Adding Up ROI

Hard, current numbers for streaming media ROIs are hard to come by - at HP or anywhere else. But the circumstantial evidence at HP bodes well. "Carly Fiorina has gone company-wide and said, ‘Use technology to eliminate travel,'" says Lachtanski. "And the more she cuts spending in this company, the more business I get. That tells me that the ROI [for streaming] is there."

According to Lachtanski, such an embrace of ROI was initially shunned. "Back when we first started streaming, somebody wrote an e-mail to the CEO at the time about why streaming was a waste of HP's money … and costing a fortune," he says. The e-mail explained that time spent by employees watching streaming video - as opposed to reading text, which took less time - was a big cost drain.

But Lachtanski says former HP CEO, Lew Platt, helped spearhead the company's current streaming initiatives with a memorable quarterly message he made about cutting expenses. His comments, which were streamed — and which apparently were quite impassioned for the usually stoic Platt — struck a nerve with HP employees. "Seeing the animation in him and seeing the anger, which you could never get from reading the text, is what got the message across," says Lachtanski. "Even if it costs more to stream a video than to put text on a Web site, there's a large difference in the amount of impact it makes. And it was never really discussed again."

Some of the Media Solutions Group's streaming presentations can be found through (www.hpbriefingroom.com).

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