Premium Investor Relations Services

Many people are not aware that August is one of the two times a year most Australian listed companies report earnings.  Typically this is done using conferencing service suppliers like Chorus Call Australia. 

Chorus Call both directly, and through partnerships with event managers and investor relations professionals, will hold over 100 investor and media briefings by ASX listed companies this August.  Getting these calls right is no simple task. Companies rely on us to ensure that the analysts or media covering their company can get access to their key management and ask their questions or receive the desired message.  The technology has to be right , the systems have to be tried and tested and most importantly the operators managing the call have to have extensive experience controlling the call to ensure an appropriate flow.

Chorus Call Australia and all of the global offices have focused on this business for years.  Last year the Chorus Call group handled over 2300 media and investor calls globally.  On any given day our Australian based operators can be helping on calls in Germany, Canada, Switzerland or the US, amongst just a few or our global network.  This network allows us to call on these trained staff, of the Chorus Call group of companies, when we have our peak periods in August and February every year.  Some of the other expertise we bring to the investor relations field are the proprietary systems and technology we have developed over the years to give our clients the best possible result.  Some of these include a system to view, control and adjust participant states directly from the CEO’s boardroom.  Others include a web interface that allows participants to preregister participation and questions and custom messaging to all participants.  When IR professionals are looking to put this key task into the hands of a conferencing company they should be looking directly at what experience they have in delivering these calls, because if it goes wrong it can be damaging to the company brand.

Related articles

• Australia's ASX H2 profit falls 9.3 pct; 2013 off to slow start (uk.reuters.com)
• Maximising Your Video Conferencing Experience (choruscallaustralia.wordpress.com)
• Australian stock market rigged: top insider speaks out!! (hangthebankers.com)

HD Video Conferencing Experience

As businesses continue to find better ways to conduct their meetings and make business processes more efficient, technology continues to rise to the occasion and serves as a reliable partner in not only expediting processes and providing unparalleled convenience, but also steadily increasing return of investments and company savings. One of these advantageous technological advancements getting more widely used throughout an extensive range of businesses is video conferencing.

In today’s modern corporate setting where businesses are more often going global and linking with other businesses to form lucrative new ventures, video conferencing has become an indispensable communication medium. Through video conferencing, companies from opposite sides of the world can conduct their business efficiently in the comfort of their own offices, and the millions usually spent by companies for travel expenses are saved.

With such innovative and beneficial business and conferencing solutions at our fingertips, we must ensure that it is used to in the right manner to produce all the benefits it can offer. Not all members of a business may be comfortable with such innovative conferencing solutions and would prefer the old but costly methods of conducting a meeting. To make sure the experience is pleasant for everyone and consequently, easily adopted as part of a company’s standard procedures, certain steps must be followed. Below are some of these steps businesses can follow in order to ensure all members have a
positive first impression and make the most of their video conferencing service.

Before Video Conferencing
· Ensure that all members involved are familiar and comfortable with using video conferencing. This may involve self-guided education, trainings and promotional programs for easy and effective adoption to the system.
· Schedule video conferences and inform all involved people and parties ahead of time.
· Create an agenda to make sure the video conference goes smoothly and tackles all necessary topics. Share this agenda in advance so all those involved will know what to expect and think ahead of what other points they may want to discuss.
· Choose or have a facilitator who can effectively manage the flow of the meeting.
· Have all needed items ready (products, charts, etc.).
· Check that all the hardware (microphones, speakers, camera, lighting) are functioning properly and are suitable for the meeting. The camera should be positioned straight at the people involved showing their upper torso up to their head, and lights should be above the camera, not beside or in front of it.
· Dress appropriately for the meeting. Because a video conference displays all users in one screen, it can be very easy to spot differences or distracting details, like brightly coloured outfits or dangling jewellery.
· Put off or in silent mode all electronic gadgets that may disrupt the meeting.
· Recording meetings is one great advantage of video conferencing and can be very useful for any company. Before you start recording though, you must ask permission from those involved as not everyone may feel comfortable with being recorded.
· If speaking with users from another country and culture, make sure to familiarise yourself with their basic speaking etiquette.

During Video Conferencing
· Speak clearly and slowly, and properly introduce those in attendance.
· Follow the flow of the agenda and pay attention to the proceedings.
· Be polite. Do not interrupt those speaking or make distracting movements or noises. Eating would not be recommended during the meeting as this can cause a lot of noise and be very distracting.
· Try to engage everyone involved. Make them feel their importance in the meeting. Much of the success of your very first video conference and the many to follow will depend upon the users’ initial reactions, so make them feel that it is a success with their participation.
· Do not disclose private or highly classified information during the meeting, such as passwords and sensitive company information.

When you need specialists to provide your business with exceptional conferencing systems, in Australia you can call on Chorus Call. Chorus Call is the preferred supplier for many companies and organisations seeking quality, value and accommodating customer service. They provide state of the art conferencing services including video conferencing, telephone conferencing, web streaming and IR communications.

Chorus Call Australia will make sure that all your video conferencing experiences will produce nothing but positive feedback and great results.

Investor Relations Have a Chorus Call

With 11 global locations Chorus Call has build its reputation on being the best provider of Investor Relations Calls. Our offices in Switzerland, South Africa, India, Brazil, the US, Canada and beyond have worked for years with the top listed companies in their markets to deliver high quality operator managed event calls.

To the untrained eye delivering this type of service may seem simple, and when it goes perfectly that is exactly how it should seem. In reality there are lots of activities undertaken to make it a seamless event. Chorus Call Australia has launched a new web site (Click Here) to outline our experience and capabilities in this very important aspect of any listed companies market communication.

Welcome to 2012

First of all I wanted to thank everyone for a great 2011. It was a great year with much accomplished and many new developments in the market. Similarly, it has been a great start to 2012 with lots going on in the Australian conferencing market.

The first thing I wanted to talk about was the Federal Government Telehealth incentive. This is a fantastic idea put forward by the Federal government to give incentive to regional and rural based medical and aged care practitioners to adopt video conferencing. The first year incentive form the government is over $6000, dropping to around $4000 in July 2012. Chorus Call has developed a product specifically designed for this market. By marrying a LifeSize HD, PTZ Passport unit to a battery powered Ergotron Styleview cart Chorus call is offering a complete package at not much over $7000. These mobile carts are specifically designed for the hospital or aged care environment. They boast 2 hour fully rechargeable battery pack, an anti microbial coating and ergonomic height adjustment. We already have talked about how good the LifeSize units are. Designed specifically for IP HD conferencing these units are quickly catching on at the expense of Polycom and Cisco.

The response has been tremendous. Practitioners are really happy that a finished bundle can be delivered and supported with payment terms that allow for very little out of pocket expense. We have seen some of the packages out there and are a shocked as our customers. We currently have a couple of demonstration carts we are lending to people to have a look at.

Give us a call if you are interested. If you want more information email us or give us a call on 1800 98 88 98.

www.choruscall.com.au

Christmas Time is Here!

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Ev’rywhere you go;
Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”

With thanks to Johnny Mathis and others who croon this song into the hearts of all at this time of the year.

As the years go flashing by, 2011 and has been challenging for many and for all sorts of reasons starting with tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis. With dictators deposed and further hope for democracy in third world countries, this globe and the people on it have suffered again while others prosper and it is the endearing human spirit of never giving up, constant attempts at improvement that drive us forward.

Currently it is all quiet with hopefully less dramatic weather conditions and some improved economic stability in Europe and the USA. While our politicians beat each other (internally and externally) into senseless negativity.

Our mining and China fuelled economy is performing better than most, unemployment is low and interest rates moving down, none of this enjoyed as fears for 2012 become hedged against production and performance with the populace very wary.

Chorus Call Australia has had an interesting year more than holding its own and continually striving to provide better, faster and smarter solutions to our existing and future clients.

Teleconferencing remains strong and the backbone while Videoconferencing moves faster up the rungs as improved and less costly hardware and software begin to open up the world even more than before.

We wish all of our customers and staff a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! What more can we say?


“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.”

The Move To Video

The Question: When will Video conferencing finally dominate over telephone conferencing?

The Background:For years people inside and out off the conferencing industry have been proclaiming the arrival of video conferencing into the Anglo markets. I say Anglo markets because much of video adoption has been a cultural issue. Japan already has a 90% penetration rate of video and uses it far more than just audio and this is largely due to the cultural issues of wanting to see the people they are dealing with. Angle nations do not have the same sensitivity and are driven more by ease of use and cost. I digress. Historically, video in a corporate environment have been hampered by the expensive Tandberg and Polycom units that they are convinced to invest in and many times end up gathering dust in board rooms. They were temperamental, badly supported and you needed to have a 18-23 year old at call to help you make a connection. It is widely known within most video support help desks that the busiest week in video support was the week after the Melbourne cup because the tv’s had been commandeered for the big race. For many large corporate and government departments the use of the tv was the most valuable aspect of the 30-50k systems hoisted upon them by IT teams wanting a toy.

Recently Cisco bet big on video in a couple of ways. Firstly there is Telepresence, a high definition and, quite frankly, an amazing video experience. The HD video monitors are moulded to the table to make it feel like the other site is actually sitting right across from you. The audio is great and the video the clearest you will see when working properly. It is so good I have found myself forgetting that it is video. But this experience is not cheap (multiple 100k’s) and the interoperability to other systems, while growing, is still very limited. The other aspects of Cisco’s bet is the purchase of Tandberg. Tandberg has the premium end of the video hardware market and worked hard to make sure that high end video clients can only use their expensive and IMO substandard equipment. Some of the ratios of this purchase seem crazy to me. The purchase price was over 22 times earnings, and a 25% premium on the three month closing average?! All this before Cisco had to up its offer another 10% to appease some investment funds who knew they had a gun to Cisco’s head with the requirement for 90% acceptance for the deal to become compulsory. While I have seen 3 or more Hollywood movies lately with nice product placement for Cisco video, their bet on Tandberg was badly timed and they will eventually write down a large portion of that investment, if they haven’t already.

The answer: Will we adopt video at a corporate level any time soon? I believe the answer to this is yes. For the first time technology is being driven by consumer requirements. Much to their horror IT and Security managers are being told by their executives to adapt the Iphone and Ipad platforms. This is being driven from a consumer experience of the platform wanting to have it available in corporate world. The same is set to happen with video. With Skype and the video chat functions of the IPad 2 executives will start to demand the same functionality for their businesses. Trying to hold back this tide are the hardware sellers, fearful of the software solutions (at a fraction of the price), and the IT managers worried about their capability to deliver such a huge amount of data.

The video we know of booking a time in the board room, having a service provider bridge 3 or 4 sites with much testing and expense will not be the model. The model will be software solutions where you can choose to deliver audio or video through an application on your desktop, smartphone or tablet with the click of a button. This solution is out there and being adopted at the flexible SMB now much to the consternation of the hardware sellers. I have tested 4 or 5 software solutions and while there are a variety of experiences and models being adopted, the simplicity, cost and flexibility is a compelling argument. The standards will be sorted out because interoperability is in everyone’s interest and it will quickly be adopted into larger corporate as bandwidth cheapens and executive demand continues to grow.

Voice and video will be delivered through the same applications with cloud based bridging either from service providers or the applications providers themselves. People will choose to allow video to be transmitted from their device of choice, or not, depending on their state of dress and if they want to do their email while someone prattles on. Unification is on the way.

The prediction:
In 5 years time the software video application sales will outweigh hardware unit sales 5000 to 1. We may see high end video units in conference centres but when you mention the words “video unit” to your child in 10 years their look will remind you of your reaction to the term 8-track. Sorry Cisco.

…Should Have Had a Chorus Call.

Industrial Disease

“Now warning lights are flashing down at Quality Control
Somebody threw a spanner, they threw him in the hole
There’s rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down”
Courtesy of Dire Straits – Industrial Disease

The Global Financial Crisis continues to keep people scared and controlled with superannuation diving, house prices falling, commodity prices rising.

We have Carbon Tax, water tax, soon it will be fresh air tax and yet people are working and companies are making profits in spite of increased share market fluctuations.
Australia’s Big Four Banks have all registered ‘record profits’ BHP, the largest corporate profit in this country’s history.  So with these fantastic results Australia’s economy continues to bubble along with low unemployment and medium level interest rates.

So the media paint a picture of a train wreck when all things considered, Australia is traveling well and punching above its weight.
So there are proven tools required to convey the success achieved by these organisations including;

• Managed teleconferencing with Questions and Answers
• Live & archived video/audio streaming

Much planning and effort by the corporate world, AV engineers and companies like Chorus Call Australia ensure the events are run smoothly and the message is clear. This enables analysts and shareholders to make better informed decisions after viewing theses multi-media presentations.

Chorus Call Australia is very proud to be part of these events and we understand the sustained effort to get it right and to ensure that we protect our client’s brand.
Your brand is our brand!