January 21, 2014
By Sarah Sluis,

Brainshark Releases Analytics Dashboard, Sales and Marketing Clouds

Cloud-based presentation company Brainshark unveiled a new analytics dashboard that provides information more visually within a single dashboard interface. The company also simplified the purchasing process for customers by dividing its offerings into a Sales Cloud and a Marketing Cloud. "We packaged it up for different audiences so it's more clear," explains Paula Crerar, senior director of content and product marketing for Brainshark.

In the past, Brainshark would offer customized groups of products depending on clients' needs, such as SlideShark and Brainshark On-Demand, which offer live and anytime presentation capabilities, respectively. The clouds simplify the company's product offerings. In addition to the Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, there is also a Learning Cloud and HR cloud for training and internal communications.

The Sales Cloud incorporates internal sales training capabilities with external prospecting abilities, including both live presentation tools and the ability to send and track presentations as follow-up. The Brainshark Sales Cloud also includes a CRM connector, enabling sales reps to send presentations directly from Salesforce.com. Tags sent with the presentation allow information about opens and viewing behavior to be sent right back to the CRM system.

The new analytics dashboard offers different views depending on roles. A sales manager can toggle views, the performance of their own presentations, as well as the activity of their reps. "You can drill down to each rep and see who is most successful, what best reps are doing, and coach the other reps," Crerar says. There are three views in total, for administrators, managers, and authors.

People logging into their analytics dashboard will also see an activity feed that features their recent actions. For a manger, that would also include the recent actions of their reports. The geolocation interface has been improved, featuring a color-coded map to show popularity of content globally.

The analytics dashboard also analyzes the effectiveness of an individual presentation as well as its performance to the author's other presentations. For each presentation, the author can look at the percentage of slides viewed, time spent, and if the person viewed it more than once. They can also drill down to see who viewed the presentation. Marketers and salespeople can compare the effectiveness of each presentation to each other, looking at the most popular presentations or ones with the most recent views. Users will still have the ability to create and schedule reports to be delivered to their inbox.

Crerar, who uses Brainshark in her own role as content strategist, particularly appreciates the ability to see which presentations are holding viewers' attention the most. "It gives me multiple opportunities to succeed," she says. "If retention dropped, or this campaign is not doing well, we say, 'Let's stop it,' and improve the presentation, editing for length or figuring out how to make it more relevant for the target audience."