by Matt Filios, Chief Operating Officer of CodeBaby

Sales leaders and executives will panic when revenue is sagging or not meeting objectives, which causes downstream chaos. Processes, if developed tightly at the onset, should be adhered to, especially during the tough times. Course adjusting to continually refine targets and ensure that extreme focus is put on where you are winning and ensuring that Product, Marketing and Sales are in sync is critical at all times, no matter what the numbers are. Here, Filios, who has led both large and small ogranizations, shares his thoughts on achieving growth.

People. Process. Tools. You repeatedly hear that as the recipe to success in all facets of business. And you know it is true. However, nowhere is this more critical than in sales. If you are failing here then everything downstream suffers as well. Because, as we all know, it all begins with the top line.

As someone who has developed, managed and run sales teams in a number of different companies, environments, sizes and products, from hardware to software to SaaS, I get asked a fair amount of time about managing sales teams when things aren’t going so well (funny how nobody asks when things are great). We all know when things are clicking and revenue is humming along, people don’t question things. When numbers are down, its time to get the microscope out and investigate every small detail of what is happening, right? Well, no. Actually, I have found that generally there have not been a lot of major distinctions in organizations between those hitting and missing numbers. There are constant modifications and improvements that need to be done all the time, but for the most part, the similarities far outweigh the differences. Let’s look at each facet, going in reverse order as I think that is how it should be looked at from an increasing level of importance: Tools, Processes, People.

Tools

Don’t get me wrong; tools are an important piece of the puzzle, but, at the end of the day, they are just facilitators of workflow. That said, it is important to stay on top of the technological advances of sales tools, from marketing automation platforms such as Net-Results and CRM systems such as SugarCRM. These two pieces are critical in most businesses to properly identify, manage, nurture and qualify your prospects. Other tools include social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Focus to understand more about what your prospects and customers are talking about, and what hot points interest them. Obviously, you can never know too much about your customers, and there are always new tools on the horizon. Don’t think because you are set today with your tools that it means you don’t have to consistently look for more. There are always going to be technological advances for prospect insight.

Process

Your processes are a pivotal piece of the puzzle too, and must always be analyzed and tweaked, no matter if you are at 70 percent or 150 percent of your plan. You can always do better! I have managed call center operations, inside-only sales teams, a blend of inside and outside sales, product-only sales, services-only selling, combination product and services sales, software-as-a-service, etc. One thing is very clear to me: No matter what your process is, there is always a more efficient way to sell. You know as your primary role as a sales leader is to eliminate barriers so that your salespeople can sell more effectively. With that in mind, you always need to be on the pulse of what is working and what is not. And without a doubt times have been changing on the sales processes front, especially as it relates to the web. Iif you don’t have some sort of an in-bound sales strategy, you are missing out on a significant amount of prospective buyers.

The bottom line is that continuous improvement on your processes should be your daily mantra.

People

When it comes down to it the most important facet of selling is your people. Assuming your tools and processes are sound, making sure you have the right people on your team will complete the trifecta of sales success. As you know as a sales leader, salespeople come in all shapes and sizes and you need to make certain you have the right individuals for what you are selling. For instance, if your sales cycle is long you need to have a team made up of experienced relationship salespeople who understand the longer process and have the skills and patience to work through the necessary steps of getting a deal closed. While these people work great in that situation, if you have a commodity product with a rapid sales cycle these people would clearly not be optimum. You need quick, on-their-feet thinkers who can deftly explain the value proposition of your product and get the deal done without the need for creating a relationship with the buyer beyond one of trust in what was presented in the initial value proposition. Generally, if you have identified your proper target market, have the right tools and processes in place, the right people can be the difference between making and missing your corporate objectives.

So where does this leave us? The focus of this article is about managing sales teams in tough times as well as good. What was my point in going through people, process and tools in this discussion? The answer lies in the continued optimization of each. It does not matter whether your numbers are great or less than ideal, you need to always be striving for better, efficient ways to make your sales team better. Don’t panic when your numbers are down, or rest on your laurels when the team is killing it. Always look for improvements. Your team and your organization will reap the rewards.

Hey, ad:tech Attendees – Your Website Needs To Get A Life!

CodeBaby To Provide “Life” Lessons At Booth 2519

Colorado Springs, Colo. – April 12, 2011- CodeBaby, an Internet software company making it easy to implement state-of-the-art interactive digital characters that improve conversions and user experiences on websites, is pleased to be part of ad:tech SF. During the conference the company’s team will be introducing attendees to the many business benefits of engaging website visitors with CodeBaby Characters!

“True customer connections take place during informative and interactive conversations,” said Matt Filios, CodeBaby’s Chief Operating Officer “CodeBaby Characters enable companies to have those same conversations with their online customers, leading to dramatically increased conversions and website navigation.”

CodeBaby Characters and Conversations drive site visitor behavior, as well as assist in answering questions tailored to visitors’ individual needs! Each character and conversation meets a client’s call to action goals, such as: add-to-cart, free trial sign-up, customer service, product up-sell and lead capture.

CodeBaby’s fine-tuned process typically launches client projects within 30 days from initial engagement. All aspects of launching a CodeBaby Character are managed internally by:

• Cutting edge 3D animators capable of creating unlimited varieties of digital character likenesses
• Veteran writers that develop targeted character personas and conversation scripts that create emotional connections with website users
• Strategic services team that delivers unmatched customer support & council
• A superior split test metrics system designed to prove value for each client investment
• Technical support and world-class hosting and content delivery infrastructures

CodeBaby Characters are used throughout many industries; including higher education, healthcare, financial services, outdoor recreation, law enforcement, non-profit, and web services.

About CodeBaby:
CodeBaby is a privately held Internet software company whose leading-edge technology enables companies to quickly and easily create high-quality, realistic digital character conversations that engage online customers and eLearners to optimize results. These customized and interactive conversations are creating value for a rapidly growing number of Fortune 1000 companies as well as mid-sized clients.! With extensive analytics, CodeBaby allows clients to track and tune Conversations to achieve dramatic results that include lead capture, cross-sell / upsell, customer service, online learning, and other web tasks!
For more information: www.codebaby.com

CodeBaby Studio 4.1 Takes The Stage At Learning Solutions Conference & Expo

March 23-25, 2011, Orlando, Fl – CodeBaby Booth #310

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – March 21, 2011 – CodeBaby, a leading provider of eLearning solutions, will exhibit its top selling eLearning product Studio 4.1 at The Learning Solutions Conference & Expo March 23 – 25, 2011 in Orlando, FL. The company’s booth is # 310 and it will be staffed with a full sales and marketing team to support show attendees.

CodeBaby is also pleased to announce it will be joined in its booth by Jack Pierce, Partner at w/, a premiere eLearning design company.  Additionally, Elizabeth Miller, CodeBaby Sales Executive, will present two different sessions. All attendees are encouraged to join:

• Master Class Demonstration on CodeBaby Studio: Fully Animating 3D Digital Characters on March 23 from 11:45 – 12:30pm

• ID Zone Session with Elizabeth Miller and Anya Wood of the University of Toronto Health Network on March 24th from 1:45 – 2:30pm.

“We are excited to be presenting during the conference, while also showcasing CodeBaby Studio 4.1 so attendees are able to learn more about our product which engages learners to maximize learning outcomes,” said Elizabeth Miller, CodeBaby eLearning Sales Executive and show presenter.

With a diverse selection of high quality digital characters, over 450 realistic drag-and-drop animations, and automatic lip-syncing that accommodates recordings in any language, CodeBaby Studio 4.1 makes producing eLearning application scenes fast & easy.

Many of CodeBaby’s eLearning customers are industry leaders: Ogilvy & Mather, Dominos Pizza, Unisys, University of Illinois, American Express, IBM Canada, Lockheed Martin, US Bank and Verizon.

About CodeBaby:

CodeBaby is a privately held Internet software company with offices in Colorado Springs, Colo. and Edmonton, Alberta. Its cutting edge technology enables companies to quickly and easily create high-quality, realistic digital character conversations that engage online customers and elearners to optimize results.

To Purchase CodeBaby Studio 4.1:

CodeBaby Studio 4.1 is part of an eLearning software purchase through CodeBaby.  For more information or for a free 45-day trial, click here.

About Learning Solutions Conference & Expo:

Attend the Learning Solutions Conference & Expo if you are directly involved in your organization’s learning efforts – especially if you are focused on the management, design, development, production, acquisition, and/or distribution of e-Learning.

Learning Solutions Conference & Expo is especially well suited for representatives from organizations that are now starting to explore e-Learning – offering a complete track of Getting Started sessions and the co-located e-Learning Foundations Intensive. For more information on the conference visit: www.learningsolutionsmag.com/content/1780/

About w/:

We listen, we collaborate, we create. We have a partnering mindset that begins with understanding your needs, objectives, obstacles, and ideas. Everything we do is a reflection of your specific needs and circumstances, including:

• Immersive e-learning simulations
• Highly interactive e-learning courseware
• Mobile learning solutions
• Consulting & strategy
• simpleLMS™ Learning Management System

No project is “typical”, but we often develop projects that take 2-4 weeks for delivery, as well as robust simulation-learning experiences that requires several weeks of development. For more information:http://www.wslash.net/

Colorado Springs Business Journal

by Rebecca Tonn

Published: March 11,2011

Time posted: 6:37 am

Tags: CodeBaby, fun, Office, scooters, Vladimir Jones

X marks the spot: Hunt Hodgkins (left) talks with Ron Stauffer and Julie Duffens about an upcoming project at CodeBaby’s laid-back offices.

When Hunt Hodgkins needs inspiration while designing digital characters, he rides a scooter around the office to visit his colleagues or joins them for Nerf dart-gun battles.

“The atmosphere here is so open, and everyone’s available for communication between teams. It allows us to work together and be more creative,” he said.

Since 2009, Hodgkins has been an animation artist at CodeBaby, a company with offices in Colorado Springs, where there are 28 employees, and in Alberta, Canada, where there are seven. The company creates and designs digital characters for business websites.

“Taking a break to create energy is not frowned upon here,” Hodgkins said. “It’s encouraged.”

Human-resource experts say this kind of creativity and humor in the work place is conducive to productivity and retaining employees.

David Abramis, a professor in the department of human resource management at California State University at Long Beach, says humor is one of the characteristics that defines people as human.

An organization that lacks humor? It’s “inhuman” and it’s squelching a core trait of its employees, he says.

Walks in the woods

Carol and Eddie Sturman, co-owners of Woodland Park-based Sturman Industries, an engineering company, have long been aware of the dynamic of humor and freedom within the work place.

They designed their high-tech mountain lodge with open spaces to foster innovation and creativity. Not only that, the building sits in a natural setting, so employees can bike and hike during breaks or walk into the woods to meet with clients.

“We wanted an environment to inspire people,” Carol said, which means there are few closed spaces or offices in their building. There are, however, plenty of informal meeting areas, couches, fireplaces and patios.

“They can turn around and get together in a few seconds,” she said. “The more you have people together, the more they feel like one team,” Carol said. “The physical separation makes it harder on the communication.”

‘Spark of creativity’

Executives who foster such physically and psychologically open environments are quick to point out, however, that there is structure — not necessarily during goof-off time — but in the creative process as employees work and think.

“Philosophically, our product is a currency of ideas,” said Meredith Vaughan, CEO of Vladimir Jones, a Colorado Springs-based public relations and marketing firm with 60 employees in the city and 15 at its Denver office.

“Fundamental to creativity is that it’s OK for there to be failure — otherwise, people won’t take risks. They have to feel comfortable enough to push boundaries,” she said.

To ensure that the company doesn’t overlook great ideas, even those that aren’t yet being executed properly, they have formalized a review process to evaluate creative concepts.

“We don’t want to kill that spark of creativity,” she said.

In the process of fostering ideas, colleagues have heated discussions, she said.

“Probably someone from a more traditional environment wouldn’t be comfortable with that,” she added. “But we like diversity, enthusiasm and innovation. We would never in a million years do anything to quash that — we need it.”

With that attitude, nothing surprises her — except perhaps the day she walked back to her office after a meeting and found two miniature horses grazing contentedly on hay beneath a handwritten sign: “There’s nothing wrong with a little horsing around.”

The environment at the agency, however, does surprise people when they come to visit. Although many people embrace it, some can’t handle it. “I think we frighten some people,” she said.

Vaughan challenges the typical corporate mindset.

“Why does work have to be all work, and fun have to be all fun? There has to be a sense of relief from work,” she said.

Sometimes, she said, employees and executives work 15 hours a day, “so if work doesn’t have a sense of joy — good grief!”

At Vladimir, “internal creative endeavors” are a line item in the annual operating budget, equal to 1 percent of the company’s income, Vaughan said. She has increased that amount substantially over the last 10 years because the value of employee fun and creativity has become more and more evident to her, she said.

For instance, Vladimir now receives as many as 100 applications for a job position, she said, and the wider talent pool benefits both the firm and its clients in the long run.

Vaughan’s company doesn’t merely give lip service to its philosophy. The agency wrote, “The TAO of Vladimir Jones,” a 70-page hardcover booklet filled with sayings that define the company’s guiding principles. Some examples: “Until you make somebody care, you’re talking to yourself.” “Fear is a bad reason to do anything that doesn’t involve bears.” “You have to know the rules before you can break them.”

Not surprisingly, employees have gone so far as to produce a video for fun, titled “A Midsummer Day’s Puck-off,” which includes screen shots of employees playing foosball, riding skateboards (every office seems to have one or two) or hanging out in the lounge while quoting lines from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The video inspired employees to create the interactive “Puck Wall” for one of Vladimir’s clients, the Excel Energy Center, a multipurpose entertainment and sports stadium in Minneapolis. The Puck Wall has large video screens; when children or adults stand in front of them, their image is projected onto the screen with hockey helmets on their heads.

The company holds itself to breaking the corporate mold in its executive and employee interactions. For instance, employees’ quarterly evaluations are self-evaluations, with the statement: “Please share examples of occasions when you exemplified one or more of these core values: fearless, soulful, smart, focused, eclectic and curious.”

In between breaks, of course, employees work hard. But when they need fresh ideas or mental energy, they jump on skateboards or compete in the lounge to be mayor of the four-square. If it’s late on a Friday afternoon, they help themselves to beer from the keg.

Once a year, the agency shuts down for a day and has a big party, hosting its “Annual Halloween Overreaction.” Clients come to evaluate as employees dress up and perform in competition.

Back at CodeBaby, the company underwent a rebirth when it moved its sales, marketing and graphic-design offices to Colorado Springs in 2008 (the engineering department stayed in Edmonton).

CEO Patrick Bultema joined the company, and business strategy shifted from designing digital characters primarily for in-house e-Learning to Internet and company websites.

These days, employees create characters for clients that help them achieve specific objectives, such as getting people to sign up for a trial period of service or filing incident reports online, said Tony DeLollis, CodeBaby’s chief technology officer.

People can make intense emotional connections with digital characters, as video gamers know. This connection works in the business world too, but it requires creativity in designing characters whom people trust enough to do business with.

During beta-testing, for example, CodeBaby discovered that the British-nanny character it designed for client Net Nanny, an Internet content-blocking software for parents, appeared “condescending and pompous,” DeLollis said.

The CodeBaby team went back to the digital drawing board and created “Molly,” a thirtysomething soccer mom with a marketing degree.

“When we write the script for her, it has to fit her character,” he said. “So we find ourselves saying things like, ‘Molly would never say that.’”

All that scooter-riding and playing with robots paid off: Molly was a hit with the client’s customers. Molly has proven to be 2.5 times more likely to get people to sign up for trial service than efforts made without her help, DeLollis said.

Much of the brainstorming and collaboration that goes into creating these characters happens outside the office. Employees visit coffee shops, go for bicycle rides, or sit on the benches outside the Pioneers Museum.

“There are many walks around the block, here,” DeLollis said. “We don’t have a clock-puncher mentality.”

Employees work long hours, and many prefer to come to work midmorning and work later at night rather than beginning earlier in the day.

There’s even a Breakfast Club, which includes half a dozen employees who shop once a week and dine together in the office on things like Lucky Charms cereal.

DeLollis said that having a creative environment and giving employees the ability to write, think, brainstorm and work outside, and have fun, increases productivity by 20 percent.

The environment helps save time on deployment, reduces rework, quality checks are done earlier, and customer satisfaction is higher, he said.

Among the company’s artists, the open and creative environment has kept attrition at 0 percent, DeLollis said. And he estimates that CodeBaby employees work about 25 percent more hours than their counterparts in a typical “corporate” environment do.

No sense of humor?

Although a recent survey of 737 CEOs by Hodge-Cronin and Associates showed that 98 percent preferred job candidates with a sense of humor to those without, few companies or CEOs tolerate, much less encourage, a culture where creativity, humor and fun are mainstays.

“(Fostering) creativity is a big player in any workplace — it goes along with thinking outside the box,” said Julie Perkins, senior recruiter at the Colorado Springs office of Manpower Inc.

“It’s a matter in general of working with your employees needs and (figuring out) what makes them want to stay, and what makes them better, happier, more productive employees.”

Abramis, the Cal State Long beach professor, takes it a step further than that.

In an article for Human Resource Management, he wrote: “If humor is suppressed, other personal characteristics that are required to do business are also likely to be suppressed — in particular, mental health, job satisfaction and what is perhaps most important, creativity.”

http://csbj.com/2011/03/11/companies-believe-having-fun-at-work-is-serious-business/

March 2, 2011

Click Here to see online article

EDMONTON, AB, Mar. 2, 2011/ Troy Media/ – Canada’s got game. And not just any game. Canadian companies have a firm grip on the bleeding edge of the video and computer game technology tsunami – a market boasting consistent growth.

This is creating exciting new opportunities for the people pushing the technology envelope.

Don Mattrick is one of them. He and a friend dreamed up Evolution in a Burnaby living room in 1982.

Mattrick’s company eventually became Electronic Arts Canada, employing hundreds in Edmonton, Vancouver and Montreal and creating huge hits like the Need for Speed series and Sims 3. It’s one of the companies that have given Canada a firm grip on the leading edge of the video and computer game juggernaut.

Edmonton’s Bioware cutting edge

According to Danielle Parr, executive director of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, Canada is the third-largest producer of video games globally (after the United States. and Japan), with some of the best-selling games in the world.

“When you think about it in terms of size of our population,” she says, “That’s really impressive.”

Parr points to Montreal and Vancouver as the largest hubs of activity in the Canadian industry, but notes that Edmonton’s Bioware Studio (owned by Electronic Arts since 2008) has also produced “some really fantastic titles,” including Baldur’s Gate and the upcoming LucasArts title Star Wars: the Old Republic.

The reason for this success? Talent, first and foremost, Parr says. “Like any other industry that’s based on intellectual property, talent is the most important ingredient and Canada has some of the best.”

The industry has evolved far beyond merely creating diversions for the masses, however, and now encompasses e-learning and simulation solutions that can train workers at less expense and risk than could be accomplished in the real world.

Edmonton’s 3D Interactive, for example, pairs gaming-inspired software with off-the-rack computer hardware to create affordable simulations for clients as far away as Japan. The goal, according to technical director Andrew Czarnietzki, isn’t to replace hands-on training but to augment it, especially in areas where such training is impractical.

“Some equipment costs $100,000 an hour to operate,” he said, “And you don’t want to take a machine like that off-line in order to teach someone, nor do you want a trainee working at lower efficiency on the real thing for too long.”

3DI’s products include portable simulators that can be set up either onsite or in the classroom. Whenever possible, the company uses the actual controls of the equipment on which a student is being trained, offering a learning experience comparable to a full-scale simulator but at far less cost.

3D training

E-learning also offers a spoonful of technological sugar to help the training medicine go down. One player with a stake in Alberta is Colorado-based CodeBaby, whose Edmonton office houses a product engineering team that helps craft the CodeBaby Studio, which clients use to create and integrate 3D characters into their e-learning courseware.

CodeBaby’s clients have ranged from Grant Thornton and Fountain Tire to the University of Arizona and the U.S. air force. CEO Patrick Bultema says customers design their e-learning courses as they always have but “include the CodeBaby character as a digital teaching instructor.” Clients import their audio files into CodeBaby Studio, which animates the character and lip syncs it to any language.

The 363-kilogram gorilla in the industry is Electronic Arts, whose Burnaby, B.C., Canadian headquarters ranks among the world’s most successful video game studios.

EA’s Burnaby campus traces its roots to the original Evolution game, which spawned a vibrant and diverse video-game cluster in Vancouver.

Yet the company has also had its difficult years, especially the last few in B.C. when several hundred employees were laid off. The positive flip side is that there has been employment growth in eastern Canada.

Parr attributes gaming’s Eastern Canadian growth to the fact that Ontario and Quebec have had the largest tax credits.

“The industry in Vancouver has flourished without tax credits,” she says. “But when you’re trying to choose between two similar jurisdictions and one has really lucrative tax credits, chances are that’s the one you’re going to select.”

Getting such tax incentives enacted has been an uphill battle, though.

“It’s an area that governments haven’t really thought about,” Parr says. “And one of the things we’ve tried to do is educate policymakers that this is big business.”

How big? The ESAC estimates that the video gaming industry included more than 14,000 people in 250 companies across Canada.

EA decision makers say that the B.C. government seems to have gotten the message: a digital media tax credit was introduced in September.

Then there’s Alberta. Neither Parr nor Czarnietzki think Wild Rose Country has been particularly conducive to offering gaming companies tax incentives, though, as Parr notes, “the overall tax environment is favourable.”

And it isn’t as if Alberta companies have had no access to government aid. Czarnietzki credits the Alberta Ingenuity Fund and the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance and Scientific Research and Experimental Development programs with helping 3DI get up and running.

Trend toward social gaming

As for gaming itself, the trend is toward social gaming. “Seventy-six per cent of Canadian gamers play online in some way,” Parr said, noting that some like World of Warcraft-type role-playing games but that “others are playing games on Facebook. Women and teen girls are especially attracted to the social nature of gaming, but it’s a real variety.”

Paralleling the success of the traditional packaged goods market, EA has made significant strides in creating opportunities in online and in downloadable content, specifically mobile and social connected games.

On the hardware side, there’s a movement toward controller-less interfaces that use sensors to capture a player’s movements and translate them into actions in the virtual world.

All in all, the industry is showing no sign of slowing down. That bodes well for Canadian-based innovators. “It’s the fastest-growing entertainment industry in the world,” Parr said, “and if you look at our continued growth and our excellence in this sector, we’re in a good position to run with it.”

By Linda Register 2/8/11

I’ve been curious for a while about what it would take to add avatars to a Lectora course. So last week, I signed up for a CodeBaby free trial and got to work. We have sample courses online; I picked the Lectora Golf Basics course that needed an instructor to liven things up! Click on the arrow to see the results.

I followed the basic instructions to get started with CodeBaby Studio since I’m new to all this Flash animation software. To create a character and animate it was much easier than I expected. The first thing you do is choose a character to animate and drop it into your project workspace. There are several standard characters to choose from. I wanted someone without a tie for my golf instructor.

You simply choose a CodeBaby character and drag it into the project workspace to get started.

I already scripted and recorded MP3 voice narration files so I just imported my first MP3 under the “import assets” menu option. I chose the option to import the narration as a dialog and auto animate the file. The program then lip-syncs and animates with realistic body motions. You can also alter the animation any way you want by dragging, dropping, or deleting motions on the auto animation track. I had fun with that feature.

You can use the auto animation feature and then edit more with an extensive
menu. The preview window shows you what the character will do.

I created seven projects, each representing a different page in my Lectora course. The animations need to be exported as Flash files with transparent backgrounds. I worked with the CodeBaby staff to remove the trial watermark for my production. Once I had the Lectora course open in “edit” mode, I simply dragged the SWF file onto the page and adjusted from there. To preserve the transparent background in the SWF, in Lectora you right click on the file, open “properties” and then pick the parameters tab. Add a parameter named “wmode” and enter “transparent” into the value field. One note, the background shows up in Lectora edit and preview modes, use “preview in browser” to see the animation with transparency.

This is the top level menu in CodeBaby.

I worked on this project on and off for about four days. The parts that took the longest were planning the script and then fiddling with the animation motions. It takes a while to learn all the animation options. CodeBaby offers a lot more than I used to create my basic course. You can create custom characters, adjust lighting and camera angles and use other sophisticated features. I’m pleased with the results. The character adds motion, sound and personality to my course and I didn’t have to read a manual. Adding Flash animation as a way to create more interest for the learner is not hard to achieve with CodeBaby and Lectora Inspire. And, it was fun!

If you want to try Lectora Inspire to create great eLearning courses, download the 30-day free trial. You can sign up for a free trial of CodeBaby software at the CodeBaby Web page.

Linda Register is part of the marketing team at Trivantis. Her main responsibilities in the Marketing group are working on the Trivantis.com Web team, communications, planning and writing. Linda has a journalism degree from the University of Oregon.

CodeBaby ADDS CONTENT UPGRADES TO AWARD WINNING eLearning SOLUTION CodeBaby STUDIO 4.1

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – February 18, 2011 – CodeBaby is pleased to announce upgrades to its eLearning solution CodeBaby Studio 4.1, available to new and existing customers today.  This award-winning eLearning product allows companies to quickly and easily create fully animated and engaging 3D digital characters.

Originally launched in 2005, CodeBaby Studio 4.1, empowers users to create and integrate 3D CodeBaby Characters into eLearning courseware. With a diverse selection of high quality digital characters, over 450 realistic drag-and-drop animations, and automatic lip-syncing that accommodates recordings in any language, CodeBaby Studio 4.1 makes producing eLearning applications fast & easy.

Recently, www.eLearnonline.biz ranked CodeBaby Studio #1 when compared to similar solutions. Click here to read the article: http://www.elearnonline.biz/index.phpoption=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=38&Itemid=54

Many of CodeBaby’s diverse pool of eLearning customers are industry leaders including Ogilvy & Mather, Dominos Pizza, American Express, IBM Canada, Lockheed Martin, US Bank and Verizon.

“The upgrades to CodeBaby Studio will enable our customers to further utilize the product,” said Tony DeLollis, CodeBaby Chief Technology Officer. “We are proud to offer the most advanced eLearning solution in the marketplace.”

CodeBaby Studio 4.1 Now Features:

• Windows 7 enabled release
• Four new motion capture characters, with fluid animations.
• Standard characters with 400 gestures
• Imports MP3 and WAV audio formats
• Easy drag and drop feature
• Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 compatible (32-bit & 64-bit)
• Automatic lip-sync and auto-animate
• Multiple character interactions and scenes
• Closed-captioning, ADA compliant
• Ability to swap characters on the fly

About CodeBaby:

CodeBaby is a privately held internet software company with offices in Colorado Springs, Colo. and Edmonton, Alberta. Its cutting edge technology enables companies to quickly and easily create high-quality, realistic digital character conversations that engage online customers and elearners to optimize results.

To Purchase CodeBaby Studio:

CodeBaby Studio is part of an eLearning software purchase through CodeBaby.  For more information or for a free 45-day trial, click here.

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Avatars have evolved enough and expanded from the initial technical challenges from basic technologies to a much wider range of application domains. The illusion of having someone present is helpful and feels like the learner can participate in the application or the application interacts with them. This illusion can be provided at many levels, from the detail of graphics, such as higher triangle or polygon counts and faster rendering times for a realistic look of the virtual avatar and environment. An interesting aspect of creating the illusion of presence in courseware is the inclusion of virtual humans, also called avatars. In the real world, we are familiar with seeing people demonstrating soft skills, illustrating proper safety tips, and so on. Until recently, many virtual simulations were very “lonely”, with the user being the only inhabitant of that courseware. Adding avatars to the courseware has the capability to enhance the learning experience, by letting users feel like there are other individuals in the CBT with them. To maximize the effectiveness of these avatars, they should interact with the user in a genuine manner. This involves, among many aspects, natural looking animations for the avatars to perform, and that these animations are strung together in a believable fashion. The goal of this discussion is to explore the different applications in a non-biased fashion and let you choose and implement avatars in a way that enhances and helps the learner retain more of the knowledge you are trying to transfer! The end result however will give our favorite applications and functions we explored.

Avatars

The word avatar comes from the Hindu term for the incarnation of some deity in human or animal form. However, in today’s internet world of three dimensional chat rooms and multiplayer games, an avatar has come to refer to the representation of some human character in a virtual world [Fisher01]. One of the earlier individuals to use the term avatar to refer to the virtual representation of a human character in some virtual world was Neal Stephenson, in his novel Snow Crash [Stephenson]. Avatars with a human counterpart and completely virtual avatars are both used very often in many areas today, especially online gaming. Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), where hundreds of users exist in the same online world, is a popular example of avatar use similar to Stephenson’s metaverse in many ways. For years now, avatars are expanding their footprint into the online learning industry. ApplicationsTo keep the initial discussion non-biased I am listing the different applications I found in alphabetical order, and I used their website information to give a brief description of each avatar system. I welcome and encourage your feedback and comments.

“AlterEgos is a desktop PC software solution that allows you to increase the appeal, communication, memorability and effectiveness of your site, training materials, presentation or general media by embedding a fully animated compare. AlterEgos generates an industry standard video file that can be simply incorporated in minutes. You simply record your voice, or import a pre-recorded narration, select an AlterEgo and the software does the rest. When it comes to Rapid E-Learning AlterEgos is a perfect partner giving you the edge with your own personal Virtual Teacher.”

“With AvaGuide you will improve your customers’ online experience and boost your sales. AvaGuide.net provides a wide choice of professionally recorded talking video characters that you can easily personalize and add to your site. They work 24/7 – no breaks! AvaGuide will make your site more attractive and intuitive for its visitors. You will decrease your bounce rates as well as the number of email support queries and increase conversions – that means higher sales!”

“The most powerful customer connections happen, more often than not, in the context of a conversation. That’s why we exert so much energy on enabling well scripted, and skillfully delivered customer conversations. After all, we know the most important moments in these customer conversations hinge on a subtle interplay of reason and emotion, and the ability to make a human connection with your customers. But we largely lose this ability to connect when the customer goes online … and increasingly that’s where your customers want to meet you.That’s where CodeBaby steps in. We bring the power of an effective conversation to the online customer experience. Our solution is a fully animated, expressive digital character (a CodeBaby) that engages customers at key points in the online experience. We focus the CodeBaby Conversation at points of predictable emotional escalation. These are points where customers are more receptive, but also “moments of truth” where the customer relationship is at stake.”

“For 15 years we have been building e-learning projects for corporate clients. We can take your material and add our proprietary NOAH virtual instructor technology to create a very engaging online learning experience. Or you can add NOAH yourself! NOAH talking avatars are powerful learning agents. NOAH avatars bring the critical element of learner engagement to eLearning projects. A virtual instructor can focus attention, point out and explain critical information, and make even the dullest material interesting.”

“SitePal is an easy-to-use service that allows you to create a speaking avatar for your website and empower your online communication.”

“SpeechAgents allows you to add Animated, Talking Characters to your website to increase Sales and enhance your sites appearance! And the best part about it is, you can get started right now! NEW!!!  We are now offering “Get It and Go” characters, which allow you to generate one-time purchase characters for a specified time period. This allows Free Users to generate characters for auction sites or as an alternative to our Paid Subscription. This also allows Paid Subscribers to extend beyond their 10 speech blocks to create even more unique characters.”

Our top picks:

1. CodeBaby – http://www.codebaby.com/

2. Alteregos – http://www.alteregos.com

3. AvaGuide – http://www.avaguide.net/

4. SitePal – http://www.sitepal.com/

5. NOAH – http://www.noahx.com/index.asp

6. Speech Agents – http://www.speechagents.com/

We found CodeBaby to have the most options and realistic quality, users are able to add hand and body gestures if you needed to but the application auto-populated the gestures to give you a base-line to start from. That added functionality came at a price and there is a small learning curve, but support was available and options like photo realistic quality made CodeBaby the clear winner. It was also a pay once use unlimited times, whereas most others were service fees based on use or views.

Alteregos was very user friendly and had many character templates to choose from, but lacked the gesturing ability which made the avatar seem a bit static after many slides.

Avaguide had photo realistic characters which were nice, but they were a bit clumsy. The pricing structure was fair but could amount to a sizeable portion of your budget if you had hundreds of hours of courseware to implement an avatar into.

SitePal was focused more on website delivery than eLearning but had several options with photo realism. It was not a standalone package, again which could amount to big costs if your needs were for many character and lots of online modules.

NOAH had an unprofessional feel with small illustrated characters that bounced around the screen and ended up being distracting.

Footnotes:

[Fisher] A. Fischer, “An extendable language flexible avatar control framework for VR Applications”, 2005[Stephenson] N. Stephenson, “Snow Crash”, Bantam Spectra, 1992

Online character helping CSPD be more efficient

Posted: Feb 14, 2011 5:30 PM by Stephanie Collins
Updated: Feb 14, 2011 6:43 PM

For the past year, the Colorado Springs Police Department has offered a unique tool on its website to make it easier for you to file an online crime report.

The digital character on CSPD’s website is called Officer Smith, and she has lived on the right side of the website since last February, “She’ll pop up as a digital character avatar and will ask you if you want help,” explains Officer Corrie Sheridan, who commonly takes phone reports and answers questions about online crime reporting.

The department has been asking citizens to file online crime reports since 2007 and since then over 10,000 reports have been filed through the system. Before Officer Smith the department was receiving incomplete reports and getting calls from people confused about how to file an online report, “Those calls have been drastically reduced, citizens are having a much easier time getting through the system,” says Officer Sheridan.

While Officer Smith is helping CSPD be more efficient, it’s also helping a local company grow. Internet software company, CodeBaby, which has offices in the Springs, created Officer Smith. A team of artists creates the digital characters down to what they say and wear. They say they’re finding different ways to use the characters all the time.

For the Colorado Springs Police Department they say it comes down to one thing, serving the community better.

To see how Officer Smith works, click here to go to CSPD’s website.

To learn more about the work CodeBaby does, click here.

A customer with a shopping cart full of products is sitting idle on an e-retailer’s checkout page. Seconds tick by. Is she fishing through her wallet for a credit card or having second thoughts?

Seven out of 10 consumers abandon their carts during the final stages of an online purchase, according to SeeWhy, an online marketing and analytics consultancy. So e-retailers are always looking for ways to save at least some of those sales.

One way is to invite the visitor to a live chat, in which the consumer and an agent type questions and answers into an instant message-type box. Relatively few retailers offer this kind of proactive chat—only 12 of 100 top e-retailers in a recent survey by research and consulting firm The E-tailing Group, compared to 43 that offer a live chat button visitors can click, if they choose to ask for help.

“The responses were things like ‘quit bugging me.’ The moment you get a couple of those—and you realize that for every one person that complains there are 10 more just not bothering to complain, you know that it’s not right,” Beason says. “It may not have been a perfect test, but it was enough.”

And a 60-second trigger may not be right for all e-retailers, she notes. Visitors to OnlyNaturalPet often spend a long time studying product information because they are interested in the ingredients or materials used, Beason says. What may look like inactivity is just how consumers shop the site. Beason says OnlyNaturalPet intends to test soon new triggers and messages based on shopping cart value.

Long chats

Jewelry e-retailer WhiteFlash.com uses a variety of triggers for live chat invitations, including the number and frequency of pages viewed and what’s in the customer’s cart or wish list. And how the invitation is worded varies based on what the e-retailer knows about the customer, says Ashley Bailey, web content manager.

For example, Bailey says WhiteFlash.com delivers a different chat invitation for a consumer who comes to the site after doing a Google search for a general term like “diamonds” than to a consumer who searched for a more specific phrase that shows she has a better idea about what she’d like to buy, such as “ACA ideal cut diamond.” The e-retailer of high-end diamonds also uses Google Analytics, its customer relationship management database and the report services of its live chat vendor, Bold Software, to refine how to target customers with the right chat invitation at the right time, Bailey says.

Given that items on WhiteFlash.com typically range in price from hundreds to thousands of dollars, most consumers interact with an agent before making a purchase. Bailey says live chat is the firm’s most effective sales channel and that consumers who chat are 10% to 30% more likely to complete a purchase than those who don’t. About 35% of extended invitations are accepted, she says. Proactive chats at the e-retailer tend to last at least 15 minutes but often go on for an hour or more.

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WhiteFlash.com also relies on its live chat staff, comprised of seven experienced gemologists, to invite conversations based on what they see consumers doing on the site. Using a dashboard of analytics provided by Bold Software, agents can see referral web site information, such as whether the visitor clicked a paid search or display ad, or if she clicked a link on another web site. They also can see the visitor’s on-site behavior.

The software analyzes the behavior and provides predictive information, based on the behavior of previous site visitors, to the agent about what the consumer might want from her visit. “It helps us to understand what we can do better to get people to talk with us,” Bailey says.

Tread carefully

It’s in these situations that it’s important to leverage data about this consumer or those who behave similarly, says Gene Alvarez, vice president or research at technology research and consulting firm Gartner Inc. “If you are aware of this customer’s activity, based on others who have behaved that way, you use the patterns to get that recognition and understand what to do next,” Alvarez says. “The pattern recognition helps you to interject proactively at the right time in a customer session.”

But that behavioral data also holds the potential for danger. Chat software programs often can be set to recognize a returning customer and show her name, location, purchase history, previous site behavior and chat transcripts. But just because a chat agent may have this information doesn’t mean he should reveal it. “Being aggressive on proactive chat personalization to consumers who think they are anonymous could cross a line to negatively impact sales,” Alvarez says.

E-retailers say they recognize this and tread carefully when it comes to revealing information that may make a shopper feel like she is being watched too closely. For example, OnlyNaturalPet chat agents can see the search terms the consumer uses to find the e-retail site, but if a consumer searched on “cancer drugs for dogs” agents would never use that information to start a conversation, Beason says. But it is good for the agent to know the customer’s mindset, she says. Agents are trained to take cues from customers about how they wish to interact and to respond in kind.

At Bluefly.com, Nelson says regular chat customers tend to understand Bluefly agents will know what products they are looking at and often ask agents for their opinions. However, agents don’t assume every consumer understands the agent sees what’s on the consumer’s screen. “If they don’t ask us something like ‘Do you like this sweater?’ directly, we will of course ask for a style number just so that we don’t feel big brotherly,” Nelson says.

Like Bluefly, e-retailer Aveda.com tailors its invitations to consumers based on where they are on the site, but is careful about how it engages visitors. When shopping the hair care category, for example, a discreet window pops up for a few seconds that says, “Looking for hair care advice?”

The window is discreet, says Samara Gattel, director of Aveda Online, because its purpose is to invite a conversation like one a consumer might have in an Aveda salon. The style is designed to fit its brand image of being natural and laid-back. When a person accepts a chat, she fills out a short questionnaire with her name, e-mail address and indicates what she’d like to talk about. That enables the agent to address the customer by name, which can help get the conversation off to a good start.

The company has used the chat format since August 2008. Gattel says the firm doesn’t do a lot of ongoing testing because its purpose with chat is to act like a friend or beauty consultant, not make a hard sell, and because the formula it uses seems to work. The company declined to reveal its chat acceptance rate, but does say that shoppers who chat with agents convert at a rate four times greater than shoppers who don’t chat and visit the site three times as often, she says.

Results like that suggest that a well-phrased and well-time invitation to chat can help turn a visitor into a loyal customer.

allison@verticalwebmedia.com

Take the next step

Going beyond text, some e-commerce sites offer customer service in the form of digital characters that look a lot like the people in video games. Strategically placed, custom-designed characters provide guidance at sites like black light retailer TeknoBubbles.com.

Designed and hosted by CodeBaby Corp., the characters pop up at points where the retailer wants to encourage the consumer to take the next step in the buying process, inviting a visitor to click on pre-set questions. If the consumer clicks on a question, the character launches into the answer in audio form.

For example, a tie-dyed, the-’60s-never-died hippie called Dr. Funk answers questions about what TeknoBubbles are and how the company’s “secret formula, dude” sets its black lights apart from others. TeknoBubbles says 70% of site visitors stay on the site and interact with Dr. Funk while he explains product benefits. A test in November had one version of the site featuring the good doctor and the other without. TeknoBubbles sales increased 9% with Dr. Funk, the retailer says.