The virtues of “virtual” training

Enterprise video search software is said to have saved a large storage and data management solutions provider $1.5 million in the course of a three-day sales event. NetApp used a solution from Altus to stage the formally live sales training event "virtually." The virtual event cost 90 percent less than the live event, Altus reports in a recent news release.

Jim Coleman, system engineering project manager at NetApp, says, "To streamline our sales process, we determined that the most efficient method was through enabling our systems engineers, resellers and OEM partners to be more knowledgeable and more productive so they can deliver the best presales guidance possible ... We had to empower our partners’ employees with the same product knowledge and ongoing support that we gave our internal people. Altus vSearch provides us with the knowledge, technology, accountability, security and control to do that. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to support our resellers and partners as aggressively and successfully as we do."

Altus says its solution enables NetApp’s in-house systems engineers, as well as several hundred of its partner companies that employ thousands of technical sales engineers, to become better informed, stay technically skilled and sell more effectively.

While Net App has organized many technical sales enablement events in the United States and in other countries, the company decided in 2006 that it could use the software-as-a-service-based Altus solution to combine the advantages of live sales events with the virtual benefits of fully searchable, referenceable, reusable media files, presentations and expert-based knowledge.