Content Management: Video Data in the Enterprise

Video is increasingly being used in the enterprise.  Many organizations have used video for training and conferencing for some time, but now video is being applied for building knowledge libraries.  Already 45 percent of enterprise employees report that their organizations are using video, and another 44 percent say that they are planning to enable IP video for internal use, based on a report from Forrester Research, written by Leslie Owens.  Forrester found that video content is 53 times more likely to be ranked higher in search results compared to non-video content covering the same topic.

The main benefit of using video in the workplace is the ability to more effectively communicate ideas both internally and externally.  But, in terms of data management, the use of video can be a challenging medium.  Unstructured data is notorious for being difficult to organize and successfully manage, and among unstructured data types, video is perhaps the most unwieldy.  Compared to text-based content, video is less searchable, and it occupies multiple orders of magnitude more in size versus content in any another format that describes the  same concept.   The result is that video can eat up large amounts of storage and network bandwidth; it is difficult to organize; it is difficult to search.

Despite the challenges, as a tool for communication and education, video is very compelling.  Another Forrester report on video in the enterprise, written by Phillip Karcher and published in January, came to the conclusion that “although video hasn’t yet taken hold as the way we communicate or work, it will play an important role in connecting the increasingly distributed workforce.”

Today’s workforce isn’t ready just yet to accept video though.  Forrester found that as many as 72 percent of staff workers would prefer not to use video at work.  The adoption of video may require a change in culture.  It also means that the right tools must be in place so that video can be found and delivered in an efficient way.  The remaining people who are anxious to be able to use it at work, can envision using it for brainstorming, distance learning and every day internal communications.

To combat the difficulty in searching videos, a move to incorporate transcripts, metadata and tagging systems are being developed.  Forrester’s Owens said “videos don’t describe themselves, they need to be transcribed, and the quality of the video and audio varies a lot and some aren’t recorded well.”   Making video searchable, synchronizing the frames of a video with a transcript and keywords  is a tedious process.  Solving the searchability problem may be the final hurdle that needs to be  cleared before video becomes more widely accepted.