Zen3, the Dubai-owned majority shareholder of UK travel software specialist CWT Digital, is poised to introduce new technology to the UK promising to tap into the sector’s wealth of content. The Hyderabad-based web and app outsourcing developer has taken on Manoj Kumar, an expert in machine learning and big data from Microsoft.
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CWT Digital parent Zen3 sets out to help UK travel firms mine their wealth of content
Zen3, the Dubai-owned majority shareholder of UK travel software specialist CWT Digital, is poised to introduce new technology to the UK promising to tap into the sector’s wealth of content.
The Hyderabad-based web and app outsourcing developer has taken on Manoj Kumar, an expert in machine learning and big data from Microsoft.
He will bring his 20-year background in developing systems for the global technology giant to roll out Zen3’s Tangram Social and Content Intelligence Platform in the UK and Europe.
This technology is able to analyse video commentary and other audio files, as well as conventional text content including pdfs to automatically identify keywords so they can be tagged and indexed.
With travel being a huge generator of content and firms themselves sitting on a huge wealth of untapped content, a significant first mover advantage is predicted for those who take up the tech.
Zen3’s non-executive chairman is Steve Endacott, the founder and former owner of CWT Digital, who took up the role as part of the deal that saw Zen3 take a 51% stake in September.
Endacott is also chairman of Teletext Holidays, also owned by Zen3 parent, Dubai Travel Services, although the two firms work independently of one another.
“The key thing is this creates rich, original SEO content. Everyone knows PPC is becoming more expensive and SEO is becoming more content driven.
“But people at the moment are just thinking we just need to get someone in to write some content and that will do it. But that won’t give you the scale you need.
“This is probable travel’s biggest coal mine that’s never been developed. Firms have archived brochure content that’s never been digitised and brought into the modern world.”
Kumar said: “A lot of companies are sitting on a goldmine of very green content which they do not realise. “The richer your landing pages, the higher your PPC score is and the stickier your site. You do not want the customer leaving your site.”
Tangram has been developed for firms to provide a far richer experience to customers as content relevant to the original search is pulled in and displayed on a landing page.
Zen3 believes the need for more relevant and richer content is becoming increasingly important in the mobile era search results move away from Google’s traditional blue link search results.
As well as improving PPC and SEO performance, it says Tangram will enable firms to syndicate content to partners or content distribution networks like Outbrain or Taboola and monetise it.
It will also apply it to its call centre, with the system able to analyse the conversations taking place between hundreds of agents and customers to help with compliance and staff training.
Endacott conceded this would be “big brotherish” but better than just relying on sample calls to assess agents’ performance and will target home working companies in particular.
“How do you know what your homeworkers are doing? You have to have machine learning to take out of the content what you are trying to measure and identify patterns in the calls,” he said.
Endacott will be targeting the UK travel sector initially before expanding into Europe and then beyond travel with the financial services sector high on the list of targets.
