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Technology Industry

Webcasting takes hold; Fortune 500 company Rohm & Haas is taking interactive Web communication and training to new heights

Communications News, Dec, 2006

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."

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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 web-casting 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."

Technology Industry

Webcasting takes hold; Fortune 500 company Rohm & Haas is taking interactive Web communication and training to new heights

Communications News, Dec, 2006

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