Virtual global sales event nets savings

To reduce the costs of hosting an annual three-day sales event that drew thousands of sales and marketing personnel and partners from around the world, Oracle wanted to find a new format for the meeting. The company decided to stage an on-demand event that could be rolled out at the same time, but didn’t require everyone in its geographically dispersed sales team to be online at the same moment.

Sending employees and partners to a single geographic location had cost the company more than $10 million each year. Oracle turned to Altus Learning and its software as a service (SaaS)-based product vSearch, which enables users to capture, share and search video content down to the spoken word. vSearch combines digitally recorded video with synchronized slides and scrolling transcripts, enabling users to see and hear the content being presented. Because every word spoken during a presentation can be transcribed, all of the content of the slides and notes becomes searchable data, according to Altus.

Paul Salinger, VP of marketing at Oracle, says, "Altus extends the shelf life of our content, making it easy to find information and create new assets from it. That’s the advantage their tool provides to the Oracle sales force." According to Altus, the virtual sales event solution has resulted in the following benefits:

• cost savings of more than $10 million;
• knowledge available on demand from any location at any time and through a variety of mediums;
• the ability to view content live or download audio or video files for remote learning;
• delivery of familiar search technology to find the exact information users need, eliminating time lost in searching for knowledge; and
• a systematic, repeatable and cost-effective way to capture and share knowledge.