Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Yorktel case study - the right way to sell video

Video is a great collaboration tool, and I've written about it often. Unlike telephony, it's not a one-size-fits-all application, and there are many natural barriers to adoption. Cost has long been one of them, but that is definitely going away, but the same cannot be said for things like network complexity and vendor interoperability.

In most cases, video is not out-of-the-box, and that's where companies like Yorktel come into play. Don't let the name fool you - they're solely focused on helping businesses deploy video effectively, and they know very well how to address these barriers to adoption. Complexity is to be expected with today's technologies, but in the right hands this shouldn't be a deal-breaker, and that's good news for SMBs, who typically have limited IT capabilities.

I've been briefing with Yorktel on a regular basis, most recently at the ITExpo event, and it was great to hear about their continued success. While I'm not doing this toot their horn, I'd like to share a case study they recently produced for their website. The focus is on a healthcare client, and it does a great job laying out the full process, starting with the discovery phase to identify the problems. From there, a solution is developed based on a comprehensive review of needs and objectives. This is key, and the case study shows how this process truly adds value.

At the end of the day, we're really talking about solutions selling rather providing a collection of point products to address specific technology problems. This approach is very much in line with what I often write about in terms of focusing on the business needs instead of what IT wants - or thinks they want.

Clearly, one-size-fits-all doesn't work for video, and when you look at the details of what they came up with for this particular vertical market - healthcare - it's not hard to see why the customer went with Yorktel. If everyone sold video this way, it would be far more pervasive, so if you're struggling to get your customers down this path, I think you'll enjoy their case study.

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