Video network of champions

For Tom Forsythe, the crowning achievement of his streaming media initiative occurred on Nov. 1, when the General Mills acquisition of Pillsbury took effect.

An estimated 20,000 employees from the combined companies tuned in to a special live broadcast from General Mills headquarters, Pillsbury headquarters and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, where the company chairman rang the opening bell. Most employees based in large facilities watched the broadcast over streaming media on the enterprise network.

After the 40-minute event, the broadcast was split into two channels, with the operations group taking over one channel and the worldwide sales group taking over the other, for additional live meetings with employees. Forsythe says the initiative - named Champions TV after General Mills' Wheaties, "the breakfast of champions" - is playing an important role in creating a "unifying culture" at the combined companies.

But Forsythe's foray into streaming media certainly didn't start out so grand. In 1998, as director of corporate communications at General Mills, his goal was to improve on the existing system of sending out VHS tapes of corporate messages.

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General Mills: streaming media in detail (graphic)

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He went to conferences and talked to colleagues in search of "a solution that had already been developed." Unfortunately, he found that "the people I spoke with hadn't figured it out either."

So Forsythe challenged the IT group at the $8.5 billion packaged foods company to figure out a way to make streaming media programming available to employees worldwide. IT came back and reported that the infrastructure to support streaming media wasn't in place and that the tools to create and distribute streaming media were prohibitively expensive.

But Forsythe wasn't deterred. He used in-house resources to develop a content scheduling tool, and with help from Microsoft, the IT group integrated the existing video studio with servers and Microsoft Windows Media technologies built into existing operating systems.

Initially, only 20% of the company could access Champions TV. "We chose to implement something that on day one not everyone could access," Forsythe says. "Our view was that in time, bandwidth, routers and everything would come along. We created demand for content and service that would drive the deployment of resources."

Today, 60% of the company's employees are able to view streaming media at the desktops and kiosks at 70 locations. That includes 6,500 desktops in the original General Mills infrastructure and 3,500 at Pillsbury.

Streaming success

Champions TV streams 24 hours per day, every day. Programming is created in eight-hour blocks, so people on every shift can view it. They can also search and retrieve content from the company's streaming media archives.

Even today, Champions TV doesn't transmit at 30 frames per second, the equivalent of television quality, and the speed considered a benchmark for most viewers. Forsythe says the streaming rate is typically 20 frame/sec and sometimes 15 frame/sec.

But no one can argue with the success of the initiative. Regular programming includes the chairman's quarterly report, the annual company meeting, departmental meetings, training materials and product demonstrations.

"Often people cite saving money as their motivation for deploying streaming media, but that wasn't the motivation of this project. It was started and remains a communications-driven project. The objective with communications is always to increase reach, quality and frequency. Now, with streaming media we have these, plus the intimacy of interactivity," Forsythe says.

Many Champions TV live events let employees submit questions via chat from any location to the production studio.

Forsythe's concern now is that streaming media is becoming too successful. "Our next challenge, since it is so convenient to watch Champions TV from your desk, is that it might have a negative affect on the turnout at our company meetings. We want to make sure that we have good live attendance at these events."

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Perey is president of Perey Research & Consulting in Placerville, Calif. The company provides business development consulting services and conducts market research on the use of video in enterprise. She can be reached at cperey@perey.com.

Global Test Alliance

Perey is also a member of the Network World Global Test Alliance, a cooperative of the premier reviewers in the network industry. For more Test Alliance information, including what it takes to become a member, go to www.nwfusion.com/alliance.

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