Case Study: Scripps Networks Upgrades Conferencing With Vapps

Scripps Networks is a leader in lifestyle media, developing content available on television, the Internet and satellite radio, in books and magazines, and on today’s emerging media platforms. The company’s TV networks are complemented by companion Web sites created and supported by its SN Digital division. The Web sites attract a monthly average of 18.5 million unique visitors and are category leaders in the food, home and living space online. The focus of SN Digital’s team, led by John Funge, vice president of product management, is on user-generated content and community-related applications as well as software development. SN Digital is, in essence, a small-to-midsized software development organization with a number of clients with large-scale, high-visibility Web sites.

The Problem:

Scripps Networks is headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn. The SN Digital division has multiple office locations across the country and around the world, including employees or partners in Washington, D.C., the United Kingdom and India. These parties needed to coordinate daily on the various projects that Funge’s team was developing. The company needed a conferencing solution that would allow it to be responsive and nimble with consultants who might be working together on the same project from opposite sides of the world. The company therefore required a high-quality and highly scalable voice-conferencing solution that could easily be integrated with SN Digital’s regular use of Skype for conferencing, voice communications and instant messaging.

The Solution:

SN Digital turned to Vapps Inc. to provide the company with voice conferencing that offers high-definition audio quality using Skype as the connection method.

For some time, internal conferencing using Skype alone met the company’s needs. But as the division grew along with the complexity of the company’s projects, Skype’s conferencing capabilities alone could not keep the company’s growing demand for instant conferencing in check. SN Digital now uses Vapps Hi-Definition Conferencing, which allows calls from mobile, PSTN and Skype.

“The solution is definitely a big part of our ability to operate with the level of agility we need in order to support what is oftentimes a dynamic and creative environment,” said Funge. “We’re relatively straightforward with our use of the service but we are very intense in our use. It is truly a part of the fabric of our day.”

Results:

International conferencing often can lead to poor connections, but SN Digital’s Skype-connected participants enjoy excellent sound quality through the Vapps platform’s wideband connectivity. Through the wideband data lines used by Skype and other VoIP providers, HD-C can enable attendees to hear four times better, feel more “present” with more true-to-life sound and can better detect who is speaking. And as with any IP-to-IP voice call, they avoid local and international calling charges, a particular benefit to international phone conferences.

“It is the call quality that definitely ranks top for us,” noted Funge.

In addition, the combination of Skype and Vapps’ solutions gives users the ability to exchange information during the conference call via instant messaging. And Vapps’ Skype Extra plug-in allows meeting coordinators to see who has joined or left, to mute and un-mute participants and to record the conference. Attendees have their own HD-C browser-based controls with which to raise their hands, mute themselves and see who is on the conference.

“It’s definitely astonishing to see the micro innovations that can dramatically impact your work flow,” said Funge.

Why Vapps?

Vapps is focused on creating high-quality voice collaboration solutions at affordable prices. In 2006, Vapps launched Hi-Def Conferencing, becoming the first and only high-definition (HD) conference calling service in the industry. Vapps partnered with Yahoo, MSN, Skype, and Gizmo and today provides high-quality solutions for home offices, SMBs, organizations and trade associations seeking high-end audio conferencing that provides quality, flexibility and reliability. Vapps has also opened its conferencing platform to the world of traditional telephony and mobile users. It allows those with mobile or landline phones to dial into the same conference rooms through regular phone system DID (direct inward dial) numbers: local, toll-free or national numbers (used in Europe) in 11 different countries.

Vapps is helping to level the playing field for its SMB customers by providing them with access to the same high-quality conferencing products it delivers to enterprise and service provider customers.