THE latest stage of a £500,000 contract to provide an interactive conference recording and playback system for a global pharmaceutical company in the US has been completed by York-based Saville Audio Visual.

Saville’s Digital Event Services supplied its specialist recording service, eStream, and its conference delegate collaboration package Saville IDEA for a pharmaceutical conference, which was part of a new worldwide drug trial.

The Nether Poppleton-based business supplied the interactive technology for the blue-chip pharmaceutical business, travelling to Los Angeles to manage the recording and delegate engagement of the event, part of a series of events being held worldwide.

Saville IDEA allows delegates to use their own mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, to interact with the presenters and each other while allowing speakers to measure audience understanding and collect real-time data which, when analysed, also helps organisers to evaluate the effectiveness of the meeting.

The eStream system allows the conference recording to be watched back securely online exactly as it was presented live, with slide and video content synced. The entire conference remains online and can be accessed when needed for research or training.

Head of digital events at Saville, Jim Young, said: “This was the latest of many events for this client. We are very pleased to be growing this relationship and foresee exceeding £500,000 value during the life of the contract.

“The key to our success, which led to us going to the US for this event, is our investment in widely available technologies and the ability to build them into a bespoke total event interactive recording and evaluation service.

“Our expertise is such that, to ensure consistency across multiple projects, our clients prefer to pay for us to travel and provide our specialist services while managing any local suppliers, to ensure an outstanding end product is delivered.”

Saville was able to complete the work after obtaining a temporary goods export certification, known as an ATA Carnet, through overseas trade specialist, Chamber International, which has a base at York Science Park.

Mr Young added: “As we take variations on this innovative technology to cover events worldwide, we need ATA Carnets from Chamber International.

“In this case, using a Carnet enabled us to avoid lodging a £1,421 import bond in the US and the hassle of reclaiming it when the goods were repatriated.”

Saville Audio Visual, which has 300 staff, based across 12 UK offices, achieved a record £40million turnover in 2014.

Chamber International is the official issuing body for ATA Carnets in Yorkshire and Humberside.

The organisation also assists chambers of commerce with specialist international trade services and is supporting Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) by delivering its We Are International export campaign, which aims to being an extra £1.6 billion to 10 local authority areas and create thousands of new jobs in the next five years.