Real Story Group: Good time to get your informational house in order

AI-based tools are changing quickly, says Tony Byrne, so the best strategy is to have your data and content in good shape.

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House In Order

It seems like nearly every marketing tool or platform these days is happy to tell us how smart it is.

Whether described as artificial intelligence, machine learning or some other variant, it’s clear that smartness is blanketing the landscape. But the capabilities are moving so quickly, it’s difficult to know how to prepare for newer and better forms of AI.

“We’re clearly on the cusp of something qualitatively different,” Real Story Group President Tony Bryne told me, but “we’re obviously still in an early phase.” (He will be presenting “The Right Way to Select Marketing Technology” at our MarTech Conference in October.)

Real Story Group CEO Tony Byrne

Real Story Group President Tony Byrne

Machine vision, business insights, predictive lead scoring, natural language processing, message performance testing and anomaly detection are among some of the specific benefits of this new intelligence, but it is continually unveiling new features. And entirely new capabilities, like increasingly self-reliant decisioning engines, are showing up.

Given this ongoing revolution in intelligence, what’s the best strategy?

Byrne said his company, which offers buying strategies and recommendations for businesses, tells its clients that “the most important thing you can do [for now] is set yourself up with really strong content and data models.”

Tools and platforms that offer AI-based support and decisioning layers, Byrne pointed out, “assume you have a lot of content and data and that it’s well organized.” He noted that even multi-variant testing systems, which have offered some level of self-learning models for years, assume that you have six different kinds of organized content if you’re testing six different variants.

To stay ready for new AI layers, he said, businesses for now would do best to concentrate on their data’s cleanliness, high-quality sources and architecture, and their content’s version control, modular reusability and performance.

“Organizations with a strong data or content management are able to experiment more readily,” he said.

But the drive to get your data and content house in order is not only driven by fast-changing levels of intelligence. I pointed out that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect in May of next year. It mandates that businesses get their data — and the surrounding privacy mechanisms — in order.

Bryne agreed that, whether it’s the stick of the GDPR’s penalties or the carrot of taking advantage of whatever AI has to offer, this is a good time for businesses to get their informational house in order.

If you’re headed to the MarTech Conference in Boston, be sure to attend the session with Tony Byrne on Tuesday, October 3.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Barry Levine
Contributor
Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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