BT Conferencing EMEA, US, & Asia Pacific won the Stevie® Award for Best Multinational Company in Europe in The 2007 International Business Awards.  It also collected the Stevie Award for Best Support Team in The 2008 American Business Awards. Here we look at how this rapidly-growing company is managing global expansion.

With businesses trying to increase productivity while striving to be more environmentally aware, and looking to improve the work-life balance of their employees, conferencing provides a cost-effective and time-saving solution.  BT Conferencing manages the conferencing requirements of some of the biggest companies in the world--including seventy out of the FTSE100, and fifty-six of the Fortune 100--with its services, and is strategically partnered wwith Microsoft, Cisco, and other global providers, to jointly bring the latest technology to the forefront of communication.

Backed by the experience, strength, and stability of BT Group, BT Conferencing was established more than 25 years ago and is now a leading global provider of audio, video, and web-collaboration services. Its year-on-year growth has out-performed the conferencing industry expectation and, with its extensive global portfolio, BT Conferencing is the number one conferencing provider in the UK with reach in over 75 countries.

According to internal customer research reports, the following are just a few of the ways in which BT Conferencing has helped itself, other corporations and their employees, and the environment through its comprehensive portfolio of audio, video, and web-collaboration services.

For BT, its customers and employees:
          •  BT Conferencing saves BT an average of 338,607 face-to-face meetings every year.
          •  Each avoided meeting saves BT a minimum of $860 in travel costs and employee time, therefore BT Conferencing saves BT approximately £290 million in annual avoided costs.
          •  Average ROI is $8 for every $1 spent.
          •  For every nineteen regular users a company can save the time and cost of one more employee.
          •  BT Conferencing allows employees to work from almost anywhere and still communicate effectively with colleagues and suppliers providing a flexible working environment and better work-life balance; personal time saved is 6 days per annum.

For the Environment:
          • By preventing travel to and from meetings, in 2006 BT Conferencing saved 54,000 tonnes of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere.

Global Platforms
To meet changes in the marketplace and to support operational strategy both the EMEA and Asia Pacific businesses migrated to new global provisioning platforms.  This included focusing resource and expertise on high-touch/high-value services; matching service excellence with cost excellence; leveraging economies of scale through globalization; and embracing extended convergence of technologies.

These significant phases of globalization brought three BT Conferencing regions onto the same shared platforms and have enabled its customers to receive a recognizable and similar service globally.

This may sound simple on paper, but the provisioning platform cutover alone contained over seventy activities and had to be completed in one weekend.

Additionally, a rigorous four-week training schedule was implemented to ensure that all call centers were familiar with the globalized portfolio offering as well as the new operating systems. All this was completed while maintaining a ninety-eight percent customer satisfaction rate globally, and year-on-year volume growth at forty percent for two years in a row.

The move toward a globalized platform has seen the need for product changes to key portfolio offerings and support services. It also required a huge customer communication program involving the entire database of over 200,000 accounts; the designing of new collateral; the creation of personalized welcome packages; and a comprehensive email blast.

BT Conferencing received the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Market Penetration Leadership Award, which recognized strategic excellence in product innovation, marketing, and sales strategies that resulted in the largest gain of market share during the analysis period.

Team Spirit
In 2007 BT Conferencing took another important step to continued rapid growth by moving office locations from Braintree, Massachusetts to North Quincy, Massachusetts.  A planning team was assembled in order to map out all of the different phases and tasks that would be necessary in order to move equipment, systems, and almost 300 people while still conducting business as usual. 

The Technical Operations Center’s (TOC) Director, Brian Marques, was assigned to lead this team and one of his department’s many responsibilities included ensuring building security.  This consisted of security camera and card access installation, relocating desktop computers and ensuring connectivity to the data port, telephone connectivity (including obtaining and assigning new extensions), and verifying voice mail accounts.

Another essential role for the TOC team was to interface with the Infrastructure team in order to synchronize the TOC’s work on telephones and end-user-system access with Infrastructure’s total redesign of BT Conferencing’s US network.

In early 2007 the planning was well underway and move dates of July and August 2007 had been established for this two-phase project.  Things took an unexpected turn, however, when TOC team members were asked to step up and take a more proactive role as their leader, Brian, had been diagnosed with stage 3B lung cancer and would no longer be able to fulfill his part of this heavy schedule due to his treatment program.

The team stepped up in a big way.  Chris Larkin, a technical specialist, assumed Brian’s role and did a great job of meeting all the deadlines set out in the project plan.  Other team members, including Ed Branco, Paul Helmuth, Scott Cook, and Bryan Bales, also helped to ensure that the many tasks was completed in a timely manner.  This team was on hand and spent the entire weekend—days and nights—of Phase One in both Braintree and North Quincy, moving and setting up computers and phones for 150 employees.  After Phase One was completed, the team had to support two locations as BT Conferencing still had staff in the Braintree office.

During Phase Two they moved the remaining staff to North Quincy, once again giving up their personal time during the weekend to ensure a smooth transition.  Brian Marque’s TOC team proved itself a diligent and dedicated one and its members deserve full credit for pushing forward with the move without their group leader.

Good News
The good news is that at this time Brian’s cancer issue appears to be behind him and he is back working with his team. Having started with BT Conferencing in November 2005 as the US Technical Operations Center Manager, Brian Marques now leads the department as the Director of US Technical Operations/Infrastructure Change Management, bringing to the company years of experience managing a high-volume support center.  Brian's experience includes the creation and implementation of a technical support call center for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, as well as management of the CommonHelp call center for the Information Technology Division of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

More About BT Conferencing
BT Conferencing is based in the USA, EMEA, and Asia Pacific and specializes in the delivery of reliable, robust, and innovative conferencing solutions and product hardware to some of the largest companies in the world.  The company offers tailor-made solutions to customers, whether they are SMEs or major global businesses.  For more information visit www.btconferencing.com.

About Aaron McCormack, CEO
Aaron McCormack was appointed chief executive officer of BT Conferencing in August 2006 and has executive responsibility for BT’s Audio/Video Conferencing and Collaborations businesses worldwide with a revenue of $180 million and 750 people.

McCormack was vice president of BT’s Global Products division from 2002.  He was responsible for all BT’s network businesses totaling nearly $5 billion in revenue, spanning 120 countries, and growing at nearly ten percent per annum.
He also takes a prominent role in BT’s merger and acquisition activities and business development and is BT’s age diversity champion.

McCormack has held a variety of positions with BT and with its joint ventures, including those with AT&T and MCI.  He has worked extensively in sales, service, product marketing, and product development.  These roles have seen him living and working in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.  He currently lives in Boston.  McCormack holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering, Business, and French from Queen’s University of Belfast.

Citrix Systems, Inc., winner of a Stevie Award for Best New Product or Service in the 2008 International Business Awards, is helping business people to realize their dreams …

The editor-in-chief and webmaster for Bass West USA magazine may spend up to five days a week fishing from his 225-horsepower Legend bass boat—but he doesn’t neglect business. Wherever his tackle box takes him, Tom Leogrande relies on Citrix® GoToMyPC® from Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, Inc., to remotely access his office desktop. He can immediately handle business issues for his magazine, and the company’s two online and three brick-and-mortar stores, while pursuing his dream of becoming a national tour bass fisherman.

Sound like a dream come true?  Here’s how Tom Leogrande does it.  “Using GoToMyPC, my laptop, and an Internet connection through my cell phone, I can look at magazine layouts and collaborate with tournament directors on how to post results to our Website—all from the deck of my boat,” said Leogrande. “Instead of being anchored to my office PC, I can combine work and fishing.”

Escaping the office clock and the office cubicle are the most appealing aspects of working from an offsite location. Remote workers like Leogrande were once called “telecommuters,” but today they are more aptly dubbed “Web commuters” for their growing reliance on the Internet.  That’s according to “Web Commuting & the American Workforce,” a nationwide survey conducted by the polling company ™ inc., and sponsored by Citrix Online.

As a computer science graduate and former software developer, Leogrande appreciates the powerful technology behind the ease of use of GoToMyPC.  As a businessman, he values the up to forty hours per month he saves by working remotely instead of constantly driving to the stores.  And as a lifelong angler, he loves the flexibility of being able to work on the water.

A subscription service, GoToMyPC enables professionals like Leogrande to use any resources on their office or home desktop just as though they were sitting in front of their PC. Connection takes less than two minutes, and security is ensured with an end-to-end encrypted connection.

GoToMyPC even allows Leogrande to prepare for and participate in demanding bass fishing tournaments such as the Wal-Mart FLW Series while staying in touch with the office. “To compete, you need to pre-fish the tournament locations—and of course, practice all the time,” he explained. “With GoToMyPC I can work and also move to the next level of competitive bass fishing.”

“Tom Leogrande’s ability to combine his vocation and avocation is a great example of how GoToMyPC can raise productivity, dismiss geographical barriers, and free up time for the really important things in life—like fishing,” said Bernardo de Albergaria, vice president and general manager, eCommerce, for Citrix Online. “He can stay on the move and take the office with him wherever he goes.”

For more information on Web commuting with GoToMyPC, please visit http://www.gotomypc.com/webcommuting.  To join Tom on the water, visit Bass West USA or his own personal website at http://www.TomLeogrande.com.

About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 215,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 8,000 partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.

About Tom Leogrande
Tom Leogrande is editor-in-chief of Bass West USA magazine and webmaster for two of the premier fishing tackle shop Websites, BassTackleDepot.com and USacproshop.com. Tom’s background as a software developer and businessman helped him to form his own company, At Hand Software, where as CEO he continues to develop software and web-based programs for the fishing industry and beyond. Tom’s professional sponsors currently include: Legend Bass Boats, Inland Marine, Quantum/Zebco, Sufix fishing line, Tru-Tungsten, and Performance Tackle Custom Rods.  Tom had more than eight top-ten finishes in the 2007 tournament season, including a first-place finish on the Angler’s Choice Clearlake Trail.  

Citrix® and GoToMyPC® are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Vérité, Inc. is a digital communications agency in Sandy, Utah, U.S.A. founded by Kim Jones in 1993. The agency has won multiple Stevie Awards over the years for its interactive multimedia productions on behalf of clients such as Intel, Symantec, and USANA, among others, most recently at The 2008 American Business Awards.

We recently talked with Kim about how and why she founded Vérité, and how she has managed to maintain such a high level of creative output and superior production at the agency.

		Listen to Our Interview With Kim Jones of Vérité...

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My Magazines : Web site that offers to convert magazines, catalogues, brochures, or any other publication into interactive publications for free.
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