Web Conferencing, ROI and the Real Challenge

We attended the Wainhouse Research Conferencing Service Providers Summit in Boston a few weeks ago as guests of our good friends at Compunetix. (The session was well done – kudos to Marc Beattie and his team).

One statistic that caught our attention is termed the attach rate (AR): the ratio between audio conferencing minutes and web conferencing minutes. The current rate is 6% or for every 100 minutes of audio conferencing usage there are 6 minutes of web conferencing. The expectation is that AR will grow to 20% over the next several years. We are seeing this growth in our own base.

As you would expect, customers and conferencing providers are responding by focusing on the technologies supporting the projected growth. As important as that is, we take a slightly different view. Given that the technology works, the challenge for clients is integrating good business practices into the web conferencing decision and delivery processes.

Profitable companies spend money on products and services only after ROI, productivity, and customer satisfaction indicators are defined. In the virtual meeting and conferencing space we see marketing and operations’ budgets quietly draining valuable cash and resources. The expense of the audio and web conferencing technologies improperly matched to the need; internal administrative costs and headaches; potential brand damage of a badly managed meeting; and the general misuse of an operating asset are spilling dollars into the cloud.

And of course, CEO’s are generally too far away to hear the sucking sound. The shame is that by applying strategic business practices improvements can be significant. In budgets larger than $40K per month we estimate that a 30–50% improvement is achievable. Gains come from the analysis and reworking of audio – both reservationless and operator assisted; the definition and consolidation of web conferencing and presentation tools; the tightening of administration processes; and the integration with Social Media initiatives.

As increased web conferencing usage puts pressure on resources, organizations will need to recognize that web conferencing has become central to customer communications, brand outreach and operational efficiencies.