At Fleet Securities Inc., for example, the loan-syndications team has embraced Web-based tools for some of its most sensitive operations. New England bankers aren't famous for their digital enthusiasms. But in this case, virtual work has meant dramatic reductions in paperwork and improved service to corporate investors -- which means that the bankers are on board.
Jeff McLane, a senior associate in Fleet's loan-syndications team, remembers what it was like before his group started using a secure online service to post materials for investors. "The worst was the time we went to the printer and discovered that someone had accidentally shredded our deal books. We ended up sending people to five different printers to make the deadline. But today, when you finish compiling material on a deal, you post them directly to the Web. You've eliminated the entire printing process."
McLane and his Fleet colleagues use a service called IntraLinks. Common to the banking and legal industries, IntraLinks allows companies to create secure Web sites for each deal. Team leaders determine which individuals can view which materials, and each time new material is posted, notifications go to the people who need to read or respond to it. Lawyers can even post due-diligence materials.
"Once the site is up, you can see who looked at which document," says McLane. "I can call up John Smith and say, 'You downloaded the book this morning. Do you have any questions or problems with it?' " Never mind that these virtual features save time and money -- they also buy peace of mind. No more worries about whether a FedEx package reached an investor who's on vacation. "It takes out the guesswork," says McLane.
William Maag, managing director of Fleet Securities, reports that virtual tools are figuring prominently in the final stage of the deal-making process: the close. Maag says that more and more investors -- sometimes up to 60% -- are participating via conference call, rather than making a trip. "We'll do a PowerPoint presentation, but the nice thing is that now, if you are on the phone, we can post the presentation to the IntraLinks site and people can follow along," says Maag. It's just one more piece of evidence that such tools for virtual collaboration are becoming reliable enough for businesspeople to bank on.
Alison Overholt (aoverholt@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company staff writer based in San Francisco.
Talk to almost any sales manager in almost any company, and you'll hear the same refrain: To close a big deal, you've got to meet your customer face-to-face. Michael Nelson, cofounder and CEO of emWare Inc., sings a different tune. He manages to close business without the hassles of long-distance travel. In part, that's because Nelson's company, which provides software and services that add remote-management capabilities to electronic devices, is ideally suited to doing business over the Web. But in large part, it's because emWare has been clever about making the virtual-sales process attractive to its customers.
Before the economic downturn, Nelson's company maintained a large sales force that was always on the road. Now, however, with his team scaled down to an eight-member sales-and-business-development team, virtual sales calls have become a necessity. And they've turned out to be enormously successful.
Previously, for example, a favorite sales technique was to bring a potential corporate customer to Salt Lake City, where emWare is based, for a technology demo. The signature gambit: Let the customer drop a Coke from a soda machine using the Web-based controls on a computer across the room. Today, using emWare's technology, the same demo can be performed from anywhere. EmWare's remote-device-management technology allows customers to take control of the soda machine and drop the Coke from Boston or Boise. A Webcam and a telephone audio hookup allow the customer to see and hear when it happens.
We tried the demo ourselves, and the next day, a can of Coke appeared at Fast Company's San Francisco offices. "It sounds hokey, I know," says Nelson. "But you'd be shocked to know how often that soda on the desk seals the deal." And there you have it -- a virtually perfect close.
The fast-growing world of electronic collaboration is filled with helpful tools -- as well stuff that promises more than it delivers. These are a few of our favorite things.
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