Great America Networks Conferencing Blog

High Quality at Low Prices Lead to Record Growth at Great America Networks Conferencing

                                            Great America Networks Conferencing announces growth and expansion numbers. They continue to attract new clients due to their excellent quality at affordable prices. They also announce their new products that have launched recently and what is in the research and development phase.

                                                                         

While other providers sign up new accounts at a higher overall per minute rate, they then have to deal with other companies continuing to attack their base of accounts and enticing them with a significantly lower per minute rate. When this happens, they must either reduce their rate, or in most instances lose the account entirely because their client feels cheated.

                                                       

                                                                               

                                            Lemont, IL (PRWEB) June 26, 2007 -- Revenue numbers and minute totals continue to increase at a record-breaking pace during the 1st half of fiscal year 2007. The organization has grown their overall monthly revenue by a factor of 120% and achieved monthly minute growth of 90% since January of 2007. These numbers are continuing to increase on a monthly basis despite the continual price erosion occurring in the conferencing industry as a whole. President of the organization, Reno Provine states, "While other providers sign up new accounts at a higher overall per minute rate, they then have to deal with other companies continuing to attack their base of accounts and enticing them with a significantly lower per minute rate. When this happens, they must either reduce their rate, or in most instances lose the account entirely because their client feels cheated." The growth has led to the formal budgeting of their next set of expansion ports that will be finalized over the next 60-90 days.

When asked what the key factors are that attribute to the current growth patterns for the organization, Reno Provine, President of Great America Networks Conferencing replied, "Our clients are finding that our organization is 100% focused on providing them with the greatest conferencing experience at the best value. Our typical client saves 60% on web and audio calls with us. They also see a significant increase in the level of service that they receive at the same time. It's a significant win-win for everyone involved. Our firm has the highest quality fully redundant bridging facilities with no VOIP circuits. All calls are guaranteed to sound perfect. Unlike other vendors, we don't hide fees like minimum conference charges, bait and switch rates, and hidden per call or user fees. We provide them an invoice that is detailed, yet simple to understand."

Great America Networks Conferencing has also released a number of new products and services in 2007 that improve the business conferencing experience while lowering costs, such as Audio Streaming, Integrated Audio and Web Conferencing, Virtual World Services in Second Life, Podcasting, and much more. Future products in development are collaboration applications for wireless devices, High-Definition Video Conferencing Solutions, and an expanding International presence.

For additional information or a sample copy, Contact: Joanne Davis at 312-432-5313.

Great America Networks Conferencing is a premiere provider of audio, video, and web collaboration services at affordable prices. They serve clients across the globe, and have offices in Chicago Illinois, Los Angeles California, Sacramento California and Minneapolis Minnesota. Their website is at www.ganconference.com.  The company was founded in 2005 by Reno Provine and Eric Brackett.

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Response to a LinkedIn Question

Virtual worlds - what are the most popular and / or successful virtual worlds in China / Asia or your part of the world?

                 

I'm particularly interested in the growth of virtual worlds around the world - which are the most popular, what is the business model, who are the users, etc.

All thoughts welcomed
Rohit Talwar
rohit@fastfuture.com

While some of these answers are accurate, the answer truly depends on what context you are using the term "virtual world".  In a traditional gaming sense these are commonly referred to as MMORPG's or Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games.  These are definitely "virtual worlds" per se, but the market and makeup of the individuals who use these are geared 100% towards entertainment purposes.

The non-gaming Virtual World environment typically consists of platforms such as:  Second Life, Project Entropia, There.com and several more.  These environments are truly structured around a virtual and social experience that don't have gaming as the core structure.  Although Project Entropia falls very closely into the "gaming" platform it's true draw is based around it's Real Time Cash Economy that allows individuals to purchase virtual goods and services for "real" currency.  In effect you trade your dollars, yen, or credit card information to purchase their in-game currency.  You can then use this currency to purchase things, upgrade your character, start businesses, conduct ecommerce trade, etc.

As far as growth goes, World of Warcraft is by far the king of the hill with over 8 Million subscribers when I last checked, and they are continuing to grow.  In a pure virtual world play Second Life has 7.2M subscribers, but the vast majority of these individuals only login once and never return, and most of them don't actually pay any subscription fees.

Where is all of this going?  Who's to say, but it's an exciting time and the promise is there that will allow individuals and businesses to truly collaborate in real-time in a seamless fashion with virtual representations of themselves.  This can range from project/team collaboration to dating services, to poetry readings, seminars, prototype launches, and much more.

The ability for individuals to communicate globally in an immersive 3-D environment is a thought that has many companies investing millions of dollars into the potential of the idea.

Reno Provine
http://www.ganconference.com
Great America Networks Conferencing

Additional Account Executive

Great America Networks Conferencing is pleased to announce the hiring of William Baumann in our Chicago Headquarters.  William is an energetic individual who will be utilizing his enthusiasm and high level of energy to build a solid base of accounts.  He will be focusing on calling out to clients and offering our services throughout the United States.  He will also be closing large deals in the Chicago area, as well as calling on key accounts in our other regional offices:  Los Angeles CA, Sacramento CA, and Minnesota.

We are pleased to have someone of his caliber on board, and are looking forward to the high level of growth that we feel he will achieve.

www.ganconference.com

New Account Executive

Great America Networks is proud to announce that Anthony Russo will be performing in an Account Executive role for our organization.  He will be based out of the Cleveland Ohio office and will focus on marketing our services to larger organizations throughout the United States.  Anthony has been in the sales and management industry for 15 years and brings a high level of energy and enthusiasm to his role.

www.ganconference.com

Importance of a Quality Sales Management Tool

When I'm talking with new potential clients and friends and partners, a question that always comes up is "Who do you use for CRM"?  As each individual goes around explaining the how's and whys for their CRM selection, it doesn't take me much time to formulate my thoughts because I have been utilizing an excellent CRM tool that goes above and beyond traditional CRM functionality.

If you're like most companies, the foray into the world of Customer Relationship Management tools comes about due to finally outgrowing the normal "Excel Spreadsheet" process, or the basic data storage applications such as ACT or Goldmine.  During my search for a new CRM tool, I evaluated several different company products, models and methodologies.  Here were some of the requirements that I needed to fill:

• My sales staff was overburdened administratively - reduce administrative burden
• My sales cycle was complex and spread throughout multiple servers (the information) - streamline and publish actual sales cycle
• My sales materials were spread throughout various servers - central documents library
• Sales letters and responses varied from rep to rep - formalize outgoing communication
• Attachments were too large to be received via email - central document retrieval capabilities
• Inability to see if clients actually read the documents - ability to determine actual read statistics
• Sales reps didn't know the specific talking points to cover - standard talking points by position
• Reporting all done through spreadsheets and manually - comprehensive statistics capabilities
• Ability to differentiate our sales process - stand out from our competition

I found the answer to all of these when I made the decision to utilize a hosted solution from Landslide.  Their software has allowed me to quickly and easily manage a group of sales representatives spread throughout multiple states, and attach meaningful statistical results to each of my employees and my marketing actions.  This allows me to truly see the value of various marketing and advertising campaigns, as well as giving me the satisfaction that all of my employees are following up on their leads in a timely and professional fashion.  The ability to statistically manage each sales activity (phone calls, emails, proposals generated, proposals read, revenue per marketing source) and much more has allowed me to increase my current business monthly recurring revenues by 50% in the first half of 2007 alone.

The VIP service that allows myself and other staff members to simply forward information for various leads to their administrative staff and have everything entered into our systems for us, along with updates throughout the sales cycle, allows my staff and I to spend more time taking care of our clients instead of doing administrative tasks.

In closing, the executive team at Landslide are a true pleasure to work with, and they care much more about your company, you as a person, and your success, then the actual selling of their product.  They stand beside their product 100% and I highly advise the use of their CRM/Sales Management Product.

I recently left my role that I was in when I originally selected the Landslide solution.  I am now at my own startup firm and I am utilizing the Landslide tools in my new business venture as well, and I couldn't be more pleased.

You can find out more about them at www.landslide.com and if you do decide to go with them, let Tom Costa and Razi Imam know that I said hi.

Reno Provine
President
Great America Networks Conferencing
rprovine@ganconference.com

New Website Launch

In an effort to keep up with the quickly growing demand for more quality information in the conferencing and collaboration industries, Great America Networks Conferencing has refined it's website.  The original structure was not able to support the amount of new pages and links required to continue our frenzied growth.  In addition, the navigation structure was getting very cluttered and confusing.  The new site, launched on June 9th, is a much cleaner design that is focused on simple navigation that allows our clients to easily retrieve the required information.

For more information, or just to see our new website, simply go to www.ganconference.com.  As always, we appreciate the valuable feedback received from everyone.

Reno Provine
President
Great America Networks Conferencing
rprovine@ganconference.com

Second Day of the San Francisco Collaboration Summit

As promised, I'll go into a little more depth about the second day of the conference, and what I took away from the event.  Several excellent workshops were given by different suppliers, I attended the Polycom and ThinkEngine networks to learn more about their offerings, and about their companies.  I came away with several ideas of additional products and services that we can offer to our clients, as well as some general time frames to make these happen.

One of the most intriguing topics of the day was based around how universities and other places of higher learning are making the foray into the collaboration world.  The concept of these organizations being able to offer truly interactive learning experiences for their students in a virtual environment is an incredible opportunity for a company that takes the right approach.  This is a very quickly growing market segment, and one that our company will be gearing up for earnestly as the next few months come along.

The age old question of "What is the future of conferencing?  And where is it going?"  is always a hot topic for service providers like myself.  Needless to say, the importance of providing top-notch levels of customer service and a truly "human" experience is going to be even more important in the future as potential clients literally have hundreds of options to choose from.  Whether to purchase premise-based equipment or an outsourced service provider is always an important decision.  Then, on top of that you have several hybrid solutions to choose from such as having the equipment on premise, but having it managed by the outsourced service provider.  The next few years will be very exciting indeed.

The technology exists today to truly recreate the experience of being "right there, next to the person".  The question in most cases is whether or not the cost justifies the results. 

Signing off for now, and going to head to another session. 

Reno Provine
President
Great America Networks Conferencing
www.ganconference.com

Collaboration Summit in San Francisco

We made the journey from Chicago Illinois over to San Francisco California to attend the Wainhouse Collaboration Summit.  The event so far has been excellent, with several hundred participants in attendance, ranging from smaller companies like mine, all the way up to the big boys such as Microsoft and Cisco.  The theme of course is conferencing and collaboration and there are many thoughts on this topic to be sure.

The first day was focused on the videoconferencing industry, and featured several vendors with outstanding technology and tightly integrated user interfaces.  The products ranged from standard definition video feeds to High Definition Video and of course everything in between.  Over the next few years, the world will definitely become a smaller place is videoconferencing becomes more mainstream.  The technology behind these products is exemplary and the price points are going to allow for some serious mainstream penetration in the near future.

After the first day and a half of the event, there have been several interesting topics covered, including the potential future of China in the industry, as well as the continued growth of MMORPG's and how the entertainment medium needs to be closely watched by business for trends.  Of course, the ever popular World of Warcraft was used as the main punchline with it's annual revenues in excess of $1 Billion and more then 8.5 Million subscribers.  Also getting mentioned was Second Life as more of a "business oriented" platform and an up and comer to watch.

Could there be an expansion into China on the horizon for Great America Networks Conferencing?  That is certainly an appealing option with a world of potential.  As most of you know, cell phones are the preferred method of communication in China, and if you add that to our future cell phone and blackberry products that allow for call control from your wireless device, there is a large potential there.

Our foray into the Second World community will continue to grow as the months move along, and we are building a very talented work force from within the Second Life community, and the potential is huge.  The Second Life Convention will be in Chicago this year, and my biggest decision now is whether to be a key sponsor in one of the chosen tracks.  I will be deciding that over the next couple of weeks.

I'll post another article when our afternoon sessions are completed.  For now it's off to lunch.