The following is an interview of DataScouting’s General Manager, Stavros Vologiannidis (SV), by FIBEP Marketing and Communications Commission.
The full interview can be found in here.
MarComm: What are the benefits that a common xml platform / vocabulary would provide for media monitoring companies?
SV: In an era of instant access to global information, the demand for actionable knowledge that transcends borders is greater than ever. Facilitating international cooperation between media monitoring providers is crucial in order to constantly provide competitive services to clients.
A well-defined, non-ambiguous and expandable common XML platform/vocabulary will facilitate information exchange between media monitoring companies, reducing costs and the human resources needed to transform data between different formats and (re)importing them to different platforms. The additional step of incorporating this common XML platform with transportation technologies such as APIs, minimizes the delays that the human interaction poses on data exchange and thus provides instant access to multinational information to end customers.
MarComm: What do you identify as the key barriers for creating a common xml platform / vocabulary? Are we doomed to a cacophony of competing vocabulary standards? Or is there a way to address this problem before it truly becomes a Tower of Babel?
SV: The media monitoring community provides services such as print, TV/radio, Internet and social media monitoring to its clients. Adding analysis and multilingual metadata on top of that, the amount of information that must accompany each clip is substantial. In order to overcome the additional burden and costs that competing vocabulary standards impose and at the same time provide a realistic solution that deals with the problem in the long term and short term, several actions need to take place at the same time:
1) The creation of a common XML/vocabulary format will be a time consuming process, but the media monitoring community can and should be based on international standards used to describe web and physical information resources such as Dublin Core.
2) A consensus from all media monitoring companies to draw and use the new XML/vocabulary format, common for all, is probably the biggest obstacle that needs to be overcome. I am aware that many media monitoring companies have their own custom formats which they support internally and possibly, will be unwilling to switch to the new format.
3) Ideally this new XML/vocabulary format should be immediately supported by all media monitoring platforms. Since, in my opinion, this is not a simple task, I believe that a centralized service should be able to provide format adaptation between multiple custom business formats as a transitional phase. I envision a cloud based web service, where each media monitoring company can describe their document and metadata format and then upload and send content to other partners which will access that information on a format of their choice. I believe that the previous actions, combined with centralized support from an organization like FIBEP, can ensure global adaptation of the platform providing clear benefits from the beginning of this endeavour.
MarComm: What changes and trends are you seeing in the call centre industry related to integration with new media, including social media, mobile marketing and SEO?
SV: Call centres are gradually evolving into contact centres, central points of an enterprise from which all customer interactions are managed. This is done by using a variety of communication technologies such as voice, social networks, targeted mobile marketing, email and newsletters etc. More and more contact centre platforms nowadays are able to deliver information to agents by aggregating data from various sources. I believe that actionable customer analytics can maximize business outcomes and increase customer satisfaction by providing a more personalized experience and interaction. Combining big data technologies with raw information derived from traditional and modern media, would lead to successful communication with customers and would provide better insights on their demographics.
Ultimately, technology should be able to distribute the right data to the appropriate agents, and enable managers to supervise outcomes and make strategic decisions.
FIBEP is the world’s largest association for media intelligence and communications insight. Founded in 1953 in Paris, the FIBEP Secretariat is now based in Brussels, Belgium. The current membership holds close to 90 members in 44 countries. FIBEP provides customers in all business, governmental and non-governmental sectors with media monitoring and analysis services that are critical to good decision making and optimal business performance.
DataScouting is a provisional member of FIBEP participating at the FIBEP World Media Intelligence Congress in Dubai as an exhibitor.
