Unless there are extra curricular reasons for a business trip – perhaps you crave a nearby golf course or fishing hole – there really isn’t any need for IR practitioners to be hanging around departure lounges, puffing and sweating between connecting flights and generally hastening the arrival of the funeral directors, all for the sake of another meeting of identical nature in a different city. Smart IROs are fast realizing that internet and telephone conferencing conducted from the comfort of their own desks is the desirable alternative to all that out-of-town exertion.
Teleconferencing has been a useful tool for some time but is now being wedded with the internet to bring a greater sense of ‘the real’ to virtual meetings involving far-flung participants. And there are a number of products vying for the IR dollar.
One leading application is MShow. As Genesys Conferencing’s executive vice president for Europe, Andy Pearce, explains, the product offers both a live audio conference and access to a series of slides on participants’ PCs.
MShow is a component of the Genesys TeleEvent package, which uses slides in a more sophisticated format than the standard PowerPoint presentation – often combining graphics, sound and animation. ‘It also gives you a view of who is listening in or watching and where people are situated worldwide via a list of names and a geographical map,’ Pearce explains. ‘This is important because sometimes when you are in an audio conference, you forget where and who the other people involved are.’
Getting on air
Another related concept which harnesses the power of the internet is audio streaming. This lets a normal teleconference be simultaneously broadcast over the web so thousands of additional people can listen in alongside those involved in the main audio conference. While it’s still not technically possible for the audience to ask direct questions, an e-mail feedback system takes queries that can be responded to ‘on air’. Participants can also access presentation details via the internet or listen to a recording of the conference after the event. Another advantage of audio streaming is that it enables a conference to be archived and then segmented by topic.
Some of the technology may sound daunting, but as an IRO, you can take on responsibility for as little or as much of the event logistics as you wish. Still, companies like Genesys stress that they can offer helpful project management experience and have a good knowledge of the latest and best presentation software available.
‘Our facilities enable people to communicate far more easily, far more frequently and far more quickly so you don’t have to be thinking about organizing a hotel or some hall. And we treat each event as if it’s being broadcast on the TV or the radio, that is you practice and put a lot of planning into how you are going to appear,’ Pearce says.
Such is the flexibility of these web-enabled services that the time lapse between announcing an event and staging it can vary widely between a matter of days and a handful of hours. For bigger and more significant events more time should be allowed for the contact details to be distributed to as many potential participants as possible.
Of course cost savings are another major attraction of avoiding business class air travel. An event held using services such as TeleEvent could cost as little as 20 percent of a traditional live event.
Pearce adds: ‘The internet is attracting all types of companies to get involved and they all want to be seen as high-tech. So conferencing generally and conferencing in tandem with the web enables you to put across a very positive image of your company. As well as a technological awareness you are demonstrating some very good cost control – which I’m sure would be of interest to many shareholders.’
One rival of MShow is Conference Center 2000, offered by US-based PlaceWare. This lets additional information be provided as the presentation unfolds using adaptable text slides and on-screen ‘white boards’. Such live interactivity also means voting can occur live using polling cards either pre-prepared or filled in during the event. It also incorporates chat facilities for one-to-one conversations during the session. The whole event can also be staged inside a variety of on-screen virtual ‘meeting places’ – a small seminar room or a larger auditorium. It just depends on the number of participants and the size of the ‘venue’ required.
Nigel Dunn, vice president of PlaceWare Europe, says this type of offering may eventually replace most face-to-face meetings between people from different locations as workload and time pressures increase. But what does this virtual experience actually feel like for the presenter and the audience? Dunn uses a recent PlaceWare event staged on behalf of Cisco Systems and involving more than 100 fund managers as a good example of what to expect.
In this instance the presenters were trained just 30 minutes before they used the system and the audience needed only the conference call telephone number and the PlaceWare URL. The rest of the process was invisible and carefree as the seven presenters showed their PowerPoint slides and ‘seamlessly swapped’ between each other’s presentations. Other Cisco staff served as moderators and fielded text-based questions from the audience. This allowed many more questions to be asked in addition to the 15 minutes of interactive Q&A set aside at the end.
This PlaceWare service is particularly good for special events when everything has to be ‘professionally handled from start to finish’. But many PlaceWare users have their own ‘conference centers’ enabling them to have unlimited use for a single annual subscription. They can then arrange meetings and use the facility without involving PlaceWare’s staff. Presenters and audience can be informed of the next event using the ‘invite wizard’, which sets up the automatic distribution of an e-mail invitation with an embedded URL link to join the session.
Other rivals to MShow and Conference Center are WebEx, Contigo and NetPodium – as well as certain streaming webcast services which are really more like an internet ‘radio or TV’ service. StreetFusion.com and the Investor Broadcast Network (formerly Vcall) combine web conferencing with event scheduling for the investment community.
But there are less complicated alternatives. A new facility just launched by AT&T might suit companies with retail investors in their sights. AT&T’s Conference Casting service enables companies to incorporate pictures, charts or photographs using the standard PowerPoint software.
Joseph Weglein, product manager for AT&T executive teleconference services, says one good use for the new service would be for retail investors dialing into the internet using a standard telephone line. ‘The required capacity is pretty small – even in a live mode,’ he explains. ‘In fact, without the participant realizing it, when they first go into the web site everything gets downloaded. So during the conference all that’s coming across the internet is a very small signal, to tell the computer to flip to the next page.’
The user puts together a PowerPoint presentation and ‘uploads it’ onto the AT&T site. During the event, the client controls the flow of the slides. Weglein says Conference Casting can support thousands of participants simultaneously. The only limitation would be if there were a lot people on the same internal network rather than the public internet.
He believes most companies are quite content with the level of sophistication Conference Casting can offer. ‘There doesn’t appear to be a lot of value in seeing someone talking. If you have a picture of them and can hear them speaking then it’s usually good enough. The problem with moving video over the internet is that it requires a high speed connection. Try doing it in a basic dial-up mode and the quality is not there. If you don’t have good quality then most people would rather not have it at all instead of having someone who appears to be moving in slow motion.’
AT&T doesn’t have an online chat facility built into it yet, but – as with the other services – questions can be answered during the usual telephone conference or via an e-mail feedback mechanism. Answers to common questions can also be posted on the client’s web site after the call.
‘This appeals to any size of company but particularly the smaller ones. If they want to get the word out and attract new investors it’s a great way for them to very inexpensively allow potential and existing investors to hear what their managers have to say,’ adds Weglein.
In short, the choice is very broad and there’s something to suit all pockets and tastes. What next? Virtual reality golf courses and fishing holes are probably already in the works.
