No more wasted meetings.

• Author: Donelan, Joseph G.
• Position: Includes related article - The CFO's Guide to Information Management: Groupware

Groupware holds the promise of making meetings more productive and democratic. For financial executives, that could translate to better ideas and less wasted meeting time.

Imagine reducing a two-day meeting to two hours. Or contemplate a budget-cutting session where the room is calm and quiet and where everyone's ideas get equal weight. How would you like to tell your boss her idea stinks, without fear of retribution?

These scenarios are all possible with a range of new products called groupware, the newest innovation in meeting management. Groupware products give individuals in a group the ability to express ideas simultaneously and anonymously. Meeting participants often feel the meetings are fairer, more efficient and less dominated by one personality.

In the last few years, companies like Sears, Roebuck & Co., J.P. Morgan & Co., Procter & Gamble, the Marriott Corp. and RJR Nabisco have used various groupware products. The 3M Meeting Management Institute found that meetings conducted with groupware are often more productive than traditional meetings.

Groupware products range in sophistication from portable keypads to full-blown meeting support rooms. Although groupware can apply to small or large groups, it's probably most useful for 10 to 30 participants. Typically, the systems allow group members to respond to questions or evaluate alternatives using an electronic medium. Systems with full keyboards also allow participants to "talk" through their computers. A host personal computer processes the participants' input and provides a summary or analysis. Hardware and software can range from several thousand to several hundred thousand dollars. Or, if you're interested in a test drive, you can rent systems for several hundred to several thousand dollars per day.

Some groupware systems display overall results (averages), scatter graphs of individual responses, diversity among responses (graphic presentation of variance) and comparisons of subgroup responses. You can print the output and then save it to a hard disk. Also, you can generate a variety of reports, tailored to your needs, and distribute them to the participants. For example, in a capital budgeting decision, the CFO may want a printed copy of a participant's anonymous comments on all the alternatives as well as the degree of consensus on each of the top three projects. On the other hand, the other meeting participants may need only the rank ordering of the top three projects. Other...