The Virtual Face to Face

Pricing for professional firms of this size starts at $10,000 varying on the number of users and the configuration. But smaller firms can sign up for a less souped-up version for as little as $39 month or $395 a year.

And it’s easy to invite someone to a meeting in either version. A user can be paging through an online document, and decide he wants to chat with a co-worker, or a client. One click on the ‘start meeting’ button and a personal meeting room opens, allowing the host to send e-mail invitations with the meeting room URL automatically printed into the message.

In the professional version, meeting rooms are always running, allowing hosts to have slides, documents, portfolios, or anything they want to share always prepped and ready to go at a moment’s notice. “It’s like I’ve put a piece of paper on my desk,” Slater says. “It stays there until I move it.”

Compliant Ready

Founded in France, Tyson’s Corner, Virginia-based Genesys has worldwide reach. And while not as limber and Flash ready as Connect, Genesys is a favorite of financial firms from large shops such as Lehman Brothers, to one-man offices. But whatever the size of its customers, Genesys emphasizes its ability to neatly integrate with a company’s compliance needs.

As it developed its recording capabilities, Genesys decided to offer users a choice in how they wanted to record–voice, Web, or both. Users also have storage options for recordings–either on a Genesys server at $200 for 90 days of storage, or sent to the host as a CD or Zip file for $100.

“Lehman had its version re-branded for them and they have a requirement that when any employee starts a Web meeting it has to be archived,” says Terry Terranova, vice president of marketing for Genesys. “So instead of having to push a button to record, it automatically does it for them.”

But multi-billion dollar firms aren’t the only ones who benefit from the way Genesys is structured. Its pricing model makes it especially friendly to small shops. Tagged the ‘multi-media minute’ by Terranova, Genesys bills its users on a ‘pay as you go’ plan, starting at 10 cents a minute. That can drop down to just 3 cents a minute depending on use, and includes 24-hour support around the globe, in real-time over the Web.

That’s a feature that sold Lillian Meyers, a financial advisor with Meyers Financial in Sonoma, California. “When I use software I always have nightmares,” she says. “What can go wrong, will. But Genesys customer support has been fantastic.”

Meyers currently uses the tool to review tax returns and financial plans with clients, and plans to upgrade her service to include Web cam support by the fall. “Then they’ll be able to look me in the eye, so to speak,” Meyers says. “We’re human beings and we still like to have eye contact. And this will allow me to do a better job for those clients who can’t come into my office.”

Knowing that some of its customers want their tools to be more mobile, Genesys is also working on integrating its Web conferencing product with Blackberry devices so that a participant could jump into a meeting even if they’re late getting to the office. While a user wouldn’t be able to see slides, they could participate through an audio link. Also in the works is being able to start a meeting from an SMS message. “That’s all coming up in the October time frame,” says Denise Persson, executive vice president of marketing for Genesys.

One downside, however, is the lack of Mac support. But since Genesys CEO Francois Legros recently acquired a Mac for his office, Persson acknowledges that the company is working towards a Mac integration hopefully by “early next year,” she says.

Secured Service

Eric Choi, GoTo Meeting’s product marketing manager, likes to think that his product could accommodate any firm, at any size, as well. And with a variety of products from meetings with two people, to seminars for 1,000 attendees, he’s pretty accurate.

Acquired by the Fort Lauderdale-based Citrix in 2004, GoTo Meeting was originally a simple screen-sharing tool. The demand to share data with larger groups of people in real-time helped boost the firm in the financial sector. One convert is Syracuse, New York-based Cadaret, Grant which first started using the service to push out platform upgrades to its 900 advisors in 2004.

Mary Pat Ganley, VP of business development with Cadaret, Grant knows her advisors are itching to use the tool beyond that and want to try it on seminars with new prospects, as well as to help them build a more personal relationship with current clients. “This will be a real strength for the service and relationship side,” she says. “And being able to meet the expectation of a technology-advanced client is crucial.”

Ganley cites an experience she recently had with her bank, where she went online simultaneously with a customer service representative so they could look at her account together. “We solved the problem in less than five minutes,” she says. Ganley believes this experience, offered to clients, could transform the industry. “Anything you can do better, faster, and smarter ends up on your bottom line,” she says.

GoTo’s Choi also likes to emphasize the “intimacy” in the way a one-on-one meeting can be set up in seconds. A small applet does need to be downloaded before a participant can join a meeting, and presenters must be on a PC–Mac-users can only attend sessions for the time being, though Choi says a Mac version for presenters in being considered.

Surprisingly, GoTo Meeting does not support Web cam integration. The firm believes that users aren’t as interested in seeing other attendees during the sessions as they are about making sure they can get online and share, quickly, and easily. But GoTo also doesn’t support VoIP, requiring all attendees to join with a landline to hear conversations rather than listen to audio filtering through their PC.

What GoTo has poured resources into, however, is security, offering 128 SSL encryption of all its sessions–a plus for those dealing with client financials such as account data and social security numbers.

GoTo also offers users a selection of recording options from archiving the file on a customer’s desktop, or hosting, and streaming it from GoTo’s servers.

While Cadaret, Grant records meetings on its own right now, Ganley mentions that she may adopt GoTo’s recording options when the firm upgrades its five licenses to add five more. The cost is well priced as well with licenses ranging from $49 to $99 a month with unlimited usage. Ganley too is a fan of the help desk tool, which gives Cadaret, Grant access to an advisor’s computer to visually see if a setting is wrong, and immediately fixing it. “We can actually take over their computer,” she says.

But the key reason the firm has adopted Web conferencing is because she knows how the tool will expand how her advisors interact with clients. “This allows technology to enhance that relationship rather than replace the personal side,” she says. “Instead of driving one hour for ten minutes of my advisor’s time, I can do a 20-minute call once a month. And the advisors can make that valued relationship that much stronger.”

Lauren Barack is a New York-based freelance business writer who specializes in stories on technology, finance, and parenting. She can be reached at [email protected].