4 benefits of voice to text technology for media companies

What is voice to text technology?

The rise in machine learning and artificial intelligence has given power to the capabilities of voice to text technology like never before. Previously, the technology has been overlooked due to low accuracy levels and high prices. Now its application has become widespread and is becoming the go-to technology for many media companies. Voice to text technology now has the power to improve both business and consumer workflows, offer competitive advantages and enable companies to get more from their media assets. In this article, we’ll dive into the benefits that speech to text technology brings to media companies.

What do media companies use voice to text technology for?

To understand the benefits of adopting voice to text technology for media companies, it’s important to understand what media companies use the technology for. Speech to text technology has many applications within the media and broadcast industry. From media asset management and media monitoring to improving the editing process and providing automated captioning of video assets. The applications are vast and benefits profound.

Drivers and motivations for adopting voice technology

So, why are companies choosing voice technology to enhance the core of their media solutions? With Internet usage on the rise, more video content is being produced and consumed than ever before. It is up to media and broadcasting companies to harness this content to make it discoverable, easily searchable, indexed and to get it in front of as many people as possible. With a booming market, media companies are seeking marginal gains over competitors and speech technology offers that and much more.

A study that Speechmatics conducted revealed that media companies are driven to adopt a voice strategy for several reasons. From gaining operational efficiencies through reduced turnaround times and lower costs to generating competitive advantages through product development and international expansion. Speech to text technology is opening up new opportunities for media companies.

What are the benefits of using voice to text technology?

As indicated above, media companies are driven to adopt voice technology for several reasons. But what are the real-world benefits of adopting the technology? In the next section, we’ll explore the results obtained from our research. We'll look at operational efficiencies, competitive advantages, improved customer experience and the ability to analyse big data sources.

Operational efficiencies

80% of media companies that have adopted automatic speech recognition technology recognise operational efficiencies as a key benefit. The adoption of voice to text technology enables organisations to process large quantities of content faster than ever before. But what does this mean to media companies?

Employee support

• People often worry that machines will take over in the workplace. But actually, they are more likely to support employee growth, improve the quality of their work and enrich their working environment. Automatic speech recognition technology is used as a support tool for employees taking over manual task such as transcribing. Human transcribers can then focus on more skilled editing roles, providing value to customers where machines cannot.

Reduced costs

• Voice to text technology not only enriches employees working life but it also significantly reduces costs for businesses. It does this through faster turnaround times and more efficient workflows. This is important for the media market, with 42% of respondents from our research stating that reducing costs was a key driver for adopting or considering automatic speech recognition technology. Voice to text technology also mitigates the need for stenographers (people who transcribe speech in shorthand). These were exposed as a huge hiring challenge and costly overhead for media businesses.

Gaining a competitive advantage

60% of media companies say that automatic speech recognition technology has provided benefits to them by creating a clear competitive advantage for their offering. Media companies recognise the importance of a feature-rich solution that enables them to look at expanding their offering into new areas.

Media and broadcast companies are adopting voice to text technology to “vastly improve existing products” and achieve “business growth and expansion”. It enables more efficient use of archived media material that was previously inaccessible. This expands capabilities for a range of applications including media asset management and media monitoring.

Improved customer experience

33% of companies stated that improved customer experience was a key benefit of integrating voice to text technology within their solutions. It is a key priority for media companies to provide solutions that enrich their customers’ workflows. Voice has been seen to be integral to this offering. It has helped drive better engagement with end-users through the accessibility that speech technology provides. Voice to text technology enables users to easily search for and use specific clips from media assets based on keywords, timings, dates etc., to produce better media content.

With time to market a priority for media and broadcasting companies, voice plays a huge role in enabling fast content creation and distribution. The value of accurate captions and subtitles is already evident. Captions enable accessibility of video content to deaf and hard of hearing audiences as well as those that are situationally disadvantaged. The advancement of speech recognition especially in real-time, means captions are now delivered faster with minimal delay. The addition of advanced features such as improved punctuation characters makes captions even more accessible for audiences.

Analysing big data sources

 20% of respondents mentioned the ability to analyse big data sources as a key benefit of speech technology, enabling more efficient use of archived material. Voice to text technology enables media companies to analyse large sources of audio and video files that were previously locked away and difficult to access. Companies can now easily access archived material simply by searching for a date, time, keywords etc., to locate specific pieces of content.