Using AI to revolutionize a modern content supply chain: What Sitecore Stream is and why it matters

If you work in digital content operations – whether it be in a busy digital newsroom or for a complicated, global marketing department – you know the role that technical innovation plays in your life. If there is a new tool that helps you do your job faster, better or more efficiently, you want to know about it, how to use it and how to measure the return on your investment. 
 
“Work smarter, not harder,” as the old saying goes, and AI is no exception.  

So, it was nice to see Sitecore fully embrace an AI-enabled future with the announcement of Sitecore Stream in Nashville at Symposium 2024. 

What you need to know about Sitecore Stream 

Billed as an “AI-powered experience that directly answers the pain points faced by enterprise marketing teams,” Sitecore Stream aims to simplify the complexity marketers face when creating campaigns, delivering personalization, and launching experiences quickly across multiple touchpoints. 

Powered by Microsoft Azure, Stream will essentially sit as an AI layer on top of Sitecore’s suite of composable products that includes XM Cloud, Content Hub and XM and XP. 

The goal is to simplify marketing workflows and supercharge productivity through orchestration, content intelligence, and automated copilots. 

Sitecore touts what it calls “brand-aware AI,” where you get interoperability across a brand’s martech stack, with guardrails to preserve brand integrity, data privacy and HIPAA-compliance. When you introduce content strategy on top of those opportunities, Sitecore becomes a place to centralize content operations, which is going to be critical for marketing and content creators in an AI world. 

In short, you need a strategy to prepare you for the technology world that is already here and changing day-to-day. 

Using AI to simplify marketing and content operations

Enterprise content and marketing operations can be very complex. 

Ask anyone who has ever produced an Enterprise Content Ecosystem Map and they will tell you that the road to global omnichannel content management is ripe for optimization with automation and AI, but not without its own complexities. Everyone boasts of a need to simplify, but the challenge of connecting with customers at scale with content that resonates is challenging already. 

You need to keep the lights on as you innovate, and with AI, that can be as hard as it is scary. There is no question that AI holds the promise of revolutionizing how creative and content teams work – now and in the future.  

But that only happens if teams understand AI enough to use it and exploit it. Sitecore Stream should make that easy because it will be integrated across Sitecore’s composable solution stack. 
 
By introducing AI as a platform feature, Sitecore will allow: 

• Organizations to reap rewards from AI immediately 
  
  
• Start to enforce rules and governance around AI-generated content and assets immediately 
  
  
• Educate teams about AI so that they can reap the rewards from AI immediately 

The sky is the limit with AI, and it’s nice to see Sitecore take a hard turn toward innovation and into the future. 

Jennifer Johnson is an associate director of platform strategy and AI at Horizontal Digital. She is based in Dallas.