For Ceridian, digital transformation means cultural transformation. This crystal-clear strategy has earned the company multiple awards for innovation, company culture, and leadership, along with praise from its worldwide customer base.
Now, Ceridian’s making video an important part of that culture—with video playing a critically important role in the way Ceridian approaches, engages and supports its customers.
With the help of Vidyard, Ceridian has discovered its video ‘happy place’ with people across the company relying on video to create powerful, personal and impactful customer connections.
Video at Ceridian is now driving 30x its cost in pipeline influence, helping sales reps clinch critical accounts and deals and improving the efficiency of the company’s quota-carrying solutions consultants.
Under the leadership of CEO David Ossip, Ceridian has built an enviable technology brand, made possible through a laser focus on its cloud human capital management business, a deep commitment to employee culture, and technology innovation.
Progressive in every aspect of its business, it’s not surprising that Ceridian’s marketing team turned to online video as a dynamic and engaging content medium. However, while Ceridian regularly created marketing videos like product demos and customer stories, the company was underutilizing its investment in its enterprise video platform—that is, until Andrei Vexler arrived on the scene.
A former film-maker and agency producer, Andrei was brought in as the new head of video production to further integrate online video into Ceridian’s marketing mix. He began with an audit of Ceridian’s systems and processes. This included taking a closer look at Vidyard’s enterprise video platform, which led to what Andrei calls his “holy cow” moment.
Digging a little deeper, Andrei discovered that the Vidyard platform was completely underutilized. This represented a great opportunity. “I quickly discovered I could tie Vidyard into Salesforce and show our salespeople exactly what videos customers were watching and for how long. That was eye-opening. Within eight weeks our team had migrated all our relevant video content over to Vidyard. Having our video content in one place, versus hosted on multiple platforms made it easier to manage and to capture the metrics we needed.”
Today, Ceridian is in what Andrei calls ‘a video happy place,’ with multiple teams in the company relying on video in some way.
“I now open up Vidyard and see hundreds of videos showing up. We’ve gone from nobody using the platform to hundreds of people using video in their own unique way to communicate with stakeholders and engage customers throughout their buying journey.”
Under Andrei, the Vidyard platform has become an important part of Ceridian’s toolkit and is used daily by marketing, sales, and solutions consulting teams.
In the hands of Ceridian’s marketing team, video is integrated across the customer’s buying journey and entwined into various forms of communication. Video is now considered as a communication avenue when campaigns are planned.
Andrei uses the analogy of dating when he talks about Ceridian’s use of video to build a customer’s awareness, trust, and confidence.
At the top of the funnel, Ceridian uses short videos deployed through social media channels to grab a prospect’s attention and build brand awareness.
“It’s like the first step in dating. You want to introduce yourself and show your best side or you’ll lose the person,” says Andrei. “So, you need to provide content that works for your audience.”
In the middle of the funnel, Ceridian uses online video to build a prospective customer’s confidence in the company and its Dayforce human capital management (HCM) platform. This often includes one-minute product demos to show off Dayforce’s powerful features.
“It’s like that first conversation after the first date. You want to share some fun and interesting facts about yourself with the other person to see if you truly click,” says Andrei.
The relationship then progresses to longer, three-minute demo videos that demonstrate Dayforce’s full platform capabilities.
“At this point, the content should be gated,” explains Andrei. “In the dating world, this would mean we now have the person’s name and number and it’s time to get more serious.”
In the last mile of the buyer’s journey, Ceridian creates videos that showcase customer testimonials to build a prospect’s confidence. Embedding video within long-form content showcases Ceridian’s thought leadership.
“The most compelling call to action on our website is our play button. But after clicking play, the next thing a prospect will do is check video duration,” says Andrei. “We want to be respectful of people’s time, so a video summary combined with a piece of long-form content gives people options in the way they interact with that content. For people short on time, video can be a great entree. Then they’ll come back and engage with the longer piece when they have more time.”
Thanks to Vidyard’s video analytics, Andrei can now granularly measure the impact of video marketing on Ceridian’s pipeline. Using custom attributes within Vidyard, video assets can be segmented by type of video and industry. This allows Andrei and his team to measure the value of content such as customer testimonials.
“I recently ran an analysis on a fairly new piece of online video content and was able to determine that this single customer story had a pipeline influence 30x greater than its production cost,” says Andrei. “Given our videos typically have a shelf life of three years, we can expect that ROI continues to grow for quite some time.”
Ceridian’s sales team is a big fan of the company’s online video content, broadcasting it out to prospects and customers.
“They’re always looking for new video content and my team consistently rises to the challenge to create relevant and impactful material. We’ve all come to realize that when you use video, the impact is everywhere,” says Andrei.
Ceridian sales rep Jason Cahill uses sales videos daily in his outreach to clients. He uses Vidyard to embed video into his sales methodology, from initial awareness through to relationship building and into the contracting phase. He estimates that every one of his 300 to 400 customers has received a personal sales video from him at some point.
“I’ll often start by reaching out to someone on LinkedIn using Vidyard to introduce myself and offer up something of interest, such as an invite to a webinar,” says Jason. “Or if I have a prospect’s email I’ll send them a Vidyard for a warm introduction to put a face to a name.”
Jason connects his use of sales videos to Ceridian’s brand reputation for being a warm and personal organization.
“We have a more personal and unique sell, and maintain a unique spot in the market,” he says. “Recording videos for client outreach takes ‘yes’ or ‘no’ off the table for a prospect by establishing mutual interest and pre-knowledge. It makes you stand out from the sales emails a prospect might get from a faceless call center.”
Jason also creates videos for his out of office messages and to debrief colleagues who may need to step into a sale while he’s on vacation.
“I’ll record a video that outlines the questions I’d ask the prospect, references supporting documents and even imparts the tone and candor I use with the client. Folks covering for me found it super helpful.”
Sales videos have become a huge part of Jason’s day-to-day work life and it’s had a noticeable impact. In one case, he says he thinks it made all the difference.
“I was selling to an apple producer. It was a competitive deal,” Jason recalls. “Things were going well, but then I received a call from the CFO. He had the entire management team in the room. They said they liked what they saw with Dayforce, but we were neck-in-neck with our competitors in terms of pricing. In short, they wanted a price haircut.”
Jason took a few days to ponder his next move. He realized he needed to fully communicate Ceridian’s value and potential for return on investment (ROI).
“I knew that if I tried to get in front of the client in person, that request would be shut down. So I decided to send them a video executive summary,” he says.
Over the next few days, Jason researched everything he could about the apple business and built an executive summary that drew a parallel between Ceridian’s unique differentiation and the way apples are grown and propagated.
He also stood firm on his price. Jason crossed his fingers and sent it off. Then, he started getting pings that people were watching.
“The CFO called me up,” he says. “He once again had everyone in the room. This time, he said everyone from the President on down loved the video. The message was spot-on and it reminded them of the value of Ceridian. Then he told me that I’d won the business.”
Outside of marketing and sales, Ceridian’s solutions consulting team is using video and Vidyard to gain efficiencies in their customer communications processes.
Ceridian’s Global VP of Operations, Solution Consultants, Jennifer Wilford spearheaded the use of Vidyard within her team as a personal way to engage and communicate with prospects and customers. It’s now become an essential tool for all solution consultants.
“It took some time for folks to incorporate video into their communications, but it’s now fully embedded,” says Jennifer. “I suspect we’d have a riot on our hands if we tried to take Vidyard away.”
Jennifer admits that Vidyard’s ease of use was pivotal in the team’s adoption.
“If it wasn’t easy to use, it wouldn’t get used,” she says. “I have to do little to no training when showing others the platform. Instead, our discussions are all focused on how best to use the tool. Vidyard’s real-time notifications offer continuous reinforcement that people are looking at content, and who is watching.”
Video allows solution consultants to build a more personal relationship with prospects as they advance through the sales cycle.
“We talk a lot about engagement internally,” explains Jennifer. “It’s core to our culture. And as solution consultants, we talk about engaging our prospects during the sales cycle. So, it makes sense to use video. It’s a far more engaging way to communicate.”
Solution consultants record videos to follow up on meetings, sending out small micro-videos to answer each customer question. They have also turned to video as a replacement for building demo workbooks.
“We’d do these long, detailed documents with screenshots that took hours and hours to build,” explains Jennifer. “The hard part was that we knew the workbooks were not read extensively. Now we use video and the engagement with the content is much higher.”
Jennifer and her team also record videos to communicate with specific customer stakeholders to go deep on certain Dayforce functionality relevant to their interests.
“In a meeting with multiple participants, it is hard to speak to everyone’s requirements,” she says. “By using video, we can make sure their interests are addressed. We don’t want anyone to feel left out.”
Jennifer estimates that by using Vidyard her team has easily shaved 10% off their workload through improved efficiencies.
The solutions consulting team also creates videos in the place of in-person meetings, saving on travel and other expenses which easily ups the ROI.
In one case alone, video saved the team thousands of dollars in travel. A partner had requested that Ceridian present alongside them to a client in the U.K. The meeting had come up at the last minute and sending someone in-person would have cost Ceridian thousands in travel costs.
“We were able to use Vidyard to create a video instead,” says Jennifer. “The partner was delighted, the client was delighted, and even better, they were able to play the video at exactly the right time in the meeting.”
Ceridian’s solution consultants carry a sales quota so must stay focused on revenue-generating opportunities. At the same time, they’re called upon by sales and others in the company to demonstrate aspects of the Dayforce platform to customers.
“Video has been invaluable here as we can pull something pre-recorded from our Vidyard playlist to satisfy the customer requirement while not taking our eye off active sales cycles,” explains Jennifer. “We also share videos amongst our team and others to help save even more time.”
Like Jason, Jennifer turns to video for internal communications with her team.
“Vidyard is so easy for me and the people receiving the communication,” she says. “Rather than writing a long email, I just click and create a video.”
At Ceridian, Vidyard is integrated with the company’s Facebook and YouTube channels, with Salesforce, and with the company’s Marketo instance.
“Vidyard’s integrations are very slick,” says Andrei. “When it came time to integrate Vidyard with Marketo the team was pleasantly surprised and happy to see it took only 15 minutes to connect the two platforms. There were no questions. No issues. It was a phenomenal experience.”
Ceridian is a global human capital management (HCM) software company. Dayforce, the company’s flagship cloud HCM platform, provides human resources, payroll, benefits, workforce management, and talent management capabilities in a single solution.
Dayforce helps companies manage the entire employee lifecycle, from recruiting and onboarding to paying people and developing their careers. Ceridian provides solutions for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to global organizations.
