Choosing an Enterprise Webcasting Solution

Building the Business Case
Many corporate executives continue to treat online video with a healthy dose of skepticism. Video continues to be seen more as a medium associated with prime-time television in the family living room than as a type of data that can enhance the business communications process. This lingering doubt over the efficacy of webcasting dictates the need for a no-nonsense approach in demonstrating the value of implementing the technology. In short, it’s time to break out the spreadsheet and measure that "return on investment" (ROI).

Measuring the ROI is not as easy as it sounds, however. It’s a task that requires decision makers to immediately recognize a myriad of factors that are likely to influence the webcast experience and estimate their impact at the beginning of the analysis work. This practice can be akin to skipping to the final chapter of a long novel: A reader gets to the conclusion of the story without necessarily understanding all of the nuances of the plot.

In the case of business webcasting, the process of determining the bottom line of deploying technology is influenced by a range of interdependent factors. In order to measure the potential financial benefits of the webcasting implementation, for instance, executives naturally have to know how the technology is going to be used.

But this effort can set off a chain of circular logic. The viability of selected applications can’t be determined without an understanding of the technology that an organization can afford. Affordability is linked directly to financial benefits. But financial benefits can’t be nailed down without knowing the applications to be deployed, completing the logic loop.

Executives evangelizing the implementation of webcasting must be aware of the logic trap that emerges when evaluating the business viability of the technology. Many mistakenly leap to building the case for ROI initially without putting as much thought as is necessary into understanding how their organization is likely to use the technology in regular business activities.

The surest path to a good decision on webcasting comes from first identifying an organization’s communications objectives, says Gary Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Netbriefings, Inc., a St. Paul, Minn.-based seller of webcast event services and software solutions.

"The best of the good, smart buyers are those who know what they want to do with the online video from the start," Anderson says. "You have to have a vision for what you want to achieve with the technology."

While the introduction of webcasting technologies can generate both tangible and intangible benefits for an organization, cash is still king when it comes to evaluating the potential ROI from the deployment of online video solutions in the business sector. When asked in the 2008 Interactive Media Strategies survey to identify the factors most useful in gauging the effectiveness of web communications technology, more executives cited the factor "Generates Revenue" than any other single factor (see Table 3). Coming in second, cited by 15% of overall respondents as a leading metric of web communications effectiveness is "Cut Travel Expenses."

Executives do not turn a blind eye to the intangible benefits that result from the implementation of webcasting technology. However, these hard-to-measure effects, such as "Improving the Comprehension" of a presentation or "Increasing Audience Reach," are cited on a less-frequent basis by survey respondents.

Timing can be key in maximizing the impact that intangible benefits can have in the purchase decision, says Berlin. For the sake of credibility, evangelists have to focus on the cold, hard, tangible financial results when first introducing the notion of webcasting to others within an organization. Once the financial case is sealed, the intangibles should be raised to illustrate how the technology has an impact on an organization that extends beyond the spreadsheet.