Avitage Collections Topical Organization of Selling Content, Best Practices, Coaching and Resources Sales Challenges — Access and Leverage Selling Knowledge, Messages and Content Despite advances in portals and content-management systems, sales professionals often complain of difficulty finding and accessing the relevant materials they need for specific selling situations. Search techniques return a dizzying array of links that exacerbate inefficient preparation for sales conversations and content delivery. Is it any wonder lack of effective preparation is a common criticism of buyers? Finding customer-ready content in formats convenient to specific customers is a related challenge. And sending emails with sizable attachments is a considerable annoyance for customers.
Marketing Challenges — Create, Manage and Deliver Relevant Content New delivery methods, including marketing-automation systems, web
Benefits of Avitage Collections
efficiency — saves time; improves
conferencing, virtual events, streaming video, MP3 and PDA devices,
call preparation, customer
significantly increase the volume and complexity of content creation,
conversations and access to subject-
management and delivery. To capitalize on the promise of marketing automation, marketers must
matter experts and their knowledge
Improves marketing efficiency and effectiveness — increases return on
create content with the flexibility to tailor final communications to the
content investments, simplifies
specific interests of buyers based upon their roles, interests, stages of
content management, improves
the buying process and more.
lead-nurturing and marketingautomation efforts
Content must be built for delivery using the mode or method preferred by buyers.
Improves sales productivity and
Simplifies access to topical Collections of communication and
Web and video conferencing are delivery technologies that cry out for
coaching assets, collateral and sales
visual content to support key points of online conversations.
resources
Drives behavior and discipline
This demand for custom variations requires increasing volumes of
through better call preparation, JIT
source content, further complicating content management and
coaching and support materials;
maintenance.
marketing tracks usage and gains feedback at every level of content
1432 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 | 781.522.8000 | info@avitage.com | www.avitage.com
A Web Database of Topical Collections Avitage Collections addresses these and other issues associated with the way organizations create, organize, manage, deploy and deliver marketing and selling knowledge, messages, content and resources. Subject experts—product and marketing managers, topical pre-sales experts, channel managers, solution and competitive experts—collect and organize relevant content and materials to meet each common selling, marketing and communication scenario. Relevant PowerPoint® slides with related audio files and associated Flash® modules are combined with links from marketing-collateral databases, learning-management systems and sales-tool repositories to provide a single salessupport Collection for each topic or communication scenario. As a web-database application, Collections are accessed by links, which can be posted in existing repositories, such as portals and document- and learning-management systems. They can be tagged and searched, as any other content item would be. The key difference is a single link provides direct access to a comprehensive source of selling aides for each topic or selling scenario, saving time, improving call preparation and customer communication. With Avitage Collections, sales professionals easily and quickly find, access and use the right content and materials for each situation, which significantly improves sales effectiveness and selling efficiency.
Create Creating multimedia shows is as easy as building a PowerPoint deck and narrating each slide with a microphone, right into PowerPoint. Make a mistake, no problem. Simply rerecord the audio. When done, review the show by playing it in slide-show mode. When you are satisfied with your finished program, simply upload the deck with the embedded audio into Avitage Collections. Each slide is extracted from the source deck into an individual slide. All descriptions and notes are also stored in the database. Slides with audio are also be converted automatically into single Flash files. Even builds and animations are preserved.
1432 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 | 781.522.8000 | info@avitage.com | www.avitage.com
To post video or Flash content, embed the files into slides and upload in a similar manner. For groups of slides that should always travel or play together, group slides using the module function. This turns groups of slides into single elements, while preserving the underlying individual slides for maintenance purposes. Want to add knowledge objects or coaching audio to Collections? Simply upload a file or copy a link to a document from a source repository. You can post titles, descriptions and other tags. Use the telephone to record coaching audio directly or upload audio files you record locally.
Organize and Access After you've determined your common topic and communication scenarios, create Collection folders by selecting the "add folder" option and typing in titles and descriptions. Links to individual slides or groups of slides can be assembled into Collections using a simple drag-and-drop method. This links the underlying content without duplicating the physical content. When slides or audio require updating, replacing or removal, simply use the batch-replace function. Over time, continue to create and assemble new Collections as new scenarios arise. Experts throughout your organization can define and create Collections, then export copies and email them to appropriate topic owners for consideration and insertion to the central library. This is a fast and easy way to capture and share best practices, including new content and insights, as well as new organizations or relevant support documents. Links to Collections can be posted into any portal or document- or content-management system in use throughout the organization. These links can be configured to behave in different ways, for example, to provide direct access to the Collection or to pull selected content types from the Collection.
Assemble and Deliver Marketing and selling in today's web world requires the ability to leverage new ways to deliver messages and to engage customers. Avitage Collections delivers custom streaming-media programs such as audio-graphic "vignettes" that deliver a video-like experience, audio podcasts, and PDA delivery—all for on-demand consumption.
1432 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 | 781.522.8000 | info@avitage.com | www.avitage.com
Real-time web communication is enabled through our built-in iNgage Presenter, a Flash communication console that delivers the rep's video image and audio, when used with a web cam. Because iNgage Presenter is integrated with Avitage Collections, the presenter can pull visual and multimedia content from Collections into the console instantly in support of the customer conversation. No downloads, no set up, just a simple link that can be embedded in an email, web site or sent through an instant message. In a similar way, Avitage Collections enhances the use of third-party webconferencing technology. Content from Avitage Collections can be integrated with marketingautomation systems to improve delivery in automated communications, as well as in the sales-handoff process. This significantly simplifies the dripmarketing efforts of both marketing and sales. Users can even assemble custom shows quickly and easily—on the fly—by adding individual items or groups of items from various Collections to a custom show. The system does the rest, compiling the show into the desired, finished program.
Operational Efficiencies Today, PowerPoint is an easy, but powerful, way to create graphically rich content as visual support to conversations. It is considerably easier to use PowerPoint, rather than documents, to create and organize the high volume of custom shows to support communication scenarios required by marketing-automation systems and professional selling approaches. Our process of embedding audio in PowerPoint and converting it to Flash is considerably faster and less expensive than traditional video-production methods. Yet, the resulting experience can be very close. This is a practical and effective way to create low-cost videos, MP3 podcasts, on-demand webinars, marketing campaign vignettes and sales training and coaching aides.
Webinars and Webcasts
Virtual Shows
Email Campaigns, Landing Pages, Surveys
Multimedia Vignettes and Viral Videos
1432 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 | 781.522.8000 | info@avitage.com | www.avitage.com
eNewsletters
When marketing or other content experts create Collections of modular communication assets and deploy them in Avitage Collections, business communicators throughout the organization can quickly and easily access and deliver tailored, relevant programs using a variety of convenient delivery methods. The use of a database is the only practical way to organize, assemble and deliver the volume of content, while preserving the ability to keep individual assets up to date.
Reporting The Avitage Collections reporting function provides the information you need to manage your content appropriately. With a simple dateoriented request, you can download Excel®based reports to monitor:
Overall system usage
Content views and usage — right down to specific modules and collections
Content maintenance — with the ability to track content expiry and updates
Example reports are included in the appendix.
Contact Us for More Information Considering a specific event? Talk to us about how we might help you get the most out of that event and lower your risk at the same time. Want to implement a comprehensive program to support your streaming and multimedia requirements for marketing, training, sales and for general business communications? If you’d like to learn more about Avitage media services, please call us or visit our website. Phone: 781.522.8000 Email: info@avitage.com Web: www.avitage.com
® PowerPoint, Flash and Excel are registered trademarks of their respective owners. © Copyright 2009 Avitage, Inc. All rights reserved.
1432 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 | 781.522.8000 | info@avitage.com | www.avitage.com
Appendix: Functionality List Create
Upload PowerPoint decks, extract and manage individual slides
Off-line narration of slides with microphone into PowerPoint
Insert video and Flash content into slides
Slides with audio converted into individual Flash files
Slide builds, animations and transitions are preserved, audio timed to builds
Single version of source content, represented by links in multiple Collections, avoids duplication and redundancy and the maintenance difficulties associated with redundant content
Create modules of multiple slides or items
Telephone creation of coaching audio
Post knowledge objects as files or links to files
messages in portals or asset-management systems
Organize and Maintain
Define and create Collection schema and titles
Drag-and-drop organization of programs
Post links to related documents, learning programs, sales tools, websites, etc.
RSS subscription to specific Collections for easy notification of updates and changes
Extensive permission capabilities to define access to and responsibility for content
Built-in threaded-discussion capability at each Collection level
Individual slides and modules are easy to update with the batch-replace function
Assemble and Deliver
Assemble custom shows on the fly
Associate links to relevant content as convenient delivery method to customers
Many deliver methods and versions available, custom PowerPoint shows, custom multimedia vignettes, custom MP3 audio, web meetings, PDA, links to landing pages and campaigns, links posted to various websites, portals, etc.
Report
Extensive online and off-line reporting
1432 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 | 781.522.8000 | info@avitage.com | www.avitage.com