Collaborative: Conferencing Buffet-Style

Posted: 5/2003

Conferencing Buffet-Style

By Tara Seals

A new pricing model is making inroads in the conferencing market: Flat-rate pricing. Purveyors say that rather than taking away from high-margin, per-use revenue, the all-you-can-eat approach helps providers tap greenfield markets and add value to existing customers.

For instance, Raindance Communications Inc. launched its flat-rate product in early March, to go after the small office/home office (SOHO) market, an area not typically part of its customer mix. The provider established a specialized inside sales force to make calls on these targets, rather than using its usual sales representatives. It plans to roll it out to the channel in mid-to-late 2003.

"It's definitely going to increase our account penetration in that area," says Chuck Tamblyn, product manager at Raindance. Small businesses, he explains, may never have used conferencing before, but this pricing places it within their range. "As long as you use it three or more times a month, this is great [pricing]," Tamblyn says.

Another driver for creating the offer, he says, was the demand for a product that unbundled long-distance costs. "We wanted to leverage our current carrier-grade architecture in a way that didn't involve long distance," he explains. "Many small businesses have negotiated really low rates on long distance, so they can use that and then our low flat-rate pricing, and that's a pretty powerful combination."

Besides the lack of toll-free or local access, the service is a basic audio offer with a Web interface for showing PowerPoint slides and other materials. It doesn't include advanced features like Webcasting, dial-out or recording/playback functions, typically offered at additional costs in the pay-per-use model. The pricing options are $59.99, $99 and $199 for up to 25, 50 or 125 participants at one time.

The packages also come with only one moderator code, a big reason this is primarily a SOHO offer. "Small businesses don't mind having only one, but if you ask an enterprise to administer one moderator code among a large number of people and locations, it gets messy," says Tamblyn. "Also, you can only have one call going at a time. It's almost like a conference room idea -- you book the room and everyone else has to wait."

The pioneer of flat-rate conferencing is arguably A+ Conferencing, which launched its "One Rate" flat-rate, reservationless offer in January 2001. It is available primarily via agents and resellers, and it targets larger companies. The retail rates vary according to the number of seats, but for up to 10 PIN codes it could run as high as $99 a month for audio, with Web added for $175 per month.

"The push for this came from the multilevel marketing arena," says Burns. "They could easily have a need for 1,000 to 5,000-person calls, around 60,000 minutes, and that's just prohibitive [in a per-use model]." Burns decided to offer these companies an alternative to holding regional meetings and conventions, and the flat-rate traffic is now outstripping traditional per-use traffic on the A+ ports.

"You can stack these people in, and we thought it would busy up our ports, but it's not like everyone is using it all the time," says Burns. "The volume really has been manageable, and we've been very successful."

Like Raindance, everyone using One Rate pays their own way to the A+ Conferencing bridge, but Burns said he can add an 800 number for a low rate, around 4.9 cents per minute. The One Rate feature set is the same as the per-use offer, including mute, digital recording and security lock-out.

Burns recommends that agents and resellers offer both pricing models -- flat-rate for heavy users and per-use for the occasional user. "[Agents] really like it," he says, "because they're able to be very competitive, no matter what kind of user they approach."

Burns says some customers still request per-use conferencing. "The corporate world and America has been brainwashed into a per-minute paradigm," he says. "For instance, more than 50 percent of lawyers use AT&T, which runs around 81 cents per minute, because AT&T owns this market and people are just used to that. We're trying to show them it doesn't have to be that way."

Genesys Conferencing is capitalizing on the high per-usage rates typical in the arena by marketing the flat-rate idea as a way to control companywide spending in enterprises. "They can plan how much they are going to use and not spend more than they need to," explains Denise Persson, executive vice president of global marketing for Genesys.

Genesys opted for a bulk-rate conferencing plan, offering say $200 for 2,500 minutes per month enterprisewide. The features and customer experience is the same as its per-minute service, but Genesys requires a one-year commitment. Pricing varies according to the number of users and minutes.

"This is primarily for existing conferencing users," says Persson. "They already know how much they use and are willing to sign the contract."

"Most clients really do want per-minute pricing," says Persson. "But this does appeal to heavy users and the feedback from big customers has been very positive."

The company also offers unlimited use of its Web conferencing and collaboration tool, Genesys Meeting Center, for $39.95 per month, with audio costs an additional expense. The offer is good for up to 15 participants. Additional participants are charged $0.40 per minute or $15 for the meeting, whichever is less.

Newcomer Easy Online Meetings offers an unusual model: It charges a flat fee of $20 per meeting, for unlimited length and number of participants, with no subscription or commitment. The offer is a basic, stripped down slide capability users can add to any conferencing bridge or point-to-point calling service they already have. As such it may be the first service to be mass marketed.

"There's no upfront licensing fees, upfront investment or yearly licensing fees or anything like that," says Bruce Krulwich, an Easy Online Meetings co-founder. "We are trying to avoid a lot of the complications a lot of other services have because we want to have something that the mass market can use."

Some say the industry is seeing just the beginning for the flat-rate model. "There's a bit of missionary work still required," says Burns. "But you'll start to see more conferencing -- and more telecom services in general -- go to a flat-rate model."

Meanwhile, Raindance is researching a flat-rate approach to larger enterprise customers and hopes to have something to market towards the end of the year.