Banking firm meets online - Trends

Communications News, Nov, 2002

SHORT TAKE

"Since we have no choice but to be swept along by (this) vast technological surge, we might as well learn to surf."

--Michael Soule in Conservation for the 21st Century, 1989, by David Western and Mary C. Pearl.

As price points come down and productivity gains go up for organizations opting for videoconferencing solutions, and available speed on most enterprise cabling networks may prevent pervasive desktop videoconferencing in the near term, Web conferencing is stepping into the gap.

According to Collaborative Strategies in San Francisco, more than 94,000 companies/organizations will be using data-/Web-conferencing systems worldwide by 2005. While the firm estimates the market will reach $10 billion within the next three years, research firm Frost & Sullivan expects the Web-conferencing market to grow from $266 million in 2001 to $2 billion in 2007.

Bob Scarlata's firm is one of those that has turned to online meetings. Scarlata, president of The March Group, an investment banking firm that assists clients worldwide with mergers and acquisitions, corporate

finance, restructuring and growth strategies, learned the benefits of Web conferencing firsthand. Where meetings are held is not what counts; content and quality are. Scarlata wants clients to see the important things first, then move on to other details.

"A face-to-face meeting is always preferable," Scarlata says, "but not always possible, and can be very time-consuming and expensive. In today's economy, we have to come up with ways to do it cheaper and more efficiently."

Many of The March Group's meetings involve reporting the valuation of a company to its executives. "But we don't want to provide that information," Scarlata explains, "until we've thoroughly educated them on how and why we came to those conclusions. Maintaining control of the meeting can be very difficult."

New Web meeting software from Cata Technologies, Sturgis, MI, enables Scarlata to exercise more control in his online meetings, just as he would in person. The software takes advantage of the Internet, allowing interactive meetings with as many as 50 people in one virtual room. Users can make sales presentations, present financial information in a spreadsheet, share ideas with PowerPoint and Web pages, conduct polls with results displayed in bar charts, and send messages. The software, available for a monthly fee, is maintained by Cata, removing the need for installation, maintenance and upgrading.

"It's exactly what we would do with a face-to-face presentation," Scarlata says. "We take select portions of the information and highlight it to clients. With this service, we can control what they see and when.

"With the ability to make a presentation over the Internet to multiple people, where we absolutely control the data and how it is presented," he says, "means clients are pleased that they're able to get the information they want in a fairly quick and easily understood manner."

According to Scarlata, such virtual meetings save his firm and the participants time and money in travel costs, and allow greater flexibility than physical meetings. "Clients might want to have their accountant or attorney or financial adviser involved. Try to get all of those people on the same page at the same time in the same place. That is a monumental task," Scarlata says. "With this solution, we reduce the amount of time it takes to make such a presentation and do it more efficiently for everyone involved.

"This program has changed the way we do business," Scarlata says. "It generates many new clients more quickly and easily than any other alternative sales strategy."

For more information from Cata Technologies: www.rsleads.com/211cn-261