At this Frankfurt Fair, knk Software is set to introduce several exciting features and enhancements with built-in AI to help clients boost productivity.
[related]“We are using Microsoft 365 Copilot, which harnesses the power of large language models (LLMs) to offer AI-assisted solutions such as accelerated marketing data insights, audience segmentation, automated meeting summaries, email replies, and marketing content suggestions,” says Sebastian Mayeres, CEO of knk (U.S). “One particular built-in AI tool focused on supply chain, has enabled us to predict and quickly address disruptions in real time.”
Such AI-powered features improve efficiency, shorten turnaround times, and save costs for clients, says Mayeres. “Our team is currently working on leveraging AI to automate metadata creation, where we anticipate substantial benefits for publishers in the near future.”
The knk team is seeing increasing interest from mid-sized publishers in AI, data security, and cloud deployment. “Early AI applications in publishing mostly revolved around editing incoming manuscripts. Today, the use of AI has spread to many functions in marketing, customer service, finance, editorial, and production,” says Mayeres, adding that marketing teams are becoming the biggest single user of AI in publishing. “It is being used to analyze reader preferences and behaviors for audience building, and in automated personalized marketing systems via email and social media.”
For Mayeres, when it comes to AI adoption, “We all know and have seen that AI will change the way we work but we all have also seen AI fail miserably at certain tasks. The question is not whether we should use AI, but for what, and specifically when not to use AI. If we do not regularly use AI, we will have a hard time understanding the quality of the output. This only comes through experience and constant evaluation of the output, because we have no good way of determining the qualitative output of an AI ahead of time—and this, of course, feeds skepticism of AI.”
So at knk, when it comes to AI implementation, Mayeres has a basic rule: “We always ask ourselves and our clients about what use cases we have in mind. It all must start there: if you do not have a good use case in mind, then simply applying AI to something will not do the trick. This very first task is often also the hardest because AI is new to all of us.”
Often, publishers do not know what AI is capable of, adds Mayeres. “We suggest that publishers collaborate with a partner that can help with both finding appropriate use cases and implementing them. Do not just go out there and subscribe to as many AI tools as you can find; this is not going to be useful. OpenAI has shown us that it is not necessary to invest tens of thousands of dollars into an AI project. Our team at knk Software is here as your sounding board on AI implementation and tools.”
This year marks knk Software’s 35th anniversary, and for founder Knut Nicholas Krause, the company’s mission remains unchanged: to support publishers in their digital transformations and help them stay profitable. “The book, as we know it, is here to stay,” he says. “For the future, the decisive question is about where the content lies and how it can be made available. There will be publishers and editors in the future who will ensure the quality of curated content, but your guess is as good as ours as to who—or what—will actually be creating it.”
But the most important task for publishers, adds Krause, “will remain the same: delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time through the right medium. If you can figure that out, you will be very successful in the future. And knk will be here to assist and partner with you on that journey.”
To learn more about knk Software and its new AI tools, visit booth E1 in Hall 4.0.
