Firm Uses Webinars to Keep Customers Informed

Keeping track of processes from raw materials to finished product is a difficult task when you’re one of the country’s largest chemical companies. And if a mistake occurs, you want to be able to handle the problem.

That’s where OSIsoft’s software comes in handy. It is used by over 10,000 customers in over 100 countries.

“Our software is real time performance management for large processes,” says Tom Coates, Knowledge Base Manager. “We service large processors such as chemical plants, pharmaceutical plants and oil or gas refineries.”

To raise product awareness among existing and prospective customers, OSIsoft began a Webinar program last July.

“We needed a better way to get messages out on a continuous basis,” said Coates. Webinars met that need by reaching international customers and prospects quickly.

OSIsoft offers three Webinar series: Product, service and executive. The product series focuses on new product features and releases. The service series shows the benefits of technical support and OSIsoft’s field service. And the executive series highlight the higher business-level issues, such as implementing the RtPM Platform as a corporate initiative, return on investment and government regulation.

The company currently offers between two and three events each month with the goal of weekly Webinars towards the end of the year. With between 100 to 150 registrants for OSIsoft Webinars, the company sees attendance of 60% for their live, virtual events. From 85% to 90% of the attendees are current customers. Attendees log on from over 60 countries. Another 25% view archived versions of the Webinar from the OSIsoft Web library.

A unique and important aspect of OSIsoft’s Webinar program is showcasing customers as guest presenters so other customers can see how peers use the software to save money.

Two OSIsoft marketing employees devote about 20% of their time to the production of the events. Since OSIsoft helps its customers automate operational processes, it sought to automate many of the Webinar program’s business processes to speed event time-to-market and expedite workflow.

OSIsoft uses Microsoft’s Live Meeting service for its Web conferencing platform and it uses ViewCentral for event management solutions. ViewCentral integrates to Live Meeting and enables event administration, communications and program reporting.

“Communication is the key,” says Coates. “That’s how we get a better percentage of people showing up.”

From the ViewCentral application, program coordinators can easily send reminder and follow-up emails to event registrants and attendees, post information about upcoming events to the OSIsoft Web site, maintain a selection of archived events for anytime, anywhere viewing (also on the company Web site), and arrange for emails to be sent to sales reps that include the names of customers who have registered for each event.

“The success of our Webinar program is due in large part to the ease with which we are able to manage it,” says Coates. “ViewCentral makes this possible by eliminating manual event-management processes and automating the capture of customer data, which has a corresponding impact on new business. In less than one year we have increased the number and quality of contacts in our lead database.”

Prior to using ViewCentral in the front end for the Webinar program, collecting new people in the database was expensive and not the best way to collect names, says Coates. The database which started in 2000 with 2000 names now has 35,000 entries. It grows between 10 – 50 people per Webinar.

“We’ve had instances in which customers have attended an event and then followed up immediately with a significant order,” Coates adds. “Certainly ViewCentral’s ability to capture, store and share customer information is crucial to our ability to be proactive and respond quickly to Webinar-generated sales activity. The result is a Webinar program that complements the rest of our marketing effort while enhancing the overall performance of OSIsoft business.” Coates estimates the return-on-investment for the Webinars is at least three times what the company spends to manage, produce and deliver them.

“If someone spends an hour listening to a Webinar, it’s a big sales clue that they’re interested,” says Coates. Still, he says it’s hard to pin down the Webinar’s ROI since it is not measured directly.

“But just from talking to our sale people we know that a lot of people who do a Webinar will then e-mail sales in the next hour or so for software,” he says. “The sales people say Webinars are the best things we’ve ever done and our customers are happy with the series.”