How To Choose A Conferencing Provider

Transcription

1 How To Choose A Conferencing Provider WHITE PAPER When choosing a web conferencing provider, you re not just looking for a tool; you re looking for a communications partner. Fortunately, there are dozens of web conferencing providers and services to choose from. You just need to find it. Here s a road map to help get you there. You ve made the decision that your business needs web conferencing. Travel costs are killing you. You need better collaboration with your developers in Asia and better communication with your sales team across the U.S. Marketing wants to start doing web seminars to generate more leads for the sales team. Customer Support wants to deliver more effective training to more customers. And it would be nice to let people work from home now and then without missing important meetings. Identify Your Needs The starting point in choosing a web conferencing provider is to determine how you will use it: Will you be holding scheduled or on-demand Web Meetings where the number of participants is limited but they need to interact freely? Will you be conducting Webinars where you re delivering a presentation or demo to an invited audience while addressing their questions and comments? Will you be Webcasting broadcasting your content over the Internet to a general audience? Will you be doing On-line Collaboration where the participants may need to share and control each other s desktop applications? You may do some or all of these, but try to determine how you will use it the most so that you end up with a service and provider best suited to your needs. Keep in mind that how you use web conferencing will likely grow and change over time. Estimate the typical number of participants you expect for each of the various ways you plan to use web conferencing. Will the participants be employees, or external participants such as customers or prospects? Where will they be located? Will any of them be participating from international locations? Finally, who will be using the web conferencing service? Is the service just for your department or for your entire company? If you can, collect input from everyone who will be using the service so you can make the best decision on a provider. You may find out that you need more than one service or provider to meet everyone s needs.. Feature Sets Once you know what you ll be using web conferencing for, you can decide what features you need. For example, if you re going to hold web seminars, do you want the conferencing service to include event scheduling and registration capabilities? If you re going to use it for training, do you want to be able to record the training sessions for later use? A majority of web conferencing providers offer the same basic set of commonly-used features. Some features may be priced separately, so it is important to know what you need versus what you want before you start evaluating web conferencing providers.

2 Purchase Priorities Before you can begin evaluating web conferencing services and providers, you should understand your purchasing priorities. A web conferencing service may have all the features you need, but be priced beyond your budget. Or, you may be willing to WHITE sacrifice PAPER some functionality for ease-of-use. Knowing your purchasing priorities will help focus your evaluation of web conferencing services and providers on what s most important to your business. Here are some purchasing criteria and questions for you to consider: Feature Ask Yourself Ask Provider Price What is your budget and what are your ROI targets? How much does the web conferencing service cost? What is included in this price? Are any of the features you need priced separately? Quality Ease of Use Based on your typical use scenario, how sensitive are you to the quality of the web conferencing service? Who will be using web conferencing and what is their level of expertise? How fast is the response time? How clear is the audio? How often are calls dropped? Are there redundant servers? How robust is the software? Does the web conferencing service require you or your meeting participants to download, install, and maintain software? Is the user interface intuitive and easy to follow? Feature Set Customer Support Security & Scalability What are your must have features and which ones can you live without? What kind of customer support do you need and are you willing to pay extra for it? Do you expect it 24/7/365? Will you want training? How do you expect your web conferencing needs to grow or change? What type of security do you need? Are the features you need well-designed and easy to use? Do any of the features cost extra? Who provides the customer support the provider or a 3rd party? Are live operators always available? Does the provider offer meeting planning and operator-assisted services? Is training available and is it free? Can the web conferencing service grow to meet the future needs of your business? Are there services available for different size businesses? How does the web conferencing service work with company firewalls? Are web meetings passcode protected? Does the provider use data encryption?

3 Understand the Pricing When you buy web conferencing, you re actually paying for a service, similar to your cell phone service. Web conferencing providers offer pricing plans. The three most common plans WHITE PAPER are: 1. Per Minute. Also know as on-demand or pay-per-use plans, you simply pay for the minutes you use. 2. Subscription. Also know as flat-rate plans, you pay a monthly or yearly fee per seat or user to hold unlimited meetings up to a maximum number of participants per seat. 3. Enterprise Licenses. Many providers offer corporate licenses so that everyone in your organization can hold unlimited web conferences at a fixed price. For most businesses, subscription pricing is the best alternative. Subscription plans vary widely among providers, so it s important to understand your typical usage pattern so your can analyze these plans and see which ones are the most cost-effective. It s also important to know which features you need in case providers charge extra for some of them. Although web conferencing providers pricing options may appear straightforward, applying them to your situation can produce surprising results. For example, consider the following example of a medium-sized company s web conferencing needs: 5 departments, each needs a separate web conferencing subscription. Each department holds an average of 3 one-hour meetings per week which is 780 meetings in a year between the five departments. Each meeting has up to 10 participants. The Marketing department additionally plans to conduct one 1-hour web seminar each month for up to 50 participants. The Training/Support department additionally plans to provide two 1-hour web training classes per week for up to 25 students. Provider A charges the following: $0.06/minute based on a pay-per-use plan. $39.00/month per seat for up to 15 participants based on an annual subscription plan. $0.12/minute for each additional participant over 15. The annual cost of a pay-per-use plan from Provider A is: # Min. Parts $ Cost Meetings $.06 $28,080 Webinars $.06 $2160 Training $.06 $9360 Total $39,600 The annual cost of a subscription plan from Provider A is: # Min. Seats $ Cost Subscription 15 $39.00 Meetings Subs $2340 Overage Webinars $.12 $3024 Training $.12 $7488 Total $12,852 Clearly, a subscription plan from Provider A is more costeffective for this company than a pay-per-use plan even though the per-minute rate seems very reasonable. Now consider Provider B, who charges the following: $59.00/month per seat for up to 25 participants based on an annual subscription plan. $0.20/minute for each additional participant over 25. The annual cost of a subscription plan from Provider B is: # Min. Seats $ Cost Subscription 15 $59.00 $3540 Meetings Subs $2340 Overage Webinars $.20 $3600 Training $.20 $0 Total $7140

4 Even though Provider B s subscription and per minute prices are significantly higher than Provider A, the annual cost is much less for this company due to the higher participant limit. WHITE PAPER That s only part of the price story, however; extra charges may apply for recording, archiving, audio conferencing, toll-free long distance, international calling, and other services. Also, some providers may offer volume discounts or customized plans if you qualify. Complete pricing information is usually not published on providers websites, so the only way to know for sure what the service will cost you is to talk to the providers and get detailed quotes. Before you can do that, though, you have to know your web conferencing needs and priorities. Research Once you know everything you need from web conferencing, you can start looking at providers and evaluating their services. Here s how to go about it: Talk to people. Many companies you know already use web conferencing. Use your contacts to find out what providers they use and what they think of the service and provider, both good and bad. Keep in mind that their needs, and therefore their experiences, may be different than yours will be. Search the Web. Google anything to do with web conferencing and you ll find plenty of useful information including features and descriptions, pricing, blogs, forums, reviews and lots of advice. When reading reviews, keep in mind that the providers themselves may have written them. Visit provider websites. Despite the marketing hype, you can learn a lot from poking around web conferencing provider websites. Most providers list basic service features, pricing, and support options. Some of them also have web conferencing case studies and whitepapers available for download. Maker sure to find out if the provider is an OEM or a reseller. Attend web seminars. Look around the web for web seminars that may be of interest to you. It s a great way to get familiar with web conferencing while learning something useful. Some providers sponsor web seminars for this very purpose. Watch free demos. Take advantage of free demos from the providers to get a good overview of their service. If the demo is an actual live meeting, ask them to demonstrate the features that are important to you. Sign up for free training. Some providers offer free training. If you want more detail than you got from the on-line demo, sign up for a class. It s time well spent for evaluating different services and providers. And it may save you some training time later on. Try it for free. Take advantage of providers free trials to play with the service on your own. You may not be able to try everything you want, depending on how much functionality the provider makes available in the trial, but it should help you see if the service is easy to learn and use. In the process, you may also have a chance to evaluate the provider s customer support. Conduct a pilot. If you have time during the free trial, try holding at least one actual meeting or seminar with it. Of course, you ll probably want to do this with internal participants in case you have problems or there are limitations with the service. But try to make it as real-life as possible. If you can t do this with the free trial, talk to the provider about arranging a pilot evaluation. Final Thoughts There are many conferencing options out there from which to choose. The important thing to know is how your company plans on using it, your budget and your support needs. There are a lot of companies touting free conference calling but in reality they are simply free to you but charge your participants. Imagine conducting a training demo for a prospect that takes an hour and then they receive long distance charges for that call - not the greatest experience for a potential customer. Be careful of hidden fees as well. The only fees that are acceptable and should appear on your conferencing bill are taxes and the Federal Universal Service Fund (FUSF). Conferencing fees, unused line fees and administrative fees are all additional charges that ReadyTalk does not charge. When purchasing from a provider, be clear on whether

5 that provider is reseller, wholesaler or OEM. Make sure to find out who will support the product should you need help. Be aware of conferencing services that break their product out WHITE into different PAPER feature sets depending on your perceived usage. If you originally source a product for department meetings and then realize you want to run webinars, most conferencing providers will require you to purchase a new product to fit your needs. Most likely, this product will have a different price point and require new training. At ReadyTalk, all of the functionality we offer is under one product at one price point. Finally, your conferencing service reflects on you as a company. You are not just picking a communications vendor but a communications partner. Your partner needs to make you look good in front of your clients, customers or prospects. You need a service that is reliable and scalable that can grow with your usage. For more information about ReadyTalk and how we can help your organization, please contact ReadyTalk Sales at or sales@readytalk.com About ReadyTalk ReadyTalk is committed to helping customers conduct successful audio and web conferences of all sizes from small, ad hoc meetings to large, formal events. Visit to learn more about our full range of technology and services including: Audio Conferencing / Web Conferencing / Event Services / Recordings and Podcasts