Arvato Systems Is Researching Smart Solutions for Editorial Work
Cognitive service hackathon
The use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other emerging innovate technologies has led to much discussion. Unfortunately, often so that the concrete benefits for customers and their business processes are not directly accessible.
How Cognitive Services can support the processes in publishing houses is one example of such benefits, and it is something that Arvato Systems has already gained knowledge in.
During a hackathon taking place at a publisher this June, experts from their in-house IT department and Arvato Systems' Microsoft services platform team brainstormed together with specialists within the publishing industry. The group researched solutions to three specific challenges when it comes to publishing books.
Why this hackathon was beneficial
To validate the use of innovative technologies to support business processes, a collaborative format such as a hackathon is ideal.
- Learning: The event thrives on the exchange between business and IT specialists. Both sides contribute their know-how and learn from each other. On the one hand, all participants gained more knowledge about cloud technologies, and on the other hand, the Arvato Systems developers learned more about the concrete challenges in the editorial office.
- Co-Creation: The close cooperation between publisher staff and IT specialists promotes creativity and the development of new approaches. Hence, the co-creation made a significant contribution to the goal-oriented solution.
- Prototyping: When the formation of the team, the skills, and the creativity agree with each other, great ideas quickly turn into a first prototype. This prototype then because the base on which the ideas can be validated.
Smart solutions for editorial work - challenges and solutions at a glance
Gaining manuscript insights ("quick reading" & rating)
How can technology make ease the life of editors? One idea to help editors is by making the high number of manuscripts which end up on the editors' desks every day more manageable. Hence, one challenge of the hackathon was, therefore, to use Cognitive Services to gain initial insights into the manuscripts. Cognitive Services from Microsoft Azure, the Google Cloud Platform, IBM's Watson and Open Source Tools were evaluated, and a dashboard was developed, showing manuscript insights.
- The dashboard provides the editor with a detailed overview of the entities contained in the manuscript.
- The dashboard displays the entities with type classifications, frequency and a note of all places where a quick "reading" is worthwhile.
- The dashboard also creates a mood curve around the entity and a model of all objects related to that selected entity.
Automated book title search takes title protection into account
Another idea how technology makes the life of an editor easier is a smart and automated cross check when it comes to the book title finding process. Since book titles are protected, they cannot be used twice. However, the publisher can use an existing title if it is copyright free or the book with the desired title is no longer for sale.
Via the user interface of the developed prototype, editors are now able to check their title ideas against various databases such as the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Amazon or the VLB (Verzeichnis Lieferbarer Bücher/The German directory of deliverable books).
The developers also designed a title generator that suggests alternative titles for the book project. Those suggestions can be made based on manually entered or on automated parameters based on manuscript insights.
Keyword extraction and optimization for title marketing
If the manuscript becomes a project, editors also have to think about how to market it. The last challenge of the hackathon was the extraction and optimization of keywords within the title for marketing purposes.
Keywords based on the manuscript insights are enriched by synonyms using Open Thesaurus and the auto-completion functions on Google and Amazon as well as similar search queries on Google. Also, with the help of the developed prototype, the editors can also identify current trend topics and social media trends. This feature is made possible by a connection to Google Trends function.
When innovative prototypes convince
The two and a half days hackathon was not only about validating ideas. They were instead about developing prototypes that should work immediately. After countless cups of coffee and a lot of creative and technical thinking, each challenge ended with a convincing final presentation and a functioning prototype. The working prototyped convinced all participants to such an extent that all prototypes are continued to be further developed in a follow-up project.