Adobe Success Story

Adobe reduces meeting costs by millions of dollars annually using Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro to foster collaboration among employees and with partners and customers worldwide

Feature-rich web conferencing
Adobe stays true to its mission to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information, not only with the software it sells but also in its own operations. The aim is to leverage breakthrough Adobe software and technologies to transform collaboration inside the company, delivering the real returns of reduced costs, diminished risk, and increased effectiveness.

Benefits

Quantitative Results

• Saved nearly $10 million in travel expenses over a two-year period
• Reached 116,000 customers and prospects, efficiently fueling the sales pipeline
• Handled 80% of IT service desk calls without escalation
• Doubled number of online meetings over two years to more than 80 million minutes for more cost-effective and extensive collaboration
• Achieved 80% usage rate across all employees

Qualitative Results

• Enhanced collaboration and boosted employee productivity, while reducing travel costs
• Provided an easy-to-use solution with functionality rivaling in-person meetings
• Safeguarded company information

Project Details

A primary way that Adobe fosters collaboration among employees and with partners and customers is through Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro web conferencing software. With Acrobat Connect Pro, employees participating in online meetings have instant access to rich conferencing functionality, from the power to chat and communicate via webcams, to the ability to exchange documents, share desktops, and view videos and other dynamic content.

The powerful multi-function conferencing and security features in Acrobat Connect Pro have spurred widespread use throughout Adobe. Marketing and sales personnel use Acrobat Connect Pro to conduct live online seminars and events that educate existing customers and generate new leads. Human Resources taps the Adobe web conferencing solution to train employees on new policies and programs while information technology (IT) staff streamlines internal service desk requests, IT emergency response (ITER) activities, and external customer support calls.

Because Acrobat Connect Pro is based on proven client software technology—Adobe Flash Player, already installed on 98% of Internet-connected computers worldwide—participants do not have to download or purchase specialized software to attend meetings. This means employees already have everything they need on their computers to engage in sessions, with nominal or even no impact on busy IT managers who do not need to deploy, manage, or troubleshoot problems with client software.

For session organizers, they know that authorized participants can get into online meetings reliably and quickly. And because Acrobat Connect Pro enables secure web conferencing, organizers can safeguard sensitive business information exchanged during meetings.

Millions in cost savings
Across Adobe, employees use the solution for meetings on an ongoing basis. The company even conducts its company-wide employee meetings—with thousands of attendees—using Acrobat Connect Pro, saving the company the rental costs of in-person event space and employee travel, while supporting convenient, easy participation from employees at any location.

“Over a two-year period, Adobe has saved nearly $10 million in travel costs—approximately $1,000 per employee—since adopting Acrobat Connect Pro,” says Mark Garrett, chief financial officer at Adobe.

According to Business Development Manager Eric Lerner, already more than 80% of company employees have used Acrobat Connect Pro and over 70% have established their own virtual personal meeting rooms, with new employees signing on daily. The number of Acrobat Connect Pro meeting minutes jumped from 35 million in 2006 to more than 80 million in 2008. Lerner appreciates the fact that Acrobat Connect Pro positively affects business objectives across the organization.

“Across the board, Acrobat Connect Pro increases effectiveness and reduces the company’s operating expenses. There are so many different savings, from a reduction in travel and training expenses to lower printing costs,” says Lerner. “In addition, we increase productivity because we spend more time working and less time traveling.”

Easy to deploy and manage
According to IT Conferencing Services Manager Joe Monteon and Director of IT Customer Support and Engineering Bill Weatherwax, who headed up the effort to implement Acrobat Connect Pro at Adobe, demand was high for the new solution as soon as it became available. “Within a few weeks, teams company-wide wanted to use the new web conferencing solution,” says Weatherwax. “Unlike our previous hosted system, Acrobat Connect Pro is extremely easy to use, with low barriers to entry. With Acrobat Connect Pro, users can share their desktop on the fly and instantly communicate any detail visually.”

Monteon and Weatherwax note that Acrobat Connect Pro was easy to deploy and integrate with existing systems. For instance, Monteon integrated Adobe’s existing video equipment with the Acrobat Connect Pro recording functionality. This enables presenters to capture their presentations and distribute the recordings to people who can’t make the live meeting due to time zone differences.

“Before Acrobat Connect Pro, we only recorded the largest, most important web conferences, and it was a big burden on IT,” says Monteon. “Now, users can easily capture a high-quality recording of any online meeting. It improves collaboration and helps remote teams really feel like they are part of meetings.”

Secure, controlled collaboration
The IT team appreciates the fact that Acrobat Connect Pro helps protect sensitive business data via features such as user authentication, data encryption, defining user privileges, and auditing and logging sessions. The software also offers granular security controls such as the ability to disable chat, or ensure that everything or nothing in a meeting is recorded.

Because Acrobat Connect Pro sessions run in the Flash Player software client, organizers gain an added layer of security. The Flash Player has already been tested and deployed by many of the world’s most secure organizations, including the United States Department of Defense and the Serious Organized Crime Agency in the United Kingdom, helping to ensure that any Acrobat Connect Pro sessions meet the highest security standards.

While some customers opt to rely on Adobe to host their Acrobat Connect Pro implementations, which include SSL encryption, Adobe has rolled out its own deployment to adhere to its security policies and compliance requirements.

In addition to the security controls in Acrobat Connect Pro, Weatherwax adds that the performance of the software has been exceptional. “We deployed Acrobat Connect Pro and I cannot recall a single case when it has caused a network issue,” says Weatherwax. “It has been a very well-behaved citizen on our network.”

Streamlining IT support
Acrobat Connect Pro has proven beneficial for IT staff, who use the web conferencing solution for everything from better management of emergency response activities to conducting technical training via prerecorded sessions and providing service desk assistance to internal and external customers. Weatherwax explains that Acrobat Connect Pro enables IT staff to more easily diagnose and work through technical issues, because they can access the shared desktop of the individual experiencing the problem.

“Sharing a computer screen and visually walking through a problem is much easier than trying to talk through an issue you can’t see,” says Weatherwax. “The first level of support can now diagnose and fix issues 80% of the time, dramatically reducing the number of calls that have to be escalated to the second level. Before Acrobat Connect Pro, we could only fix issues on the first pass 53% of the time. The cumulative savings of our faster resolution can total hundreds of thousands of dollars annually because we handle 15,000 calls monthly from employees.”

With Acrobat Connect Pro, IT emergency response (ITER) activities run smoother than ever. Teams in North America, Europe, and Asia can work together in virtual ‘war room’ environments in real-time to analyze and solve critical outage issues. By using features like the breakout rooms in Acrobat Connect Pro, every project team member can assess and join the virtual collaboration environments with instant insight into actions taken and recommendations from global teams. Sessions can be recorded and made available to team members that missed a meeting or used as a learning tool for dealing with future IT issues.

“Acrobat Connect Pro is extremely reliable and readily accessible to anyone working on a project,” says Ron Nagy, senior evangelist for the Adobe@Adobe program. “It’s transformed how our teams collaborate and communicate, eliminating hours of work for IT staff and making it easier for us to keep systems up and running.”

More effective sales and marketing
With Acrobat Connect Pro, sales and marketing teams are reducing costs and increasing the effectiveness of sales initiatives through live eSeminars, on-demand presentations, and other online activities.

The eSeminars offer lively presentations and demonstrations with registrants answering polling questions, rating content, and conducting real-time conversations with multiple presenters—rivaling in-person events. Acrobat Connect Pro makes it easy to cost-effectively deliver tailored eSeminars to key targeted vertical market and solution segments, such as government, manufacturing, education, and creative professionals.

In a recent year, Adobe’s North American field marketing team conducted 399 eSeminars, averaging of 291 registrants. Overall, the eSeminars reached nearly 116,000 participants, increasing awareness of Adobe solutions and interest from prospects, while reducing the cost of travel for everyone involved. Direct sales teams have also found that Acrobat Connect Pro is an effective tool in closing deals.

“With Acrobat Connect Pro, we can touch more prospects and help assist the pipeline for sales,” says Field Marketing Manager, eSeminars, Sandra Schofield. “It lets us remotely reach out to customers and prospects, generate interest in Adobe solutions, and shorten the sales cycle, while keeping everyone’s costs low. Most of our online attendees rate Acrobat Connect Pro excellent in terms of the user experience.”

A valuable sales tool
For Adobe’s busy, global sales teams, Acrobat Connect Pro has proved invaluable for streamlining everything from sales forecasting and quarterly business reviews to bid evaluations and establishing more ongoing contact with customers. Sales executives and managers regularly use the web confer¬encing tool to host meetings with their teams, eliminating the need to add to employees’ busy travel schedules and reducing costs across the entire organization.

In Adobe Sales Operations, a team of executives and managers meet regularly to review forecasts and outline strategies for growth. “Acrobat Connect Pro brings immediacy and a much greater efficiency to our meetings,” says Adil Munshi, vice president of worldwide sales operations. “Spreadsheets and other documents can be shared instantly and securely onscreen, eliminating any confusion that could occur if we were trying to talk through complicated analyses by phone.”

The same efficiencies are evident at the regional and local sales levels, where Adobe sales teams constantly collaborate with each other and with customers. For instance, as many as 40 employees previously might have had to travel to participate in quarterly business reviews for just one sales region. With Acrobat Connect Pro, that process can now be handled quickly and cost-effectively online.

“We gain several advantages by using Acrobat Connect Pro,” explains Josh Normand, district sales manager for the U.S. Northeast region. “We greatly reduce travel costs, and we help our staff to stay more productive because they can spend more time meeting with customers and less time traveling to internal meetings.”

In addition, Acrobat Connect Pro makes it possible for sales managers to offer even greater support to their teams. In one day, a district manager can participate in many interactive, virtual discussions with account managers and with clients. And while the Adobe sales teams still rely heavily on face-to-face customer meetings to build relationships, Acrobat Connect Pro allows account teams to meet with customers in more unscheduled, impromptu meetings to quickly address questions or problems.

Impressive returns company-wide
With so many employees at Adobe embracing Acrobat Connect Pro, the company is a showcase of how broad-based adoption of secure web conferencing can reduce operating costs, increase productivity, and improve collaboration—all while securing sensitive information.

“Nothing matches the security and ease of use of Acrobat Connect Pro, and I haven’t seen anything that equals the richness and quality of the user experience,” says Lerner.

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