ON24 and ACCA Account for the Future

SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- With more than 162,000 members, 428,000 students, and a network of more than 89 offices in 173 countries around the world, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) is the global body for professional accountants. The organization offers business-relevant qualifications to people who seek careers in accountancy, finance and management and supports them throughout their professional careers through research, events and Continuing Professional Development (CPD). As part of its mission, the ACCA holds an annual meeting to deliver the latest industry information and trends and professional development content to its members.

Bringing members together – virtually
In 2011, ACCA took its conference online, leveraging the ON24 virtual environment platform. The ON24 platform gave ACCA the global reach, reliability and cost savings it needed to make the 2011 virtual conference a success and laid the groundwork for an expanded, five-day conference in 2012. At the same time, ACCA began to utilize the ON24 webcasting platform to deliver the organization's ongoing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training, providing localized, on-demand training to a worldwide audience at a lower cost and with more end-user convenience.

For the 2013 event, ACCA took a thoughtful look at "lessons learned" from prior events, in order to enhance the end user experience and maximize ROI. ACCA's growing success with virtual events and training led the organization to further expand the scope of the 2013 virtual conference, with a deeper focus on separate content tracks, theme-based content and video/multimedia.

Working with ON24, ACCA redesigned its virtual environment, creating a sleek lobby and 3D features to deliver a more engaging user experience and easier navigation. ACCA also defrayed production costs by selling sponsorships to companies within its industry, enabling key vendors and partners to promote their products and services within the virtual show environment, as well as to interact live with attendees using the ON24 platform's built-in chat features.

Finally, given ACCA's confidence in the scale, reach and "no-excuses" performance of the ON24 platform, ACCA decided to heavily invest in video and multimedia for 2013, with pre-recorded panel debates to showcase ACCA research, live audio panels featuring interactive Q&A sessions, and pre-recorded workshops to enable members to fulfill CPD requirements.

Measuring success – engagement and ROI
The format for the "new and improved" ACCA "Accounting for the Future" conference gave each day more clarity and relevance by closely mirroring the structure of a physical event so that attendees could select and attend the days, topics and sessions most relevant to them, enhancing audience convenience and saving time.

The updated conference format, theme-based content and multimedia aspects of the event meant that "Accounting for the Future" achieved overwhelming success. Key metrics for ACCA included:

• 17,500 registrations
• 16,500 live session views
• 45,000 hours of user engagement
• 200 minutes average in-event viewer duration

In addition, ACCA's sale of sponsorships in the show's virtual exhibition hall helped further reduce event cost, from £5.30 per delegate in 2012 to £2.20 per delegate in 2013. The record-breaking attendance of the 2013 event provided greater brand reach for ACCA, and post-event surveys were highly favorable. In fact, nine out of ten respondents indicated that they would recommend the online event to colleagues, citing the show's convenience and high-quality, engaging content.

"As we move forward to focus on global content and delivering locally, we know that ON24 will be able to support us in our future plans with their worldwide network of delivery partners and localization capabilities," commented Amrit Saroya, Marketing Manager for ACCA. Added Lars Christensen, ON24 Marketing Vice President, "ON24 supports a variety of critical business applications, including marketing and virtual training, with our patented webinar platform, helping customers achieve their program objectives while maximizing ROI. We are thrilled that ACCA has recognized and selected ON24 for the reliable global delivery of their powerful and engaging content."

About ON24, Inc.
ON24 is the global leader in cloud-based solutions for webcasting and virtual communications. ON24 offers a broad and innovative product portfolio accessible from any device and supported by industry-leading reporting and analytics. More than 1,000 organizations, including IBM, CA Technologies, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, Credit Suisse, Rosetta Stone, Ernst & Young and SAP, rely on ON24. Applications for the ON24 platform include demand generation, customer engagement, talent development and town hall meetings. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout the world. For more information, visit http://www.on24.com.

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SOURCE ON24