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Opportunity

Schneider Electric is a Paris-based global specialist in energy management with 180,000 employees and a flourishing partner community. In the past, Schneider Electric would bring all partners together from around the world in order to showcase their products and strengthen relationships. This annual event was not only costly, but also an inefficient way to effectively distil information. Since only the top executives were able to attend this event, many employees within each company were excluded from direct communication and engagement efforts.

Schneider Electric decided they wanted to cut down on the travel costs associated with bringing together all of these partners from around the world by hosting a live video event instead. For the “Channel on Partner Broadcast” event, Schneider Electric would invite partners from nine countries it operates in to contribute to the event. The goal was to have each location running the event simultaneously, using a mixture of global and local pieces.

By producing a global event with a local feel, the aim was to communicate new product updates to all markets at the same time, while catering to each market’s individual needs.The company knew that the event had to be engaging and interactive for participants. At the same time, they wanted a solution that offered a branded event page that could provide the necessary context for participants, as well as robust analytics throughout the registration process and the ability to personalise email responses.

Solution

Schneider Electric ran its first digital company meeting in 2015. The Leadership Forum meeting used Kollective technology to successfully reach the entire workforce. The meeting secured more than 12,000 concurrent employees worldwide watching the live event, saving millions of dollars in travel costs. Based on this experience, Schneider Electric knew that Kollective could deliver. It needed a solution that was reliable, flexible and could be customised to support extra features and requirements and Kollective fit the bill.

The partner event was powered using Kollective’s Software-Defined ECDN for video delivery on a global scale, without the need for purchasing additional hardware or bandwidth. Kollective’s Kontiki Webcaster solution was used as the webcasting vehicle for the live event.

“A key benefit of Kollective’s technology is that it can be deployed quickly and using Kollective, we already knew we could confidently stream high quality video to all of our employees and external partners reliably, without it impacting the network. We also knew we had the opportunity to adapt the technology to meet our requirements. Having live polls added to the overall experience we received great feedback from employees about ‘having a voice’ on the day of the event,” said Olivier Giry, Digital Event Infrastructure & Solutions, Schneider Electric.

Digital consultancy, 27partners, managed the implementation of the Kollective solution and advised Schneider Electric on enhancing the communication processes to deliver a more immersive live event. 27partners ensured seamless integration across different time zones and multiple local marketing teams.

The project involved designing, developing and integrating the customised platform to support extra features, such as multi-language support, integration with existing marketing CRM systems and branded email notifications to improve the user experience for Schneider Electric’s live events. 27partners developed a bespoke event portal for information and registration that offered the feature-rich and engaging end user experience that Schneider desired. The partnership between 27partners, Kollective and the Schneider Electric team set out to build the perfect global event that would be available to partners both live or on-demand, across multiple devices and through a user-friendly platform that everyone could easily connect and engage with.

Features and Benefits

 Visual, attractive and interestingly branded registration page: consistent branding across downloads, video player, images and content.

 Simple registration: Integration into the current CRM system, capturing relevant data which removes the need for a dual sign-up process.

 User-friendly platform: Enables easy connection on to live or on-demand video.

 Personal agenda: Contains timely information and reminder notifications, integrated with the user’s calendar.

 Downloadable resources: including speaker biographies, whitepapers, apps and brochures.

 Interactivity tools: Live polls and an online question function of the broadcast and through social media using #ChannelOn

Olivier Giry, Digital Event Infrastructure & Solutions, Schneider Electric, says: “In the past, before Kollective and 27partners, event landing pages were basic and didn’t support our brand, the user wasn’t given much information about the event and we had limited capability to capture analytics. We traditionally sent email campaigns out separately to each country, which resulted in poorly tracked analytics and lacked integration into the company’s CRM and email system. The customised platform delivered on everything we required and more.”

Results and Next Steps

4500 people signed up for the partner event and 2000 watched it live. Following the success of the live partner event, Schneider Electric continues to look at new ways to offer attendees a more collaborative and enjoyable user experience from start to finish and offer partners and employees a different way to connect, engage and learn.

Whether it’s developing an event portal with full details of upcoming events, or bringing together interactivity and 360 technology, 27partners and Kollective continue to work alongside Schneider Electric to develop a hybrid space that offers enhanced and intimate engagement to satisfy live and on-demand broadcasts.

Giry concludes: “We found 27partners to be inspirational throughout the process. They clearly understood all of our requirements, accommodating them right up to the last minute. The global live event was a great success and we couldn’t have asked for a better user experience for our customers. We have having nothing but good things to say about how the team worked together to ensure a truly immersive live broadcast that continues to offer huge value as an on-demand offering.”

“Kollective SD ECDN and Kontiki Webcaster served as the technology platform and was customised by 27partners to deliver the perfect global event with eye-catching branding and interactive features. We received excellent feedback from the Schneider Electric partner community and are excited about how we can develop this in the future,” said Olivier Giry, Digital Event Infrastructure & Solutions, Schneider Electric.