How the Media and Entertainment Industry Can Harness and Elevate the Power of Cloud Technology | TaskUs

People live for stories–and in this era of hyperconnectivity, we are capable of sending and receiving a deluge of information every second. For content creators, then, the make-or-break factors for their success include: identifying precisely what kind of stories resonate with your audience, the quality with which they can consume it, and the ability to handle the demand for more stories.

Audiences across the globe have billions of pieces of digital content to choose from. However, if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for on their chosen platform, they are likely to migrate elsewhere. 

This is where personalization comes in. Creating personalized interactions and customizing the user experience allows the audience to feel that their needs and interests are truly being taken into consideration [1]. On the side of the content creators, it allows them to identify which types of content they should be producing more, as well as to provide their subscribers with a more accurate list of available content based on their preferences.

Another factor that hugely impacts viewership is the quality of streaming. In a survey conducted by NewBay Media, a marketing solutions company, poor streaming quality can lead to a 90% decrease in viewing time when buffering occurs [2].

Finally, while there is a plethora of studies revealing the formula for viral content, the digital landscape together with human behavior and attitude is continuously evolving; thus, the formula for what content could go viral is never set in stone. Having said this, the ability to handle fluctuating demand is imperative. Scalability, a word we hear all the time in business-speak, has an importance that goes beyond demands in streaming. A scalable business means you do not have to make drastic changes despite how big your business is growing [3].

It might seem difficult to address all these challenges at the same time, but there is one technology that can do the job–cloud computing. The cloud is simply a virtual space where anyone can store their digital resources such as software, applications, and files. For businesses, particularly companies from the media & entertainment industry, the cloud is where they can migrate their operations to address the challenges of scalability, providing uninterrupted, high-definition streaming, and connecting with customers on a personal level.

Identifying the content that a subscriber is likely to watch is like trying to find a needle in a haystack; but with the use of cloud computing’s virtually limitless computing resources and processing power [4], content creators can find order in this haystack and come up with a customized list of offerings, based on a user’s viewing history and shared customer data.

In terms of streaming quality, the cloud’s immense capacity provides a huge bandwidth for streaming platforms which translates to better video streaming performance and viewing experience. This means that viewers are more likely to finish content, which will increase their total viewing time.

Without cloud technology, streaming platforms are largely incapable of accommodating the traffic coming from viral content. In an era where trends change every second, cloud computing is essential to efficiently meet demand.

Cloud computing may already be this powerful, but industries and businesses can elevate addressing their specific roadblocks to another level by setting cloud technology as the foundation for artificial intelligence. AI’s purpose is to mimic human intelligence so that it can aid people in solving real-world problems. The technology makes it possible for machines to learn from experience and adjust to new instructions the same way humans do [5].

However, the potential of AI will not be fully realized without the power of cloud computing–and a growing number of companies have come to realize this. In a 2019 survey conducted by Deloitte, 49 percent of the companies that deployed artificial intelligence (AI) are using cloud-based services. This is because developing, testing, enhancing, and operating AI systems is easier in the cloud, and companies do not have to make a huge investment to achieve this [6].

At TaskUs, we have no problem scaling, personalizing, and understanding market trends. In fact, these are areas where we are capable of demonstrating the best we have to offer, thanks to cloud technology. We are partnered with companies that have enterprise-grade cloud solutions, embedded with machine learning and AI capabilities. These partnerships allow us to manage our operations 24/7 despite how fast trends change.

Our being a cloud-heavy user has also allowed us to aggressively expand our geographical footprint over the past few years, faster than the rest of the industry. It normally takes a maximum of 3 months to set up a new location and start its operations, but TaskUs can enable a site within a month–complete with solutions for its clients. 

Finally, TaskUs is geared towards having a proprietary cloud-enabled AI platform. As of the moment, we are partnered with one of the biggest cloud solutions providers across the globe. This partnership made it possible for us to create a proprietary coaching platform which augments our already robust coaching and training framework. 

Because of our coaching platform, our support team leads can see the bigger picture and identify what areas they should focus on, in order to improve the overall performance of their team. Ultimately, this gives them more time to focus on meaningful coachings with their Teammates. In the future, our ultimate goal is to embed our own AI and machine learning capabilities within this tool, proving our capability of  providing the next-generation customer service.