Quark Software (www.quark.com) has released the “Content Automation Trends Report 2017.” The research, conducted in conjunction with market research firm InfoTrends, confirms that while digital transformation is driving content initiatives for most organizations, content teams continue to struggle to meet the need for engaging, device-specific content.
In fact, less than 20% of study respondents are confident their content is consistent across channels. This, along with other research findings, indicates a need for large organizations to move beyond basic file sharing and even traditional enterprise content management (ECM) in order to remain competitive.
Quark and InfoTrends surveyed 252 businesses worldwide with respondents spanning a range of industry sectors, departments, and job roles. The research objectives were to gain insight on current practices for managing content throughout its life cycle, uncover challenges content teams face, and better understand technology spend and investment outlook. Key findings include:
° Businesses spend on average $779,000 a year on content-related technology with the highest budgets reported in financial services ($1.4 million in 2017).
° The key objective driving businesses to invest in content-related technology is improving customer satisfaction, which mirrors results from 2016. However, efforts to reduce costs and improve compliance increased noticeably between 2016 and 2017.
° Digital transformation initiatives are driving a focus on content. The top two initiatives noted by respondents are improving the intranet/portal content
° Email and PDF are still major pain points. Most respondents indicated they spend too much time managing content and have difficulties with PDF (70%) and email (78%) as tools for reviewing content.
° Most businesses do not accurately know who is consuming their content (13%) or on which device it is being consumed (14%). Meanwhile, stakeholders continue to require an increasing amount of Web and mobile content.
° The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or machine learning technology for content is still very nascent with the strongest application found in customer service-related content (22%).