Features

In 2004, Alan Friedlander, the manager of Rohm and Haas’ multimedia services group, began exploring new options for developing and expanding the scope of the company’s media resources. “Traditionally, we would travel to a location with all of our camera gear, then we’d bring back the raw videotapes, edit the footage, etc., and the end product was always very good,” he says. “The pain point was the distribution and utilization of that quality end product. We could send VHS tapes or DVDs to people all over the world, but we were never really sure whether they watched them or not.”

Friedlander wanted his department to use the Internet to expand and enhance Rohm and Haas’ efforts to increase the exposure of its research and development experts to the organization’s customers, partners and prospects. His basic theory was that the more that Rohm and Haas could share about the company’s new product and service offerings with its customers, the more likely they would be to incorporate the firm’s specialty materials into their new product development efforts.

“With broadband Internet taking hold here in North America, everyone was using online video, and everybody was downloading it,” Friedlander explains. “So we said to ourselves, if people at home are doing it for their own entertainment value, there are probably Rohm and Haas customers who are checking out video online, so it made sense for us to get in on this type of communication.”

Taking into account the need to integrate Web-based video content into their communications technology, Friedlander explored the business benefits that could be derived from the deployment of corporate webcasting to deliver high-impact presentations. Corporate webcasting incorporates video with Power Point (or other visual aids), which can be scaled to thousands of participants without loss of quality. Furthermore, webcasting creates an interactive environment through the use of Q&A, polls and surveys throughout the broadcast.

Rohm and Haas Co. is a Fortune 500 manufacturer of specialty materials, such as chemicals and acrylics that are used by other companies to make an array of products, ranging from building materials and household wares to electronics and pharmaceuticals. With annual revenues of approximately $8 billion, Rohm and Haas operates more than 100 factories and customer service sites in 27 countries, with a global workforce of more than 17,000 people. Its products are sold in more than 100 countries around the world.

For more than two decades, Rohm and Haas had a dedicated in-house multimedia services department that produced video presentations, which were distributed to employees initially on film and videotape, and later via DVD.

Communication, not sales
The goal of this webcasting initiative for Rohm and Haas was not to use a solution to close a sale. Rather, the medium was seen as a communication venue where Rohm and Haas’ experts could proactively answer the questions and concerns of customers and prospective clients.

When he was developing a strategy to acquire and deploy a webcasting solution, Friedlander turned to a strict set of guidelines and specifications for weaving the application into the fabric of the organization’s existing communications process. Specifically, he wanted a webcasting platform that had the flexibility to publish and archive multimedia presentations that looked and felt similar to other media that Rohm and Haas utilizes in all of its day-to-day communications.

Friedlander also worked closely with Rohm and Haas’ IT organization to ensure that the webcasting solution he selected would work within the existing technology infrastructure of the organization. “Both within Rohm and Haas and for our external customers, we did not want to do anything from our multimedia studio that was going to jeopardize any information or sales or support from our internal IT environment,” Friedlander explains.

“One of the top priorities in selecting our webcasting solution was to work with a vendor who would be a team player. If they tried to sell us an ‘out of the box’ solution, we were not interested,” he adds. “When going through the procurement process, you have to look for a vendor who is fully invested in the success of the project long-term, not a closed application that can’t be modified in the future. Otherwise, it just won’t work.”

After a comprehensive review process, the company chose to implement IVT MediaPlatform, a complete webcasting publishing platform from Interactive Video Technologies that supports the entire lifecycle of a webcast. The product enables clients to broadly produce, manage, distribute and monitor live and on-demand webcasts.

“In order to get a basic webcast off the ground,” Friedlander explains, “MediaPlatform does require a little bit of training, but it’s not that difficult. What really appealed to us was that you can customize the webcast, in terms of the types of data you’re trying to gather, the way it works for you, what parts can be re-used in subsequent webcasts. Overall, it’s not a tremendously complex system unless you want it to be. But you can make it look and feel exactly the way you want it, make it fit your needs.”

Additionally, one of the prerequisites of this project for Rohm and Haas was to purchase a solution that was reliable in the distribution and delivery of its online multimedia content. The combination of Akamai’s content-distribution services and IVT’s publishing software were sold to Rohm and Haas as a single solution, ensuring smooth links between the publishing platform and the network used to distribute the multimedia content.

initial challenges
Friedlander says there were some initial problems, “Often on a project like this you need to make adjustments, which we had to do with our implementation. At first we found that it was a bit unstable and clunky. We also had a couple of snags where the refresh rates weren’t working properly and we couldn’t always get it to work as we wanted.

“But many of those early problems were solved as we worked closely with IVT to improve the tool. Today, it works precisely as it was supposed to, upgrades are done automatically and we see no hit or downtime from the enhanced features. And they continue to create new feature and service upgrades to the platform.”

Friedlander explains that since moving to the ASP version he has seen additional benefits from the IVT-Akamai partnership, “We chose to basically host everything with IVT and Akamai. Our IT people provide just basic support and make sure that our department is not using too much bandwidth. The idea that all our data, whether it’s video or HTML, resides on servers outside of Rohm and Haas is fantastic. With the limited resources corporations have these days, this is a true added benefit for us.”

Another key attribute for Rohm and Haas was the ability of the solution to allow the creation of multiple templates and wizards that can be used to streamline the publishing process. MediaPlatform’s system of wizards and templates allows executives and technical presenters to develop their own webcasting content, with a minimal level of support from the organization’s multimedia services group.

“The big issue for us was to find a solution that we could actually apply a process to,” Friedlander explains. “We didn’t want to have to do too much work between each webcast. We needed something that was almost template based–and IVT used that same terminology.”

Re-using content is one of the benefits of creating templates for webcasts. By using a platform that relied on simple drag-and-drop features, Rohm and Haas developers could quickly re-use a webcast template by plugging in new content for simple updates or switch out specific components to tailor them for multiple audiences.

One of the objectives of this process for Rohm & Hass was to deploy a webcasting solution that enabled the company to not only distribute multimedia presentations, but to track whether or not they were being watched. “A key to an effective webcasting strategy is a solution that enables an organization to set up projects quickly and then deploy them instantly into a useful online archive,” Friedlander explains. “The back end reporting in MediaPlatform is great, but that function is only as good as the polling questions that we create. However, the ability to mine that data and help customers that might have a concern is invaluable.”

interactive webcasts
When watching a webcast, participants can submit questions, and when the Rohm and Hass presenter is finished with the presentation, she can then answer questions submitted by the audience in detail after the event.

Since the beginning of the year, Rohm and Haas has successfully created and distributed more than 35 webcasts, and projects to conduct a total of 75 webcasts for 2006, double what its webcast activity was in 2005. Of those, two thirds were to external customers, the remainder to internal audiences.

“The template-driven publishing process helps make the expanded webcasting schedule possible,” Friedlander says. “As we move forward, I’m really starting to see a 50/50 split–50% customers, 50% internal. The ability to interactively talk to employees in Shanghai, for example, is just fantastic. We do a webcast from Philadelphia at 8 p.m. and then we’re live in Shanghai the next morning with live polling and Q&A. From what we are hearing, they feel a little bit closer to the company using this technology.”

Friedlander has difficulty putting an exact value on the benefits that the company has realized from its adoption of corporate webcasting. The company has had a conscious focus on highlighting the intangible benefits achieved from the development of improved communications methods with its customer base, rather than thinking of its outbound webcasts as just a primary vehicle for pumping up sales.

“One of the values of the IVT solution is the ability to collect usage data from the webcast,” says Friedlander. “Rohm and Haas does not use webcasting to ask for a sale. We use it to inform and educate customers about our technologies, and the data that we collect allows us to service and inform our customers about concerns they might have about certain products. It allows us to capture that information and respond in a timely manner.”

The webcasts are meant to be an information-sharing exercise between Rohm and Haas’ chemists, marketing managers and product developers, and the company’s customers. While webcasts help disseminate product information that may contribute to sales later on down the line, the company recognizes that the dynamic of the online sessions would change noticeably if prospects would come to view the presentations as selling sessions rather than learning opportunities. To that effect, webcasting has changed the corporate culture of the company, transforming the way online multimedia communication is perceived.

Some Rohm and Haas executives have begun to use webcasting as an essential communications tool, Friedlander says. “With locations around the world, it’s impossible to visit them. They’re beginning to use webcasts on a quarterly basis to regularly update their teams. We do this for offices in North America, Europe and Latin America, as well as the Asian Pacific region. In the future, more executives will be doing quarterly briefs this way and our CEO will begin delivering his internal communications via webcasting.”

With the implementation of IVT’s MediaPlatform, the multimedia services group at Rohm and Haas has grown increasingly comfortable in developing events to communicate information to employees on an internal basis. Now, even the company’s chief financial officer uses webcasting as part of regularly scheduled meetings with his global staff. Webcasting is also being used to communicate a host of human resources and training information.

“As a large corporation, the financial return on investment on anything we do is extremely important,” Friedlander says. “Being able to reach existing and potential customers, it is something that is very hard to put a price tag on. With the cost of travel these days, it’s very hard to consistently communicate with all of our customers. This new capability has allowed us to come face to face with that customer and have a virtual sales call. With everybody’s days being packed with more and more meetings and phone calls, this technology allows us to connect with people whom we otherwise would not be able to.”

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