If Episode 1 debunked the idea that “corporate video” is its own technology category, Episode 2 goes a step further: even vendors who do understand the corporate video market often oversell it. In this second installment called, Removing the M&E Re-Labeling Bandaid: Why Corporate Video Doesn’t Need Full Broadcast Tech, Eivind Sandstrand of Varde Media Solutions sits down again with OpenDrives CEO Trevor Morgan and CTO Alex Dunfey to unpack why loading a full broadcast-grade production stack onto a corporate video team adds cost and complexity these teams never asked for, and why the real conversation should start with business objectives, not technical specs.
Watch the full conversation below, or keep reading for the key takeaways and full discussion.
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5R8y8DPhLmk
Key Takeaways
- Corporate video doesn’t start with a live broadcast or a town hall. It starts with a marketing budget, a project plan, and business objectives.
- Vendors selling a full production suite (built for live broadcast and sports) are often adding cost and complexity that corporate video customers don’t need and don’t want.
- The right first conversation is with “the people who own the pain”—those producing or consuming content—not IT. IT, legal, and compliance typically join later, once security and regulatory requirements come into play.
- Slow file access is a bigger problem than it sounds: what should take seconds can take minutes or hours, which is enough to make marketing teams give up on producing video in-house altogether.
Why Corporate Video Doesn’t Need the Full Broadcast Stack
Sandstrand draws a clear line between what broadcast-focused vendors are used to selling and what corporate video teams actually need: “A lot of production technology companies… they do have impressive platforms and systems for live broadcast and sports worldwide… But they’re forgetting one very important thing, and that is that corporate video doesn’t start with a live broadcast or a town hall. It starts with a marketing budget, a project plan, business objectives.”
Dunfey, OpenDrives’ CTO, agreed that oversized solutions create their own problems: “If you have a company who’s coming in and trying to sell a full production suite, that’s more than what these customers need to pay for… it adds more complexity into the overall solution in addition to cost. And they don’t need it and don’t want it.” Morgan, OpenDrives’ CEO, tied this back to what actually matters to enterprise buyers: “Usability in my mind is always going to be way at the top—usability and being able to administer it without… that very large IT group that they’ve got on staff.”
Who to Talk to First: The People Who Own the Pain
Sandstrand was direct about how he approaches new corporate video prospects, and it isn’t IT first: “When I go out prospecting, looking for clients, I’m not going to IT first and foremost. I’m going to the people who own the pain, either from producing content or trying to access and consume content and then do something with it.” He was careful to note IT isn’t sidelined, just sequenced differently: “It doesn’t mean that IT and legal and compliance and HR are any less important, but that conversation’s often a little bit further down the road, when we’ve got to start talking about what kind of security requirements do I need to make sure that we fulfill.”
Dunfey added why going straight to IT can backfire: “You need an advocate on the inside, because if somebody just goes to the IT department and says, ‘I need a technology solution for XYZ,’ they’re going to go into what is already familiar to them, and that might not be the right type of solution for a corporate video workflow.”
The Real Cost Nobody Talks About: Time
Asked about the biggest problem he sees across the corporate video, healthcare, education, and public sector verticals/industries alike, Sandstrand didn’t hesitate: “The biggest time waster that I have seen… is time. The numbers are staggering.” He connected this directly to storage performance: “We come from a world where technology like OpenDrives’s Corporate Creative Solution gives us instant access to the file; it takes like half a second to open up a large file and get to editing. For people in [slower] environments, [it’s] literally minutes, hours.” The downstream effect, in his words, is real: “That becomes a demotivating factor… the Chief Marketing Officer says, ‘let’s not bother with video, we’re just going to outsource it to an agency because we can’t do it in here. It’s slow.'”
And that is a missed opportunity. Corporate video customers don’t know there is a solution out there for them, and that’s because we need to be talking the same language, not forcing them to talk media and entertainment (M&E) broadcast technology peak.
About the speakers
Eivind Sandstrand is Founder and Principal at Varde Media Solutions, a consultancy and solution builder focused on enterprise video, and OpenDrives’ channel partner for this series. Connect with him on LinkedIn here. You can also visit Varde Media Solutions at https://vardemediasolutions.com/.
Trevor Morgan is CEO of OpenDrives, with a 30-year career in enterprise software and a role at OpenDrives since 2018. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
Alex Dunfey is CTO of OpenDrives, overseeing product development across OpenDrives’ Atlas, Edge, and Astraeus product lines, plus IT, customer support, and product teams. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
FAQ
Do corporate video teams need the same broadcast-grade production technology as live sports and news broadcasters? No. Corporate video starts with a marketing budget, a project plan, and business objectives, not live broadcast infrastructure. A full production suite built for broadcast adds cost and complexity that corporate video customers don’t need.
Who should vendors talk to first when selling a video solution to a corporate video customer? The people who “own the pain”— those producing or consuming the content, not IT. IT, legal, and compliance typically enter the conversation later, once security and regulatory requirements need to be addressed.
Why is slow file access such a costly problem for corporate video teams? Because it wastes the thing teams can’t get back: time. What should take seconds to open and start editing can take minutes or hours on slower systems, which can be enough to make a marketing team give up on producing video in-house and outsource it instead.
This is Episode 2 of our series with Varde Media Solutions, Debunking M&E Myths and Uncovering How Media Tech Partners Can Effectively Drive Business Value for Corporate Video. Look out for more episodes here: https://opendrives.com/blog/the-corporate-video-series/.
Tired of wasting time on the wrong general-purpose IT storage solutions or over-engineered broadcast technology for your corporate video needs? See how OpenDrives gives creative teams instant access to their creative files and boosts productivity with the Corporate Creative Solution.
