Case Study: ViewCentral Helps Xerox Get Serious About Webinars

In retrospect, White regards the Proof Source Sales Tool CD launch events as "very successful." Of the 7000 salespeople targeted, approximately 5000 participated in one of the Webinars and registered for the CD.

White also feels certain that Xerox has gotten a return on its investment from these Webcast events, even though that is hard to measure this early in the game. "ROI for something like this ultimately would need to be linked to equipment sales revenue," says White. "At some point in the future, I think we would be able to come up with a metric that ties this program in with the success of the CD collateral and what our return was. Our process here at Xerox currently wouldn't calculate this at that granular of a level, however. We would look at the overall training budget associated with a particular product line which includes lots of different activities when figuring out ROI."

Despite the overall success of the project, it did teach White a few lessons. He learned, for example, that it’s difficult to get high participation at live events. "People are challenged by time constraints and job commitments, and time zones can create problems," says White. He feels that in the future Xerox will be offering fewer live events and more "non-realtime" Webinars. The negative aspect of that, he complains, is that participants lose the advantage of live interaction. He says Xerox currently offers replays of Webinars and training Webcasts, and viewers can ask questions, but they don't get the answers until 24 hours later. "That's not exactly immediate feedback," he says.

White says Xerox is strictly a Windows Media user when it comes to streaming, though it used Macromedia Flash on the CD. For most Webinars, Xerox employs Microsoft Live Meeting. White says the majority of Webinars are slide and audio conferences with both live and polling questions. Most Webinars last from 30-45 minutes. Xerox also occasionally uses services from providers such as WebEx and Placeware.

When Xerox does Webinars or Webcasts like the Proof Source Sales Tool CD, they use "multicasting inside the corporate intranet and unicasting to the public Internet using a external provider," says White.

"We manage the entire technical infrastructure and process for internal Webcasting," says White. "We utilize an external supplier for the stream that goes outside our corporate intranet—on to the public Internet." But they may not be using outside help much longer. "We are in the process of building the infrastructure that will allow us to manage the external streams as well and expect to have this in place by year's end," says White. What‘s the rationale for doing everything in house? "The primary driver is cost savings," says White. "Plus it allows us to control when we do events—not having to plan ahead with an outside service provider."

Meanwhile, Xerox is not resting on its laurels, according to White. He says Xerox has all but abandoned its previous use of expensive satellite communications in favor of new Internet solutions. The company is still trying to leverage some value out of its old ISDN videoconferencing equipment, but as White stated earlier, the company is "building the infrastructure" that will result in an all-IP environment. It seems clear that the future of Xerox will be intimately intertwined with the future of IP-based communications.