Increasing Efficiency in Audio Management

1. Business Overview

ProLingo, a leading company in the global simultaneous interpretation market is using microphone discussion systems (push to talk microphones) in their presentation audio support efforts. They wanted to increase interpreter sound feed quality for events with high discussion components.

2. Key Facts

• 60% of Q&A sessions are affected by lacking participant's audio amplification
• 100% loss of foreign audience participation negatively impacts events simply because interpreters are not provided the Q&A audio feed
• Global meetings turn into local meetings without interpretation, especially during Q&A exchange
• Number of ProLingo events affected: 170 per year

3. Situation & Challenges

If panel or audience participants are not heard by the interpreters for even brief times they were often confronted with situations where content needed to be written off as lost as there is no means to recover the lost audio, especially in a live event. Second big challenge is to integrate the representatives of a foreign organization in the communication exchange. There has been no mode in place to determine appropriate internal communication rules for the centrally managed event host to pool to the global opinions. This absence of transparency led into excess segmentation between markets.

4. Solution

Microphone discussion systems are used for any event with audience communication required. Push to talk microphones have an integrated power supply and infrastructure to communicate either wired or wirelessly among audiences of any size. In order to capture all of the audience input or questions, the system needed to do integrated audio management providing a single audio output from an unlimited number of microphones. However, those microphones are completely interference free and require the participant to activate the microphone with the push of a single button (push to talk), also activating a bright light ring indicating the unit is turned on.

All discussion systems are equipped with audio management designed to operate a minimum of four microphones at the same time, as well as speaker timer, event recording, and presidential override module. A unique combination of audio technology and a strong battery pack overcome the challenge that wireless systems had no self-power supply. The audio devices transmit their data when activated through dedicated frequencies to a management module. All transmissions are encrypted for tap proof security. Additionally, all wireless devices can be reset for quick room turnovers with minimal time.

5. Key Benefits & Payback

• Now ProLingo has the overview on how many microphones are under control by which group per day.
• Number of messages which have been written off in the past was eliminated.
• Time to gain control back of microphones with unknown messages is now in the hands of the chairman.
• Internal communication between the event participants from any language background can now be interpreted sharply, instead of being written off.
• Evaluation of contributions by all international markets leads to increase event capacity which resulted in increase of registration revenue.

ProLingo increased its overall microphone inventory from a pioneering 50 in 2005, to 600 in 2011.

6. Achievements

• Implementation of the discussion microphone devices lead into three times more focus input by international delegates. Some events doubled international attendance over a period of two years, estimated primarily, due to increased registration.
• Complexity in knowledge pool and data exchange is increased which decreases workforce cost employed for those processes in post-event queries.
• Additionally, the provided information gives ad-hoc decision opportunities in various operational processes. 

Testimonial Statement

"We can now discuss the same amount of global information with a significantly smaller budget. The system works for our clients, especially on the customer leadership exchange level."

Katherine Holoman, CMP, IBM Reference Team, December 2010