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Medco Takes Its Meetings Virtual
Connections: Healthcare Co. + Online Meetings Provider
By Jessie States
The exhibit-hall floor was pristine. No telling stains of conference-gone-by. No scuffs or scratches. Each booth faultlessly aligned. It was very literally perfect.
But, the true beauty of this Medco Health Solutions event was not its precision, rather its accessibility. The 2009 market group conference had gone virtual, offering entrée to headquarters staff in Franklin Lakes, N.J., as well as satellite personnel at home offices and satellite centers across the States. Medco’s account management team logged on and tuned in to high-level content, three hours a day for five days.
The global economic crisis hit most sectors of U.S. industry—including healthcare. Execs at Medco had some tough choices to make. In January 2009, the senior leadership team canceled annual sales conferences for account management—affecting some 800 employees dispersed across the country.
Corporate leaders then tasked Mary Rose Wild and her internal team with creating an online conference to replace several live events at a fraction of the cost. She had a span of 14 weeks to accomplish it.
“In Quarter 1 of 2009, we were tightening our belts and being very diligent with our dollars,” Wild said. “Holding those meetings would have cost us millions of dollars, and we just didn’t want to take a risk at the time.”
The challenge for Wild: deliver an interactive, engaging online experience encompassing more than 30 products and capabilities via more than 40 product owners and subject matter experts. And no one was allowed to travel. The company was looking to save US$2 million, and it was up to Wild to make it happen.
Wild contacted Unisfair on recommendation from a colleague at Agilent. There, she found an ideal virtual world for her event, one that offered real-time interaction between speakers, exhibitors and staffers; easy to access documents and presentations; and live and on-demand conference sessions. Wild’s team began collecting and uploading content: various literature and learning materials, case studies, PowerPoints, video profiles of experts, ROI assessments.
Medco staff needed to leave the virtual event able to differentiate Medco in the marketplace, leverage success stories from their peers, create compelling messages for clients and articulate the clinical and financial value of the company’s Therapeutic Resource Centers.
Wild meted out her conference space into different rooms for live conference sessions, an exhibit floor and professional networking. Employees entered booths to discuss products with internal experts, shared comments on speakers with colleagues, even dialogued with execs in threaded discussions. They also downloaded content into their virtual briefcases, received up-to-the-minute announcements and relaxed in the lounge.
Wild had initial concerns with the lack of synchronized equipment at Medco’s various locations. Some home offices didn’t house the same computer technology as others. She worried that the Unisfair experience wouldn’t register the same everywhere. But Wild’s employees loved it, based on Unisfair data.
According to Joerg Rathenberg, the company’s senior marketing director, Unisfair provides detailed reports on attendee behavior, poll responses and surveys. The firm compared how many people registered versus attended, how long delegates stayed in the environment, what brochures they downloaded and what sessions they attended.
Nearly 90 percent of respondents to a post-event survey rated the experience valuable, very valuable or extremely valuable. In addition, 95 percent of delegates reported high-level confidence in their abilities to position the Therapeutic Resource Centers relative to competitors, and 81 percent said they have the new tools needed to describe Medco’s capabilities for drug and disease management.
Goals achieved, Wild looked at the costs. A typical three-day offsite sales conference carried an average cost of approximately $2,000-$3,000 per person. The per-person cost for delivering via Unisfair was $62.41. The virtual event generated a total savings of approximately $1.5 millions-$2.3 millions. One+