MeetMax 1X1 investor conference software has a new feature to maximize 1X1s at an event (please e mail corporateaccess@twst.com for details). Extracting maximum commercial impact from investor conferences is likely to intensify as a business priority. Reinforcing this trend is the increasing competition for buy side commissions. One survey this week anticipates a 17% drop year on year for 2011 in buy side commissions (http://www.integrity-research.com/cms/2011/03/14/csa-use-grows-on-buy-side/).

MeetMax was launched in 2003. At that time the one on one allocation process at investor conferences was managed in spreadsheets. Now most sell side firms understand the limitations of spreadsheets for such a commercially critical process as meeting allocation. Maximizing the number of individual meetings as well as the flexibility to accommodate changes quickly reveal the limitations of spreadsheets. To be specific: 1. Spreadsheets often lead to errors with the basic copy and paste function leading to data transfer error. MeetMax centralizes all the data so that it can be easily manipulated. 2. “Spreadsheet jungle” syndrome can occur as the volume of individual one on one starts to increase and changes need to be made. MeetMax one on one scheduler has many features but of course no double booking is possible. 3. Spreadsheets typically lack a dashboard. Dashboards present a quick overview of key information. MeetMax enables you at a glance to see key details such as who has signed up but not yet requested one on ones, what is the most requested company, number of investors, number of meeting requests and many more.

I stopped in to Apella, event space at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, in New York City, to meet Susan Sutler who has been a MeetMax event registration and 1×1 meeting client and who is now the conference services manager at Apella.  Susan offered me a tour, and told me some about the type of meetings and events they are hosting at Apella.  It is such an interesting space and so well-thought out that I wanted to share it.   The facility has two large configurable presentation rooms and a number of smaller breakout rooms.  The modern design is beautiful and complements the setting overlooking the East River.  One of the breakout rooms has an entire wall of whiteboards, in addition to state of the art electronics, making it perfect for scientific meetings.   If you would like to learn more about Apella, www.apella.com.

I had a call yesterday from an event planner in the UK asking about how flexible MeetMax is, really.  He has looked at a lot of different online registration systems, and his complaint is that they are all flexible, but only to a point. “This one lets you have just 4 pages; that one lets you have more but the page design/layout can’t be changed.”  I offered to put together a set of screen shots illustrating a few of the many variations you can do with MeetMax.  I thought you all might be interested as well — so click here to view.

If we can be of help to you with software for marketing/registration for your next event, please give us a shout – www.meetmax.com or meetings@twst.com

I recently found an article on Forbes.com that speaks to the business case for face to face meetings.  In their study of 750 business executives, Forbes reports that “executives expressed an overwhelming preference or face-to-face meetings, with more than eight out of ten saying they like in-person contact more than virtual. Asked why, those that prefer face-to-face meetings cited how they build stronger, more meaningful relationships (85%), the ability to “read” another person (77%), and greater social interaction (75%).”

Here at MeetMax, we specialize in working with corporations for which conferences are a key part of how they provide value to their clients.   At their conferences, they feature 1-on-1 meetings so that attendees can connect, in private pre-scheduled meetings, with companies with whom they may invest or otherwise do business together.  Just a sample of some of the events our clients have held this summer –

• China Conference: 451 registered. 119 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 1062 meetings in total
• Healthcare Conference: 478 registered. 92 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 542 meetings in total.
• Automotive/Transportation Conference: 304 registered. 228 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 2387 meetings in total.
• Energy Conference: 775 registered. 311 Attendees have 1-on-1 meetings. There are 1212 meetings in total.

At these events, attendees had on average between 4 and 10 meetings.  These are meetings that are scheduled for them before they even show up at the conference — so they know in advance the value that they will get from attending.  And the conference sponsor/organizer can make a strong case for attending – because they can guarantee some minimum number of private meetings.   With travel budgets being slashed, conference organizers need to be able to demonstrate why attending their conference is going to provide a return on investment.  And as the Forbes article points out, for the majority of business executives, face to face business development meetings provide a strong return on investment.

So that’s the case for including 1-on-1 meetings as part of your conference.  But, imagine scheduling 2387 meetings on a spreadsheet!  It hurts my head to think about how complex and time-consuming a task that would be, if you tried to do the scheduling without good tools.

At MeetMax, we provide you with the tools that meeting planners need to successfully manage a 1-on-1 meeting program within a conference.  By integrating 1-on-1 requests with online registration, you can streamline the requests process.  Our one-click scheduling tools make it simple to build the meeting schedules for each participant.  And, built-in communications tools make it easy to email schedules to all participants in advance.  On-site tools help you keep track of what’s going on throughout the day, and make sure that people are notified of any changes in their schedule as the day progresses.

When you are planning your 2011 user group conference, or trade association annual meeting, or industry conference – think about how 1-on-1 meetings can help you increase the ROI for your attendees and your company.  If we can be of help to you, please give us a shout – meetings@twst.com.

You asked for more automation in scheduling 1-on-1 meetings and with our latest release, you get it!

Now with one click you can schedule all of an attendee’s meeting requests.  It doesn’t get much easier than that.

MeetMax builds the schedule based on a few variables:  availability, preferences, request rankings.  And if you need to reschedule a meeting, MeetMax makes it easy to keep track of how an individual attendee’s schedule changes over time.

Are you new to coordinating 1-on-1 meetings?  Our MeetMax customer support specialists can offer suggestions on how to go about managing the 1-on-1 process, and can train you on how to use the MeetMax 1-on-1 scheduling tool.

Click here to read more about MeetMax’s latest release.

Corporate Access reports are becoming a staple of Investment Banking presentations to Corporates.  The problem for Bankers in many sell side firms  – is that generating these reports is much harder than it should be.

The Wall Street Transcript’s corporate access software has been designed to maintain the details and accuracy of the data set generated by a sell side Corporate Access business. MeetMax CAM generates clear and accurate reports of what management meeting took place, where, when and the buy side attendees.  These reports are then used for direct discussions with buy side firms about services and compensation.

What is less often discussed, is the considerable value of Corporate Access reporting for the investment banking side of the business. MeetMax CAM generates the most detailed reports available for each Corporate of which buy side firms the Corporate has met with, when, and where. This can be of great value to a banker in his dialogue with the issuer as part of the day-to-day relationship management. In banking, relationship management is critical as the deals are infrequent but very profitable – and it is vital that the bank demonstrate support of the Corporate between deals.

While the role of the Corporate Broker is well established in the UK, it does not have an exact counterpart in

• Advising Corporates on fund raising (e.g. new issues of shares).
• Helping generate interest among investors for the company’s securities.
• Making a market in the stock.

The global settlement of 2003 between the SEC, NASD and NYSE placed strong constraints on using research to provide Service #2 above.  Corporate Access is not subject to these constraints – and is a vital part of Service #2, that is needed to get to Service #1.

We are seeing increasingly that Investment Bankers include Corporate Access reports in their presentation materials for Corporate meetings. MeetMax CAM makes that quick, easy and accurate.

I think 2010 will be the year when buyside firms really get organized about tracking their Corporate Access services from the sellside.   There are a few trends making this likely.

• Critical mass.  After a few years of Wellington and SAC being the only guys driving this bus – there are now a sizeable number of buyside firms tracking what meetings they take so their traders can better figure out who to pay.  This further drives other firms to join the trend.
• They are getting help with new and cheaper tools.  Voting tools used to be exotic – but they are getting simpler and cheaper – and powerful meeting tracker services act as vote support systems or ersatz vote systems.   These are now being marketed by many firms which is just raising the awareness on the buyside.
• Corporate Access (and direct contact with analysts) gets ever more valuable – and guesswork is no longer a basis for buyside firms to allocate payment.

CAM is doing its part too.  We are the best way for brokers to report their meetings – by a long way.  In fact the only way to get into some of these buyside systems. Just doing our bit to help our sellside clients get paid.

One of our clients has a new 1-on-1 coordinator scheduling meetings for an event happening at the end of the week. She called today to find out how to do the scheduling in MeetMax. Forty-five minutes later, she had all of her meetings scheduled: 61 attendees, 21 with meeting requests, 6 companies, 54 total meetings. Here’s how we did it:

• Schedule requested meetings for the tier 1 attendees first, using a batch scheduler to make this process quick and simple.
• Repeat for lower tiers of attendees, until it looks like there are no more fillable requests.
• Then go through the list of unscheduled attendees, and use the information provided by the attendee, when they registered, to determine who is willing to participate in small group meetings. Schedule these meetings by combining attendees who have indicated similar levels of knowledge of the company with whom they will be meeting.
• Continue this until you have scheduled all attendees and/or filled up the available timeslots for each company.
• Review the rooms grid to make sure that the number of meetings in each timeslot does not exceed the available number of rooms. Adjust the schedules as necessary.

The secret to efficiently scheduling meetings: Collect information about each request (priority, preferred meeting size, knowledge of the subject) when the attendee registers.

Investment banking revenues are of course a little slower right now for banks.   But they need to keep their conferences going because it drives their institutional trading business.  So they are looking to improve the economics.

One trend we are seeing come into play is charging non-clients to attend.  For years, banks didn’t mind too much who attended their conferences.   Notionally they were for Clients only, but they didn’t go to much effort to keep non-clients from attending.   Now they are looking to charge non- clients to come – thus making them a profit-center.  Non-clients may still not get 1-on-1 meetings.

We’ve had to do a fair bit of work on MeetMax to accommodate the  need for this.