, they might as well be disappointed and have preconceptions. The speed of change in that world is tremendous; it’s critical to show what’s available today, not yesterday.
· Finance and procurement are the two departments that are often side-lined in the process of demonstrating the value. However, it’s important to bring them up to speed and educate about the nature of new tech — as said above, the tech might be misunderstood due to its newness.
Why should a company take a risk and invest in intelligent language solutions?
· Firstly, scalable and cost-efficient localization is becoming a necessity for an international player. Every global company knows the cost of NOT doing it right — there’re risks of bringing the wrong message to a local market, multiplying localization departments, having too many systems, or simply not being able to support a global distribution fast enough. So the risk might be not in implementing the best-of-breed language solutions, but rather in NOT implementing it.
· Integration is key. Language solutions don’t just function by themselves; they need to become an organic part of the business.
The recording of the webinar will be available to LT-innovate members.
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