EVER HEARD OF WEBDIALOGS?
It's got 37 service providers reselling its Webconferencing packages
I didn't know that!
Got a call from WebDialogs the other day, and sat through a demonstration of WebInterPoint (WIP), the company’s Webconferencing software. Seems that after only two years of working on the product and focusing on audio conferencing service providers, WebDialogs has got 37 service providers reselling it to you. And WebDialogs is profitable and sees its minutes of use and revenues growing at 12%-15% a month. That’s pretty darn good!
The company’s business plan was fairly simple: voice conference call providers are seeing their average price per minute continuing to tumble, and needed something to provide a price floor. Since Webconferencing is perceived (I’ll get back to that in a sec) to be desired by end users today, why not give the service providers a low-cost, easy-to-use Webconferencing product they can resell, and boost their revenues and their profit margins at the same time.
Enter Lou Guercia, WebDialogs’ CEO. With a history of venture-backed startups, he goes out and raises $2 million and voilà! he and 19 other folks create a family of products that sell, and, in fact, are well liked by their customers (I called a few of ’em).
The product is really a family of products called WIP One, WIP Lite, and WIP Pro. You can see them on WebDialogs’ Website, or see the basic features and pricing by going to use the product, and just click on “Host.”
WIP One
WIP One provides PowerPoint publishing, a steerable pointer, an attendee roster, and secure presentations. You as an end user can use it for free, while your conference call provider pays a low fee of $1,500 a month for up to a million minutes a month of usage.
WIP Lite
The strategy, of course, is to upsell, which brings us to WIP Lite, which allows the users to send Microsoft Word and Excel documents to others, mark up things on your screen, conduct file transfers, pool participants, do Outlook scheduling, and even send out “Yahoo” invitations, and more, like electronic hand-raising, chat, handoff of the presentation baton to multiple presenters, keyboard chat, and the moderator is even e-mailed a summary of the call. WIP Lite bills out on a per-minute basis, with a list price of 15¢ a minute, but I’m sure if you’re a volume customer, they can “get it to you holsel!”
WIP Pro
The top of the line adds application sharing and remote control. This has a list price of 20¢ a minute, but again, as the volume goes up, the price comes down.
Who’s using it?
It’s more a question of Who’s Who. WIP is resold by ConferencePlus, ClearOne (now owned by Premiere Conferencing), V-Span, and 34 other service providers.
Here’s what I think
Well, I’m elated to see so many companies now working on “lite” Webconferencing and making it so easy to use. To be fair, they join a slug of others who are now offering entry-level Webconferencing for free, including Raindance. And from the resale standpoint, we can’t forget Data Connection.
I tried WIP out and liked it a lot. No download required for the participant, and it works on Apple Macintoshes, which makes half of TeleSpan absolutely elated!
In the main story I said that Webconferencing is “perceived to be desired by the end users today.” I said that because one of the responsibilities we have at TeleSpan is to tell the truth. And as the bean-counters of the industry, we see Webconferencing used on less than 2% of all voice conference calls. Sure, everyone’s talking about it, but few are really using it. I mention this because Lou and I totally agree on this point, and in fact that’s what his business plan is all about, and in fact, why I like it. His theory is that Webconferencing will become popular if at least two things happen. First, end users see it and click into it easily. By teaming with the service providers and making it easy to see and use, he’s driving up his customers’ minutes of use of Webconferencing. Second, you can’t price Webconferencing at prices that are two to three times the price of voice-only conferencing. Free to a few pennies will work, and nothing more.
Berlitz Translation: I think WebDialogs is spot on, and cheer all the companies who follow their lead, and run with them
