Global Sporting Goods Manufacturer
Achievements
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Director of IT launched streaming solution in less than 3 weeks
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High-stakes meeting successfully streamed to hundreds of team members
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CEO’s verdict: “It could not have been more perfect.”
The Challenge
The global sporting goods manufacturer is headquartered in Asia with offices in the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.
When the first all-hands team meeting of the year was fast approaching, the Director of Information Technology (IT) for the company’s North American headquarters received an email from the CEO, asking him to find a live streaming video solution that could allow the entire team to experience the meeting from any location as if they were there in the room.
They would have only three weeks to select and implement a live streaming solution — with absolutely no margin for error.
Past experiences with video hadn’t gone well for the company. Attempts to live stream video of meetings proved frustrating for viewers, producers and presenters. Video streamed with the company’s internal web conferencing software would stop unexpectedly, and audio was often unintelligible. The combination of video, music and PowerPoint slides that accompanied many executive presentations was difficult to capture. The company’s existing recording tools limited a presenter’s freedom to move throughout the room. And after recording the meetings, the IT team would need to spend one to two days processing the large video file so it could be uploaded and shared on the company’s intranet.
Based on these experiences, the Director of IT knew finding the right video streaming solution in less than three weeks was a formidable challenge. “I didn’t even know if the video technology we needed existed,” he recalled.
The Solution
Comparing Panopto’s enterprise video platform with competing solutions, it was Panopto’s flexibility and the quick response of the customer support team that convinced him to sign up for a free trial and pilot the solution at the upcoming team-wide meeting.
Right away in his initial testing, he was impressed with how easy Panopto made it to set up a professional-quality live broadcast. He could initiate a new live stream simply by clicking “Webcast” in the Panopto desktop app, or schedule a live stream ahead of time in the Panopto video library.
Panopto automatically recognized his video cameras. It could stream multiple video feeds simultaneously — making it simple to share viewpoints from different cameras, along with presentation decks, laptop screens, and other materials, all at once. Panopto could even sync and stream live video captured on different laptops — without requiring any cables or other connections.
On the day of the event, the IT team was ready. With more than 100 team members filling the room and hundreds more viewing online, the Director of IT managed the audio while another team member worked the video camera. Together, they flawlessly streamed the meeting in full, capturing all the audio and visual elements for audiences onsite and online.
Scribbled on the whiteboard in the Director’s office the next morning was a note from the new CEO: “That was so awesome. It was flawless. It could not have been more perfect.”
The Impact
With the success of the monthly all-team meetings, it wasn’t long before questions began rolling in from other teams at the company, each interested in putting Panopto to work in new ways.
Looking towards the future, the company plans to use Panopto for product training videos, internal communications, and Learning & Development. With Panopto, video can be used to teach everything from quick skills to complex subjects. And since recordings are securely stored in the company’s Panopto video library, it’s easy for people to find the lessons they need with a simple search.
In just a few short weeks, the company was able to make its all-hands team meetings more inclusive and engaging. Panopto helped bring the entire company together by making every member of the U.S. team feel as though they were right there in the room. Now, as the company looks to video to support and scale a wider range of communications and training activities, Panopto’s video platform has proven to be an even smarter investment.