Delivering AI Impact at scale through rigorous evaluation and content execution

Market & budget pressures meet AI-powered video trainings

A major high-tech design and manufacturing company was experiencing major economic and competitive turbulence. For their field and channel enablement leads, this put unprecedented pressure to maximize the impact of each sales enablement resource they funded. 

At the same time, new advances in generative AI technology were being infused into content development platforms and translation service providers.  One of these enablement teams—led by our client—saw the potential for this technology to act as a one-to-many scale engine, delivering automatically- generated content that could be automatically translated into compelling experiences for their global field and channel. But the client had many questions: Where to start looking in the “ocean” of new AI apps (not to mention legacy tools being infused with AI)? Can any existing tools deliver, or are they just science experiments? And among these, which is the best fit for purpose? 

A strategic approach to leveraging AI capabilities 

One of the sales enablement leads had a standing relationship with Spur Reply (Spur) and asked us to bring our consultative expertise to bear on the challenge. Spur has been exploring the capabilities and advantages of emerging AI-powered tools to learn how they can enhance our offerings and best serve our client’s needs. We’ve found that, as with virtually any new and rapidly growing technology solution area, testing and experimentation is necessary to deliver the desired results.

Research, qualification, and demos

Spur worked closely with our client to survey and document the AI-powered video content development and translation tool landscape. Then we defined a set of best-fit criteria and evaluated offerings in the market against these criteria. This meant analyzing each tool’s capabilities, customer satisfaction ratings, cost and expected ROI, supported content, and the technical competency required. We then arranged 1-on-1 vendor conversations and one-to-many demos for our client and our client’s key stakeholders, including other client teams also investigating AI-powered tools for scale and efficiency.  

Tool selection and pressure-testing

Our client landed on HeyGen, a web-based video production platform that utilizes AI to offer lifelike avatars, voiceovers, and – most notably – instant on-screen text* and audio translation into dozens of languages.  

*Instant translation available for text elements developed within the HeyGen platform. 

Following this decision, Spur performed a series of explorative tests and worked through the AI content development process to help our client unlock the full capacity and value of HeyGen. We answered questions like: 

• How much pressure can we put on the HeyGen platform in terms of video length and complexity? 
• What workflows can be optimized to maximize existing traditional assets (in formats like PDF and PowerPoint)? 
• How can we efficiently develop examples of different usage formats, including mobile, QR code video, and more? 
• What is the easiest way to develop AI avatar videos optimized for end-to-end translation, while adhering to our client’s brand guidelines? 
  

Rapid video development at scale

With a two-person team, we were able to rapidly develop a total of 27 sales training videos from three product briefs– showcasing each product at three different levels of depth and in English, Chinese, and Japanese.  

Throughout this effort, we also documented our findings with step-by-step instructions and tips and tricks to navigate within the HeyGen platform’s existing capabilities and interface. This documentation was then turned into training assets to support our client as they ramped up use of HeyGen across their organization; it also proved valuable for HeyGen’s own team, helping them identify three areas in need of technical fixes.  

Our testing documentation – in combination with a live training session from our team that had been working with the tool – empowered the client and others at their company to take advantage of HeyGen as well, even the users who were initially hesitant about using the platform. 

Unlocking the full potential of AI-enabled video training development 

By the end of this project, we were able to not only deliver the desired video content but also provide our client with training collateral that has supported a successful rollout of this new technology for their organization. Their teams are now equipped with the tool they needed to drive results, and our team can continue to build on our expertise of this platform as a resource for other stakeholders.