Coventry Building Society
Achievements
On-demand video used to communicate with over 3,000 colleagues
Improved company accessibility through video captions
Increased efficiency and engagement through video analytics
The Challenge
Coventry Building Society (CBS) is the U.K.’s second-largest building society and employs around 3,000 colleagues in the Midlands region and its wider branch network. It provides a range of mortgage and savings products and manages £55 billion of assets throughout the country.
In 2020, the company was faced with a dilemma when trying to communicate company updates and important information with its colleagues. CBS had just appointed a new CEO, Steve Hughes, and needed a way to introduce him to employees who were social distancing during the pandemic. The existing in-house video system was difficult to use and lacked the capability to distribute content to a large audience.
When considering a new video management system to tackle these challenges, Panopto’s secure cloud solution struck a chord.
The Solution
After considering a range of platforms, CBS chose to implement Panopto’s secure VCMS cloud solution. The platform’s ability to simply record, edit, and manage video files in a clean UX design was exactly the type of solution the company needed. “It was a balance of factors: we liked the look of the platform, it met our needs from a security point of view, and we wanted that ease of user experience and consistency,” says Charlotte Verrall, Senior Specialist, Colleague Experience at CBS.
One of CBS’s primary requirements for a video solution was the ability to provide fair access for all employees. The company has branch colleagues in a number of towns where internet connections weren’t always the best. “We wanted something that would give people a consistent experience where it didn’t matter if you were in the head office in Coventry or down in Frome,” says Verrall.
As a highly regulated financial services organization, CBS also had to find a solution that could meet its stringent data and financial security requirements. “We have a rigorous procurement process that makes sure we do all the right things,” says Verrall.
“It was a balance of factors: we liked the look of the platform, it met our needs from a security point of view, and we wanted that ease of user experience and consistency.”
Charlotte Verrall, Senior Specialist, Colleague Experience at CBS
The Impact
Since implementing Panopto, CBS has significantly improved its ability to communicate with colleagues at scale. The company regularly runs “Coventry Conversations,” an internal Q&A session with executives. Often, these sessions would have several hundred people on the call live, with another 2,500 unable to join the call. Thanks to Panopto, these sessions are now easily shared for people to watch if they missed the live session.
Analytics
Panopto’s analytics have enabled the Colleague Experience team at CBS to monitor if video content is timely and interesting for their audience through detailed insights into who is watching videos and for how long. “It encourages people to think that bit more about the point of their video and trim content down to focus on what the audience needs,” says Verrall.
This has been particularly useful in CBS’s customer service department. The team does a regular weekly video update and has been able to track how it’s grown in popularity over the last year. From Panopto’s analytics, the department determined that short videos perform better than the longer ones, as well as the impact of certain guest speakers.
“The stats are definitely useful for us in Colleague Experience when we work with our stakeholders and make sure we’re bringing good value for the videos that we create,” says Verall.
Accessibility
The use of Panopto’s automated captioning has helped to keep engagement high. Employees can now watch videos without sound and follow their content without the need of audio. “We put a video on Panopto and click the auto-caption button. It’s been a big help for us because we do have a handful of colleagues who appreciate having captions both from an accessibility point of view and from a practical one,” says Verrall.
This type of accessibility sets CBS apart in the financial services sector. “Diversity and inclusion is really important to us. We want to create a place where people can belong, and having tools that help us make our communications more accessible is really valuable.”
The ability to download the SRT file for captions has also helped save time for CBS administrators who can download and edit transcripts for internal purposes or distribution. “We have some events where we want that transcript, and it’s nice not having to manually type things out or do a write-up. You can pull the captions off the video; that’s already done for you,” says Verrall.
Video Management
When it comes to content management, Panopto helps CBS stay organized through the unique link provided when a video is uploaded.
This has been particularly beneficial as the company has grown, teams have developed, and the need to categorize videos has become increasingly important. “I’ve been able to move things around and nobody notices what I’m doing in the background – it’s fantastic. The links don’t break and that’s been a big help to keep things nice and tidy for us.”
“Panopto is just a very easy platform to use. It’s very straightforward and it’s very clean-looking as well – there’s not a lot of complicated bells and whistles for you to try and figure out,” says Verrall.
