Oracle Goes Virtual with its Global Sales Kickoff, Netting over $10 Million in Savings

Introduction

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest business software company with over 345,000 customers, 86,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues of $23.3 billion dollars. Oracle's business is information—how to manage it, use it, share it, protect it. For over three decades, Oracle has provided the software and services that let organizations get the most up-to-date and accurate information from their business systems. 

Problem

In a time of economic challenge, companies of all sizes are looking for ways to reduce costs. Even for a highly successful company the size of Oracle, proving to shareholders that it is doing its part to reduce costs and become even more fiscally responsible, is important. Oracle has always hosted their annual sales event in a “traditional” manner – bringing thousands of sales and marketing personnel and partners from around the globe to participate in its field readiness event. The three-day event includes sessions focused on updates to corporate messaging, sales awards, product positioning, and new sales techniques. Sending the company's thousands of global sales personnel, hundreds of global partners and global marketing team to a single geographic location can run the company more than $10 million each year. In 2009, Oracle determined it would require a new format to reduce this budget line item. Considering the different time zones of the geographically dispersed sales team, Oracle needed an on-demand event that could be rolled out at the same time but didn't require everyone to be online at the same moment.

Solution

Oracle turned to Altus365 vSearch to capture and share its annual sales knowledge. Specifically, Oracle digitally recorded Oracle executives and customers delivering their key messages, which were then delivered on demand to their global sales audience. The company also opted to capture the live delivery of awards to those who received them and include these feeds in their sales video portal. Because Oracle's field sales team is mobile, it was important for them to have MP3 files of the videos to enable their field employees to download the content and view it at their leisure. It was also important that Oracle have a reporting mechanism to show who was viewing content on the site. Line-of-business managers were alerted as to who had viewed the content and who hadn't. Altus365 ensured that Oracle's single-sign-on and authentication was integrated so that users could leverage their existing login information versus having to remember a new user name and password. The ability to role this out to a global organization simultaneously created a cohesive event for Oracle.

Altus365 vSearch enables companies to easily capture and share expert knowledge throughout the extended enterprise to reduce costs, increase productivity, and shorten time to revenue. Altus365 vSearch combines digitally recorded video with synchronized slides and scrolling transcripts so users can see and hear the content being presented. By transcribing every word spoken during a presentation, in the slides and notes, become searchable data. As simple as conducting a Google search, users can find exactly what they are looking for down to the point of interest and get the knowledge they need—at the presentation, topic or sentence level—eliminating costly time scouring corporate intranets for knowledge that is hidden amongst millions of documents. For global organizations with employees who speak English as a second language, the ability to see, hear and read the content is critical to comprehension.

Capture and Share

Oracle digitally recorded their content and leveraged existing video feeds to deliver key knowledge that is historically shared during their live kickoff event. Each video was fully transcribed enabling the search and find capabilities Altus365 vSearch provides.

The digitally recorded content was uploaded to a sales portal and is downloadable in mp3 (Audio), mp4 (video) or PowerPoint formats, with the embedded transcript. The content is fully searchable providing instant, anywhere, anytime access to sales knowledge.

Search

Oracle sales representatives, partners and marketing personnel are able to search any term and find the most relevant, individual bit of information from available video-on-demand presentations, transcripts, and documents. Presentations can be launched from the presentation beginning, individual slide, or sentence level. This feature enables users to get to exactly the knowledge they require versus wasting time watching and listening to content that isn't currently relevant to their task. All content is transcribed and is searchable down to the spoken word. This unique and powerful search capability combined with the downloadable options allows users to quickly find the content they need and take it with them as needed. By making knowledge easily accessible, users do not have to remember specific content or even know that it exists. By searching, users will automatically be directed to it. The knowledge is always available, when they need it.

Mobility

With the Altus365 vSearch ability to deliver files in MP3 format, Oracle has been able to provide its field organization with digitally recorded video content which is available on-the-fly for its highly mobile sales professionals. This piece of the solution is critical considering the amount of travel the field is engaged in each day.

Results

By eliminating the need to send thousands of field personnel and partners to a single event, Oracle saves more than $10 million dollars in 2009. In addition to the high success rate of the sales event, Oracle replicated the process for its North American partners for their annual kick off and for marketing's annual kick-off.

Paul Salinger, Vice President of Marketing, Oracle commented, "Altus365 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."

Benefits

Having valuable knowledge recorded and available on-demand for its employees and partners has given Oracle the following benefits:

• Cost savings of over $10 million dollars by taking their sales kickoff virtual
• Increased sales effectiveness as reps and partners are better prepared for customer meetings
• Increased productivity as users can quickly search and locate the exact knowledge they need and take it with them on the road

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