Web Conferencing on Steroids

If you’re like many sales managers, you probably value the advantages of Web conferencing but are convinced that for large-scale sales meetings the limitations of Web conferencing require an in-person meeting. If so, you’d be half right. It’s true that traditional Web conferencing technologies, which excel in a collaborative environment, are limited when you want to deliver rich media content, videos or maybe an exam or two on the materials you have covered. But the limits of Web conferencing technology are right where iLearning’s Resound Network picks up, enabling large-scale meetings to be delivered to a network of classrooms across North America.

“Resound was built to be a larger-scale, video-centric delivery model. We believe in the power and impact video brings to the learning equation,” says Christopher Brenchley, iLearning’s director of strategic product management. In light of that philosophy, iLearning considers Resound to be “more of an event platform, not a meeting platform. What differentiates the two are scale and impact.” The Resound platform is an ASP-based, hosted-technology solution that integrates satellite, streaming media, dynamic Web applications and networking technologies with high-end broadcast studios, Internet-connected training facilities, hosting facilities and a network infrastructure that powers single-source knowledge-transfer solutions for Global 2000 enterprises.

Want a large, studio-quality presentation dispersed to sales teams? iLearning’s core technology, the Resound Network, integrates full-production and Web cast studios with a network of Internet-connected training facilities located in major metro markets throughout North America. Shockwave-rich media content, slides, video, multiple-expert Q&A capabilities, exams on the material presented – Resound can handle it all, as well as capture and synch all the material for later access by those who missed it live. iLearning customer, NEC, has been using Resound instead of conducting six- to eight-week road shows during new product rollouts. They have reduced those six to eight weeks down to a one-day cast, says Brenchley.

Want to test the product? An ad hoc event using the Resound Network classrooms runs about $100,000, Brenchley says. Enterprise or subscription customers doing regular communications – say, using the network solution to launch a product or conduct a national sales meeting and then following up with regional training sessions via the Web – will pay about $5,000 to $10,000 a month. Think it sounds like a lot? Compare those numbers to the cost of your annual sales meeting. Chances are you’ll be looking at significant savings.