Premiere Global, like many companies, plans an annual January event to celebrate our success from the previous year, honor our sales leaders, and gear up for the coming year. This important event allows our Executive Team to communicate and reinforce our strategy, paving the way to accelerate our growth in providing on demand communication services.
Until last month, plans for 2009 were no different. Actually, we had bigger aspirations for next year. Instead of planning three independent events as in the past (North America, Europe, and Asia), we had planned a single, global sales kickoff in Orlando, Florida. Based on our confidence in our virtual meeting tools, however, we are changing to a 100% Virtual Global Kickoff Event.
The obvious benefit to this approach is the cost savings on travel, but upon deeper reflection, there are many more meaningful reasons to do so, such as:
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All Hands on Deck – Rather than selecting only 30% of our employees for the trip, we will be able to include 100% of our associates for the first time
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Productivity – More so than the cost of travel is the time and loss of productivity, particularly from those coming overseas. This time can be put to use more effectively.
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Overload – A single event leads to compacting large amounts of information sharing and collaboration into a 2 day window. Going virtual enables information to be more readily absorbed through a shorter, more impactful core session followed by a series of deep dive breakout sessions.
In light of our announcement, a handful of our premium clients are planning similar virtual events. This is a trend we foresee growing significantly in the future.
How about your company? Add your comments below
Tune in next month for another example of our PGi COS (Communications Operating System) at work – bridging the gap between in person and virtual meetings.
David
Tags: CTO Update
