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THE CN INTERVIEW: Ken Velten
The CN Interview with Streamlogics customer Ken Velten
7 July, 2008
Ken Velten is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development at ConferencePlus. He is responsible for ConferencePlus' marketing activities including product management, product marketing, new partner relationships, advertising and corporate communications. We caught up with Ken to ask him questions about ConferencePlus and their webcast offerings through Streamlogics.
Conferencing News: Ken, please describe how Webcasting fits into your existing conferencing services mix. Do you see it as a complimentary service?
Ken Velten, ConferencePlus: Webcasting is a complimentary service, a competitive service, and it fills its own niche that traditional audio, web, and video conferencing services couldn’t fulfill. It is complimentary, in that our customers can add a streaming component to their audio and or video conference. They can then make it available to hundreds or thousands of participants that would have previously been unable to attend because of cost, lack of equipment, or geographical dispersion.
In this same way, it competes with traditional services for large volume conferences. We are seeing customers that used to do large volume audio or web conferences switch to streaming because it offers a fixed cost and often times, substantial savings.
CN: Do you find that by offering Webcasting as a service you have a competitive advantage over those competitors that do not?
KV: Absolutely. It saves our customers the time of searching for a Webcasting provider that they can rely on and trust. They can come directly to us and know that we can provide all the services they need. Our customers know we are committed to quality and excellence in everything we do, so they know that the Webcasting service we provide through Streamlogics is going to be to the standards they have come to expect from ConferencePlus. Beyond that, if we didn’t provide Webcasting, our customers would have to manage and coordinate an event across multiple vendors because they often require integration of audio or video bridging for media signal acquisition. We handle all that for them and then put it all on a single invoice. It really simplifies the experience.
CN: What are some of the other key benefits that offering Webcasting provides your firm, and your customers.
KV: The Webcasting services we offer through Streamlogics fill a few market needs that none of our previous services could meet. This is especially true in the area of Continuing Education and training, and in providing a better archiving and retrieval experience.
For education, the Streamlogics platform offers excellent tracking, reporting, and testing. This previously could only be achieved on a seat license based web conferencing service that required annual commitments and knowledge of audience size. For many customers this wasn’t a viable solution. With Streamlogics, we can offer these services on an ad hoc basis, giving our customers the flexibility to train when and however they want.
In regard to archiving, the Streamlogics’ user-friendly platform offers easy access to saved events. The interactive elements in the archive such as Q&A, polling, and testing still function as in the live event. The participant tracking is also a key benefit of the archived webcasts. This is particularly important if webcasts are being used for lead generation or training.
CN: What would be some of the key items you would look for in a webcast partner?
KV: A commitment to quality and service is the only place to start. Webcasting can be very customizable and have lots of moving parts associated with an event. Without a partner that is dedicated to customer service, a customer can become overwhelmed and have a bad experience in hurry.
CN: What are the services that Streamlogics provides you and your customers?
KV: Streamlogics is a full service Webcasting provider and we offer their complete portfolio. At the basic level, they offer audio and video Webcasting which we find highly complementary to our audio and video conferencing services. At the next level, they offer audio and video Webcasting with slides added. This is a powerful combination that is ideal for large audiences and training. All these services are available for live events or on-demand archived events. This gives our customers a lot of flexibility and options for reaching their audience. Beyond these core services, Streamlogics has built a lot of features into their platform to meet the needs of different types of events. We have the ability to play flash clips into the slide viewer, poll the audience, do testing, and issue Continuing Education certificates. It’s a really robust service.
CN: How long have you been Webcasting with Streamlogics and what were some of the key reasons you choose to work with Streamlogics?
KV: Our relationship with Streamlogics has been growing for over two years. We originally chose them because they were an excellent fit in terms of breadth of service and commitment to quality and customer service. Our previous vendor just fell short in terms of the reliability and service offering we needed to really push Webcasting with our customers. With Streamlogics, we found a dependable partner that gave us the confidence to really start marketing and selling Webcasting to our customers. Since then it’s become one of our fastest growing services.
CN: How do you find working with Streamlogics as your webcast partner?
KV: It’s been a great partnership. Streamlogics and ConferencePlus are very similar in our approach to customer care and providing quality services that our customers have come to expect. We both believe in being flexible and going the extra mile to meet customer needs. From a development standpoint, we both share the ongoing initiative to continually upgrade our platforms to improve the customer and audience experience. Our customers are happy, so we’re happy.
Thanks, Ken. Continued success with ConferencePlus and the Streamlogics webcast offering.
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