Avtex

Company Expects Web Conferencing Solution to Save Nearly $70,000 Annually

Avtex, a provider of contact center and business process applications, wanted a less costly Web conferencing service. Within 18 months, the Minnesota company grew from 50 to 100 employees, who work from offices in four states and from remote locations. Because its employees are geographically dispersed, Avtex relies on Web collaboration for team meetings and training sessions. The company also uses Web conferencing to communicate with its 650 customers and provide them with support services. Avtex decided to replace WebEx, the service it had used for six years, with Microsoft® Office Live Meeting. Now Avtex employees have an enhanced Web conferencing service that includes audio and video conferencing, live chat with voice over IP, and document sharing. By deploying Office Live Meeting, Avtex saved nearly U.S.$20,000. The company also expects to save $50,000 a year in travel costs.

Situation

After analyzing the Web conferencing features that we used, it came down to the price because Office Live Meeting was the most cost-effective and gave us the features we use the most.  Jennifer Eckert Consulting and Education Manager Avtex

Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Avtex provides contact center, unified messaging, and IP telephony applications and integrated solutions to more than 650 customers in 50 states. Founded in 1971, the company is based in Bloomington, Minnesota. Over the past three years, the company has acquired three competing companies, and its number of employees has doubled to 100. Employees work from offices in Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin and from home offices. Avtex customers include Wells Fargo, Time Warner, and the University of Michigan.

Avtex had a contract with WebEx for six years that provided Web conferencing for 50 users who could host meetings with up to 20 people per session. After the company doubled its employees to 100, however, it wanted all of its employees to be able to use a Web conferencing solution. The WebEx proposal for the additional licenses was “a staggering amount for our company,” says Jennifer Eckert, Consulting and Education Manager at Avtex. As a result, Avtex decided to evaluate other products to find a more cost-effective solution.

Avtex uses Web conferencing to hold meetings and training sessions with company employees who collaborate while working from the company’s five offices. An additional six employees—who represent the development, education, support, and sales departments—work from their homes in locations throughout the country. “Web collaboration software has been integral to us for being able to bring those sites and those remote workers together in the same meetings,” explains Eckert.

Additionally, Avtex relies on Web collaboration software for communications with customers. The sales team uses it for product presentations and demonstrations, and the development team uses it for project design and implementation. The support team uses it to troubleshoot problems, and the education team uses it to conduct training sessions and informational meetings with customers.

Avtex wanted a cost-effective Web conferencing solution that would provide users with integrated capabilities including document sharing, voice over IP, and embedded animation, audio, and video files.

Solution

In early 2007, Avtex managers analyzed their company’s business requirements for a Web conferencing solution. The managers considered how many employees used Web conferencing and what features they used the most. In addition to Microsoft Office Live Meeting, the company evaluated GoToMeeting and a smaller third-party vendor.

Avtex decided to deploy Office Live Meeting (2005) in February 2007 for use throughout the company and agreed to participate in the Live Meeting 2007 Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for the new release. “We were excited to get into the RDP because we need the ability to transfer files from our system to the system we are connecting to,” says Eckert. “The 2005 version doesn’t have that, but we were able to test that capability with the new version.”

The audio and video capabilities of Office Live Meeting and RoundTable allow everyone at the meetings or trainings to see people in the other offices. This significantly improves morale.  Jennifer Eckert Consulting and Education Manager Avtex

As part of the Office Live Meeting (2007) deployment, the company enhanced its video and audio communications by including the Microsoft RoundTable™ conferencing and collaboration device, which offers 360-degree video conferencing. This tool combines the features of a speakerphone with those found in video conferencing equipment to offer a virtual real-time experience by displaying side-by-side images of conference participants. The device also tracks the flow of conversation so that the person speaking is spotlighted in a separate, larger panel.

Avtex has deployed Web conferencing as the Office Live Meeting hosted service and as an on-premise solution. The company, which is participating in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 RDP and the Microsoft Voice Partner Program, plans to make the on-premise solution available companywide by December 2007 to provide employees a choice when communicating internally or with customers.

Eckert’s education team was asked to make certain that Office Live Meeting met the company’s Web conferencing requirements. Then the software was deployed to a small group of employees from the support, development, sales, and education departments, the heaviest users of Web collaboration software. “Once these employees were comfortable with it, we deployed Office Live Meeting to an additional 45 people who were the next highest users of Web collaboration software,” explains Eckert.

The new version of Office Live Meeting and the RoundTable device are used exclusively for internal Avtex communications. Although Avtex employees still use Office Live Meeting (2005) for some customer communications, the company plans to deploy the new release to all employees by December 2007. “Our employees have either interdepartmental or interoffice interactions as well as customer interactions, so we want them all to have the ability to use the tool to enhance productivity at meetings and training sessions,” says Eckert.

Avtex employees report that they are pleased with the enhanced functionality of Office Live Meeting, including improved audio and video conferencing features, note-sharing capabilities, and recording and archiving resources. Employees appreciate that documents shared online are automatically scanned for viruses by Microsoft Forefront™. Office Live Meeting enhances communications for Avtex employees who rely on it for team and project meetings and for interaction with customers.

Benefits

After deploying Office Live Meeting, Avtex expects to save at least U.S.$70,000 a year.
Additionally, the Web conferencing solution provides Avtex users with rich media audio and video conferencing, improved collaboration features, better customer relations, and tools that give the company a competitive edge.

Cost Savings of Nearly $70,000

By choosing Office Live Meeting, the company saved almost $20,000, which is more than 50 percent of what it would have paid for the same number of WebEx accounts. Not only was Avtex able to license 100 accounts for less money, but also the pricing was more cost-effective. Its previous contract was for 50 users, who could host up to 20 people, but most Avtex employees use Web conferencing for meetings with no more than four people. Now the 100 Avtex users can host up to 10 people per meeting, and a shared room is available for up to 250 users.

“After analyzing the Web conferencing features that we used, it came down to the price because Office Live Meeting was the most cost-effective and gave us the features we use the most,” says Eckert.

Additionally, Avtex employees no longer need to travel as often as they once did. Sales, development, education, and support team employees who meet online with customers are expected to save the company $50,000 annually in travel expenses.

For example, says Eckert, “We are doing on average 10 online trainings per month that a year ago would have been at the customer’s location.” Not only is the company saving money but also “not having to travel has freed up our ability to provide additional services.”

The Web collaboration tools available to us in Office Live Meeting help differentiate us by providing services that our competitors don’t provide.  Jennifer Eckert Consulting and Education Manager Avtex

Improved Audio and Video Conferencing

The enhanced audio and video conferencing features of Office Live Meeting and the RoundTable device have improved communications and productivity at Avtex, says Eckert.

“One thing that we didn’t expect, but that we have really grown to embrace, are the enhanced communications using RoundTable,” Eckert explains. "In the past, when we have added a new office as a result of an acquisition, we haven't had as much visibility as we would like. The audio and video capabilities of Office Live Meeting and RoundTable allow everyone at the meetings or trainings to see people in the other offices. This significantly improves morale.”

Eckert is among the remote employees who use a webcam to join managers who use RoundTable at headquarters for weekly meetings. The device has improved the effectiveness of the meetings.  Eckert says, "It affects productivity because, when you can actually see what is happening at other locations, you feel more a part of the meeting and actively participate in it."

Eckert’s education team also uses RoundTable for an informal employee program held during the lunch hour. “So much of these sessions isn’t necessarily just teaching them something; it’s also giving them an opportunity to see the people in the other offices,” Eckert says. Seventy-five people attended one of these informal online sessions, which introduced the RoundTable device to Avtex employees.

RoundTable is used only minimally for customer communications, but the device soon will be widely integrated into many customer interactions, including weekly project status meetings and monthly educational sessions.

Avtex expects RoundTable not only to improve communications with customers but also to enrich these relationships. “When the customers can actually see the person who is speaking, in addition to seeing the presentation being given, the video will have more of a personal touch,” Eckert says.

Office Live Meeting and RoundTable sessions are recorded and archived for later retrieval. “We plan to have a dedicated site on our server, so users have access to our library of recordings,” Eckert says.

Easier Collaboration

Office Live Meeting collaboration tools—including document sharing, note sharing, and the handouts file transfer—provide Avtex with “the missing link that we didn’t have before,” says Eckert. “We used to ask, ‘Who wants to take minutes today?’ and no one would volunteer. With shared notes, when people have something they want to make sure gets written down, they just type it in.”

Additionally, knowing that Microsoft Forefront scans documents that are distributed by file transfer during online meetings is important to Avtex. “We touch so many different customer systems,” says Eckert. “We need to make sure that we are not receiving something from a customer environment that could potentially put ours at risk and that we are not passing something into their environment that could put them at risk.

“It is another one of the things that we were very excited about when we heard about it because it is something WebEx didn’t offer us, so we were at risk with the transfers that we were doing.”

Avtex users find Office Live Meeting easy to implement. “The feedback that I’ve gotten is that it is much more intuitive than our previous solution,” Eckert says.

Better Customer Relations

Office Live Meeting enhances the ways Avtex maintains customer relations and provides customer support.

Sales teams can provide preliminary demonstrations of products during online meetings before they travel to a customer’s location. Then they may ask an Avtex project engineer to use Office Live Meeting to join them as they meet onsite with the customer.

“They bring in a person from Avtex using Web collaboration, and they can have access to resources in customer sessions that they may not have been able provide otherwise,” says Eckert. “It’s made the sales process a lot more efficient.”

In addition, Avtex uses Office Live Meeting as a tool to help it fulfill its maintenance agreements with customers. “We use the desktop sharing capabilities, so we can watch what’s happening from a user’s standpoint. It makes it much easier for us when they call and describe the problem, and we can’t give them a solution. We’ll say, ‘Can we go on and actually watch this happen?’ A lot of times it will make it much easier for us to diagnose the problem.”

Avtex also uses Office Live Meeting when working with customers who have Internet access but don’t have a network infrastructure that supports remote access “Although we don’t rely exclusively on Office Live Meeting as an access method to the servers that we support, it is definitely an option for us,” Eckert says.

Competitive Edge

Office Live Meeting gives Avtex an edge over other companies, many of whom represent the same software manufacturers as Avtex. For example, Avtex is the only partner of Interactive Intelligence to provide a monthly online presentation that explains to customers how to use the software effectively and provides an opportunity to ask questions. Eckert says, “The Web collaboration tools available to us in Office Live Meeting help differentiate us by providing services that our competitors don’t provide.”

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For more information about Avtex products and services, call (952) 831-0888 or visit the Web site at:
http://www.avtex.com/

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Document published October 2007