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Self-Service Webcasting has ArrivedExtend the Reach of Your Message with Easy-to-Use High-Impact Webcasts
A Frost & Sullivan White Paper
Sponsored by TalkPoint
frost.com
contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Webcasting .......................................................................... 3
Changing User Behaviors-Consumerization and the Emergence of Self-Service Webcasts 5
The Imperative to Leverage Existing Investments in Video Conferencing ............................. 5
The TalkPoint Solution .................................................................................................................. 6
Customer Examples and Use Cases ........................................................................................... 8
Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 9
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Self-Service Webcasting has Arrived Extend the Reach of Your Message with Easy-to-Use High-Impact Webcasts
INTRODUCTION
Seismic shifts in technology and the emergence of social, cloud and mobile collaboration are connecting people in more ways than ever imagined before. The rapid growth trends in adoption of web collaboration solutions that bring together distributed work teams are driving real benefits for companies of all sizes. Webcasting has emerged as a key collaboration enabler for businesses that are looking for compelling and cost-effective ways to get their message out to a large audience.
Significant time and travel cost-savings, combined with pervasive access to rich information, are making webcasts a viable alternative to in-person events. As a result, the usage and adoption of webcasting is skyrocketing. Whether it’s town hall meetings, new product launches, or marketing and training, webcasting has become a game-changer to better engage employees, customers, and partners.
Advances in video technology, shifting user behaviors, and the onset of consumerization and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends are prompting greater use of webcasts for all aspects of enterprise communications. While webcasting has become a critical tool for internal and external communications, its usage in the past was restrained primarily due to complexity and high costs. There is a growing need for easy-to-use, engaging, and more affordable solutions. In recent years, there has been a rapid user adoption of self-service or do-it-yourself (DIY) webcasts that are not only easy-to-use, but are also lower-priced.
The effectiveness of webcasts is contingent on not only creating compelling content, but also delivering it in ways that keep the audience engaged. Users are demanding solutions that are flexible and easy-to-use while retaining the richness for the more sophisticated users. This calls for simplicity without sacrificing advanced functionality. Furthermore, businesses should be able to leverage their existing investments in other communication assets such as video conferencing, audio conferencing and telephony infrastructure, by easily integrating them into their webcasts.
This paper will discuss the evolving trends in webcasting, including the adoption of self-service webcasts, and the imperative to integrate video conferencing assets within corporate webcasts to not only deliver high-impact video events, but also to obtain greater ROI from existing investments. Lastly, this paper presents one vendor’s solutions and approach to delivering effective webcasts, along with real-world use cases.
KEY TRENDS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF WEBCASTING
Webcasting services encompass a set of cloud technologies that enable delivery of web-based content in real time over the Internet to a large number of simultaneous attendees. Webcasts are differentiated from smaller web meetings or web conferences by scale, business behavior, business requirements, and customer expectations. While use cases determine the technology selection, users choose webcasting solutions over web conferences when there is a need for greater reliability, support, scalability, robust video, branding and other customization capabilities.
In recent years, the use of webcasting services has increased significantly as companies seek greater savings on travel costs and look to extend the reach of their events. According to recent research from Frost & Sullivan, the total number of SaaS-based enterprise webcasts grew at a robust 22.7% in 2013.1 As depicted in exhibits 1 and 2, several business drivers and market trends are emerging to fuel this growth.
According to recent research from Frost & Sullivan, the total number of SaaS-based enterprise webcasts grew at a robust 22.7% in 2013. The use of webcasting services has increased significantly as companies seek greater savings on travel costs and look to extend the reach of their events.
1. Frost & Sullivan, “Analysis of the Global Web Event Services Market,” April 2014.
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Exhibit 1: Key Business Drivers for Webcasting
Source: Frost & Sullivan
Extend the Reachand Impact of a
Company’s Messageat Lower Costs
Social Media IntegrationAdds Value
Anytime, Anywhere
Connectivity
Keep the Audience Engaged
Do More withLess - Improve Productivityby Holding
More Events
Exhibit 2: Emerging Trends in Webcasting
Ease of UseUser-friendly, self-service webcasting solutions delivered via the cloud reduce complexity and costs and are critical to drive adoption.
Video Webcasts
A picture indeed speaks a thousand words. Customers are looking at video far more strategically than they have in the past. It is seen as a business-critical tool for better engagement and a more effective mechanism of content delivery, resulting in greater business opportunities.
Persistent Environments
Users are extending the life of their live webcasts by making the content available in persistent environments for longer periods of time to build a rich knowledge repository. Solutions that cater to both live and on-demand use cases are growing.
Mobile Webcasting
The proliferation of mobile devices and apps demands anytime, anywhere access and rich functionality including better control from mobile devices. The growing focus on “mobile first” means webcasting should enable not only access, but also productivity over mobile devices.
Social Webcasting
Social webcasting is increasingly supporting the notion of driving audience interaction and engagement by allowing integration with different social media and communities.
Power of Analytics
Analytics and reporting capabilities are recognized as key to driving greater value from webcasting data in order to improve effectiveness of the webcasts and capture opportunities, both in-session and post-event.
Workflow Integration
Users are demanding webcasts that can integrate with existing workflows and business applications, such as marketing automation software and CRM applications, allowing users to capture pertinent actionable information.
End-to-End Functionality
Users are increasingly looking for solutions that address the entire lifecycle of a web event - content creation, promotion, distribution, management, analytics, and content management.
Source: Frost & Sullivan
The emergence of self-service webcasting has shifted the power from
a handful of trained event professionals in an enterprise to
myriad users that can now easily produce
professional-quality, high-impact events
right from their desktops or
mobile devices.
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Self-Service Webcasting has Arrived Extend the Reach of Your Message with Easy-to-Use High-Impact Webcasts
CHANGING USER BEHAVIORS –CONSUMERIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF SELF-SERVICE WEBCASTING
The growth of mobile technologies within enterprises and the resulting business advantages is unprecedented. At the heart of the mobility revolution are the employees that are blending personal and business technologies to be more productive. Webcasting has not remained untouched by the trend toward consumerization and BYOD.
Users are finding innovative ways to seek communication applications that enable them to do more in less time. Moreover, they demand tools that enable quicker interactions and easy access to services. In this new market order, only those solutions that deliver on meeting these fast-evolving user needs will win. The emergence of self-service webcasting has shifted the power from a handful of trained event professionals in an enterprise to myriad users that can now easily produce professional-quality, high-impact events right from their desktops or mobile devices.
Self-service webcasting allows users to control the webcasting process end to end with customizable features. Users at any skill level are able to schedule, customize, and broadcast audio or video webcasts. A strong shift to self-service models has made webcasting easier to use, thereby lowering costs, encouraging higher utilization rates and expanding the addressable market. Consequently, pricing models are evolving to flat-rate, subscription-based pricing, allowing users to host as many events as they want at a fixed monthly price.
THE IMPERATIVE TO LEVERAGE EXISTING INVESTMENTS IN VIDEO CONFERENCING
“Show, don’t tell” has become a powerful mantra for effective webcasts. The power of visual communications is well-established to make webcasts more productive and keep the attendees more engaged and attentive. A recent survey of more than 250 users revealed the strong need for video; 62% of the respondents said video is the most essential feature of a webcast, and 50% requested more video in webcast presentations.2
Unlike web conferencing or online meetings that only use webcam video for small group meetings, professional events with thousands of people require a more robust and viable approach to video. Webcasting solutions must, therefore, enable video signal acquisition from a variety of sources, allowing flexible video capture that offers greater control, high quality, and performance tracking.
Large enterprises that have invested thousands, and in some cases millions, of dollars into video conferencing endpoints and infrastructure are looking to better leverage their investments for all aspects of enterprise communications. Integrating high-quality live video into the webcasting experience is fast becoming the de facto mode for webcasting.
Businesses need agile communications that can adjust to varied devices, infrastructure, and networks. To deliver webcasts that are more effective, it is critical to deliver video conferencing over personal endpoints – desktops as well as mobile devices. The mobile delivery option further enhances the experience as users can access and view the video webcasts on the go from their smartphones or tablets from a single URL.
Large enterprises that have invested thousands, and in some cases millions, of dollars into video conferencing endpoints and infrastructure are looking to better leverage their investments for all aspects of enterprise communications.
2. TalkPoint, “The 2013 TalkPoint Webcasting Survey: Content and Conduct,” December 2013.
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THE TALKPOINT SOLUTION
In recent years, newer approaches to webcasting have removed the barriers to adoption while offering significant shifts in pricing and deployment models.
TalkPoint offers an alternative to costly and complex-to-use webcasting solutions that have kept adoption restricted to enterprises with deep pockets. TalkPoint’s ConveyTM is a cloud-based, self-service, full-featured webcasting service. It is not only intended to meet the rich functionality needs of technology or event professionals, but is also designed for business users to self-launch and self-manage video-enabled webcasts ranging from small groups up to 10,000 attendees. For users looking for additional services and support, TalkPoint also offers a broad range of fully-managed webcasts.
There are several factors that differentiate TalkPoint’s Convey™ that are creating a groundswell of adoption:
• Simplicity – Convey™’s biggest attraction is its ease of use and DIY setup. Its simple, five-step webcast wizard walks users through the entire setup process in a matter of minutes. Users can choose to broadcast in audio or video, upload presentation documents, share streaming audio or video clips during the event, conduct polls and link to different social media channels.
• Rich Feature Set – Focusing on ease of use, Convey™ offers a unique “permissions-based” model that allows IT and event administrators to turn certain functionalities on or off. This allows the tool to be flexible and easy-to-use for the casual users, while retaining the richness for the sophisticated power users.
• Lower Costs – Offered as a subscription-based service, Convey™ allows users to move away from buying on a per-event basis to buying a license that allows them to host any number of concurrent webcasts. With this new low-priced, subscription-based monthly license, users can drive usage and host unlimited events at lower costs.
• Any Device Connectivity – Convey™ delivers webcasts to viewers regardless of the device they are on–desktop and mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, or Android devices –directly from the browser, requiring no downloads, apps or plug-ins.
• Leverage Existing Investments – Convey™ allows enterprises to leverage their existing enterprise assets, such as video conferencing and telepresence units, encoders and webcams, to provide a scalable and flexible interface to deliver professional-quality, more-engaging video webcasts.
• Automated Publishing and Editing – Users can extend the life of their events by making the webcasts available for on-demand viewing immediately after the event is completed. Viewers can use the same URL for the live event to watch the on-demand webcast. Additionally, Convey™ offers a browser-based rich editing tool to cut and crop video, audio and PowerPoint slides, and to upload additional slides and video clips.
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Self-Service Webcasting has Arrived Extend the Reach of Your Message with Easy-to-Use High-Impact Webcasts
Exhibit 3: Convey’s Easy-to-Use DIY Setup
Source: TalkPoint
Exhibit 4: Leverage UC Infrastructure with Webcasting
Source: TalkPoint
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CUSTOMER EXAMPLES AND USE CASES
High Tech – GENBAND
The Company – Offering networking solutions for service providers and enterprises in more than 80 countries, GENBAND’s technology facilitates real-time multimedia voice, data and video from “anywhere”and on “any device.”
The Goal for Web Events – The company wants to provide its global employee and customer base with high-quality web events.
The Solution – GENBAND hosts approximately 50 webcasts a year for its employees, contractors and customers. The company’s internal webcasts are primarily for quarterly all-employee meetings and training sessions. Prior to TalkPoint, GENBAND was using another webcasting provider. When GENBAND implemented a marketing automation tool, its team found that the previous webcasting solution did not provide the technical capabilities to host a professional webinar, which led it to evaluate other solutions.
GENBAND chose TalkPoint for its simplicity and seamless marketing automation integration. An added benefit was TalkPoint’s unique “permissions-based” model, allowing any user to be an administrator, with the ability to launch webinars independently. GENBAND also leverages TalkPoint’s simu-live capability for recording webinars that are edited and broadcast at a later time, with live segments.
Financial Services – International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
The Company – The IFRS Foundation develops a single set of high-quality, understandable, enforceable and globally accepted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) through its standard-setting body, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). It promotes the use and rigorous application of those standards to take account of the financial reporting needs of emerging economies and small and medium-sized entities (SMEs).
The Goal for Web Events – The IFRS Foundation uses webcasting to reduce the logistics challenges and project delays resulting from the growing demands on its leaders to manage projects and teams in multiple locations, and to provide timely interaction and information sharing among its global stakeholders. The foundation’s main use for webcasting is monthly board meetings that are broadcast to worldwide participants. The monthly board meetings can run between two and four days. Due to the very public-facing nature of the foundation’s core business, everything has to be recorded for public consumption and archived for compliance purposes. These webcasts can be initiated from one location or presenters can join from other locations. The foundation also uses webcasting for education and training events. The IT department sets up and runs the webcasts in a manner that enables internal departments to manage the meetings themselves.
The Solution – The foundation tendered for the webcasting solution, and after a thorough evaluation of five vendors, chose TalkPoint’s self-service offering, Convey™.
Key features for the foundation were TalkPoint’s interface, a five-step set-up process, allowing anyone to set up a webcast. If the user makes a mistake in the set-up process, there is built-in intelligence in the software to make corrections. The cost-effectiveness of TalkPoint Convey™ was another factor. The TalkPoint licensing model enabled significant savings each year.
“ We selected TalkPoint for the simplicity and
elegance of its solution. TalkPoint provides us
with a professional, proven solution
that offers seamless integration with the
marketing automation tool we currently use. We have used several
webinar and webcasting solutions, and TalkPoint
is small enough to be technically agile and
responsive, and big enough to have the
sufficient breadth and depth of solutions that
fit our needs.”
Paul Leininger, Creative Director,
GENBAND
“TalkPoint’s simple, five-point set-up process
is a real winner; anybody can set up a webcast. By moving to TalkPoint, we
have saved to the tune of $300,000 a year. For a
public-facing organization like ours, reliability is
mission-critical. We can’t afford any technical audio or video failures. We have experienced no technical issues with TalkPoint in
the nine months of using the service.”
Bob Young, IT – VC and Media, IFRS Foundation
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Self-Service Webcasting has Arrived Extend the Reach of Your Message with Easy-to-Use High-Impact Webcasts
Recording and hosting video archives are key requirements for the foundation. TalkPoint provides the video on demand just hours after the event is completed. Other vendors had taken up to 24 hours to publish the event, which had led to frustrations from its constituents. TalkPoint’s ability to connect from many devices, including tablets, has enabled participants to join from varied locations. Lastly, the ability to include animations and active hyperlinks within the webcasts has made a big difference in creating interactive content.
Retail – McDonald’s
The Company – McDonald’s is the world’s leading global food service retailer with more than 35,000 locations serving approximately 70 million customers in more than 100 countries each day. More than 80% of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local business men and women.
The Goal for Web Events –To reach its many global viewers for audio and video events, McDonald’s Creative Services is the in-house team that supports the delivery of the corporate message to all important internal and external audiences.
The Solution – McDonald’s Creative Services uses TalkPoint’s fully-managed events as well as Convey™ self-service webcasting. Webcasting users within McDonald’s are not mandated to come to Creative Services. However, for events that require support services, McDonald’s Creative Services offers the required production assistance to create high-impact events.
In recent years, the percentage of video webcasts hosted by McDonald’s Creative Services has significantly increased. Video events are generally encoded by the Creative Services encoding team using Digital Rapids (touch stream). Other video events have utilized VCU technology.
TalkPoint usage by McDonald’s Creative Services team has grown significantly to upward of 50 webcasts per year with events ranging from 50 to more than 6,000 live viewers. Depending on the nature of the event, viewers can be employees, partners/franchisees, shareholders, a public audience and more. McDonald’s has chosen TalkPoint for its excellent customer service, the strength of its self-service portal, and TalkPoint’s ability to work with its diverse needs, including the delivery of a quality video experience under varying network and bandwidth restrictions that users can have in different areas of the world. Lastly, McDonald’s has seen greater savings with the shift to the self-service Convey™ platform.
CONCLUSIONS
Webcasting has become a key communications and collaboration tool, and a common thread for sustainability and growth in an intensely competitive and volatile business environment. It is creating new degrees of connectedness and is playing an ever-larger role in determining the success of marketing and training events, as well as internal communications.
The new generation of webcasting, driven by easy-to-use and effective self-service solutions, meets the needs of businesses for greater speed and agility. To effectively extend their message to broader communities and to remain competitive, smart companies are taking full advantage of the latest developments in webcasting.
“ At McDonald’s Creative Services, we typically work in a constantly changing production environment for events. Because there are so many external factors that affect our productions, TalkPoint is very flexible in helping us meet our ever-changing timelines. We select vendors we can trust, that can get the job done, and have a successful track record. TalkPoint’s excellent customer service, fast turnaround times, flexibility, and the strength of their self-service platform are the reasons why we chose them.”
Darryl Webber, Creative Services Team, McDonald’s
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