With 160,000 employees working remotely around the world, Dell streamlined corporate communications, meetings and internal trainings with Mediasite. The company’s private, secure repository of videos, DellTV, powered by Mediasite allows employees from around the world create and search videos in seconds. This ensures that regardless of location, everyone is on the same page and communicating.
A Communications Partnership
We’re enabling employees from wherever they are, especially right now as we’re all working remotely, to continue communicating with video,” explained Lawrence Grafton, DellTV creator, Dell. “They’re creating videos right from their personal devices and sharing them in easily searchable catalogues, all using Mediasite, and it is exciting to see the extent to which everyone is collaborating. Our sales team is talking to marketing, engineering is collaborating with the training department, and everyone from individual team leads to company executives are excited to hit record and connect with each other.”
The tech giant has been using Mediasite since 2007 as a cost-saving solution to streamline communications and foster positive corporate culture. Using the personal video capture software, employees to date have created more than 500 Mediasite catalogues that are easily searchable to employees. On average, employees view the videos an average of 4,000 times per week.
“We saw a global increase in online video views. What also changed, and accelerated this change, is the vast number of new people looking for opportunities to create and share content,” Grafton said. “All in-person meetings have been cancelled, so we immediately needed an online option. While some of these meetings are less than 10 people, others are over 1,000 and all need to be recorded and distributed differently, based on needs. Mediasite lets us do this easily.”
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Mediasite’s analytics are a primary reason employees rated DellTV—one of a handful of video creation solutions—their favorite and go-to tool, according to a recent employee survey.
“We can see exactly who watched what and when, which is helpful to make sure everyone views important team updates and attends virtual trainings,” Grafton said. “We also combine our on-demand Mediasite videos with real-time Zoom calls, and we upload all of the video conference recordings directly in Mediasite so everything is in one central place.”
Support from Anywhere
In some ways, the timing of the creation of DellTV was extremely fortuitous—more or less coinciding with the emergence of COVID-19, which created enormous obstacles to personal interaction, both in social situations and at work. Within this environment, DellTV was embraced by employees as a venue for much-needed human-to-human interaction. Dell, which offers a number of K-12 and higher education solutions, provided educational content for company employees who were juggling remote work and homeschooling, as well as for those helping their college students navigate the challenges of the pandemic.
The Dell Family Series School From Home program team spearheaded the creation of these resources, which included videos on how to create a positive family routine, how high school and college students feel about different situations, and how to keep students connected with friends. The videos are recorded with Zoom, uploaded into Mediasite for DellTV, and are accessible to anyone at Dell.
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“When we realized that everyone was going to be doing school from home and a lot of Dell employees would have to figure out how to become a teacher to their kids overnight, we wanted to create videos to support them,” said Kelsy Quinn, education strategist, Dell. “During that time, we were all trying to adapt together and support each other where we can.”
Beyond providing a resource to assist employees in their personal lives, DellTV also proved useful in communicating important job and company-related information. “We’re also making department announcements with videos, introducing new products and initiatives. Video is easier and quicker for most people than having to read a few paragraphs in an email,” Quinn explained.
DellTV is an example of how leveraging cutting-edge technology can help solve even the stickiest challenges. By using tools like Mediasite’s search and analytics capabilities, Dell was able to overcome a host of potential obstacles to the implementation of a shared content creation and community-building platform and turn those obstacles into a roadmap for success.
