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Encrosoft LLC. |
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November 9, 2015 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Platform for Arranging One-to-One Meetings |
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Founder
Encrosoft LLC
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – November 9, 2015
CEOCFO: Mr. Brandon, what is the concept behind Select Your Meeting? Mr. Brandon: We introduced Select Your Meeting (SYM) to simplify the process of arranging one-to-one meetings. Usually with one-to-one meetings there is a tremendous amount of back and forth, involving many emails and phone calls, which take a great deal of time. However, Select Your Meeting simplifies the whole process. You create your own calendar of availability and specify the people that you would like to meet. Then Select Your Meeting does the rest – it sends out personalized invitations through email to the recipients. Upon receipt, they look at your availability and select the day and time that works best for them. The system is a web-based 24/7 system, completely confidential which provides confirmations to both parties who can add the meetings to their calendars. It is a very simple process and works really well.
CEOCFO: Is this for conferencing or day-to-day engagements? Mr. Brandon: Select Your Meeting is good for both scheduling one to one meetings at conferences and day-to-day engagements. I recently attended the International Bar Association Conference in Vienna, which is where we launched the product, and normally it would take me about 48 hours to agree the days and times for my individual meetings. However, using Select Your Meeting it took me just under an hour to arrange over 70 meetings, so you can see how much time it saved. From the point of view of arranging meetings in your office, as an example, the managing partner (Don Ridge) of a law firm called Morris Polich & Purdy LLP, uses SYM to arrange meetings with his individual partners and attorneys, and he is delighted with the efficiency and effectiveness of the system.
CEOCFO: How does your system differ from other scheduling systems available today? Mr. Brandon: As far as we are aware, Select Your Meeting is the only US system that focuses on one-to-one meetings. Other products are designed for getting groups of people together in one meeting as opposed to arranging meetings between two entities. In addition, the simplicity of how you create your availability calendars and how people select their meetings using todays wide range of devices is also something we believe differentiates SYM from other products.
CEOCFO: Is your system customizable or a standard format? Mr. Brandon: That is a very good question and yes it is customizable. You can include your company logo and any information you feel appropriate in the invitation. Invitations can include contacts names and companies and you decide what you want the invitations to say. When you plan to meet people at a conference the invitation you send will be different from an invitation that you would send to someone to talk about business development, sales, strategy or an interview. You also have control of how the invitation looks including the colors that are used.
CEOCFO: Have people been looking for a better way, or is it the case where they will be excited when they find out that a better way exists? Mr. Brandon: People are used to making phone calls and sending emails to try to agree meeting times as until now there were not really alternative methods available. I am sure they have been looking for a better way to do this and indeed that is how the concept and design of SYM came about. I was attending a great many conferences and arranging meetings every week in the office and going through the process of scheduling meetings, making large numbers of phone calls and sending emails. I searched the internet but could not find a solution that would work for me and so came up with the concept for Select Your Meeting. I developed a prototype, and last year when I was in Tokyo at attending a conference, virtually every person that we met asked about the software that we were using to arrange the meetings, and asked if they could buy it. I had to tell them that it was a prototype and not something that they could buy at that time. Their enthusiasm encouraged me to create Encrosoft, design the product, find the right developers and get SYM out there.
CEOCFO: Has anything changed from your original concept? Mr. Brandon: You have a great idea, but it is only as you design it, develop it and research what potential users are looking for that you find that there are perhaps better ways to do it. One of the key things that changed was the simplicity, because if you include too many alternatives for people to choose right at the beginning, it could make it a bit of a daunting process. Therefore, one of the things that we did was to simplify the whole process. We included standard settings so that people could start using it without doing very much at all, then provided them the facility to go to the settings panel if they want to customize it. The key thing that we learned was that simple is best.
CEOCFO: How was the reception at the recent introductory conference? Mr. Brandon: It was amazing. We knew that there was going to be over 6,000 delegates at the conference in Vienna where we had a conference booth and it was amazing to see how many people stopped by. They wanted to see the demonstration of the software and the animated video, which provides a 58 second overview of how Select Your Meeting works, which is available on our website, and they loved both. It was a great start and we could not have wished for anything better.
CEOCFO: What is the strategy and rollout plan as you move forward? Mr. Brandon: The roll out plan started with the launch at the conference in Vienna and we followed that with a national press release, which I am glad to say generated a big response. In addition, we are promoting Select Your Meeting for a number of upcoming conferences and contacting groups of people we feel might like to try the software. One of the things that has really helped is that we provide Select Your Meeting totally free for a period of 30 days and everyone can use it without using their credit card information. The trial enables everyone to see the benefits and power and once they decide that they like it, they can sign up for just $25 a year. Select Your Meeting is a very inexpensive product, and the $25 provides unlimited use for 12 months. Our strategy is to promote this to anyone that would be holding one-to-one meetings and as SYM can be customized to fit the needs of the person using it, we hope the market share will grow as people see it in action.
CEOCFO: Is the worldwide approach deliberate? Mr. Brandon: The worldwide approach was something that we definitely wanted to go for. The International Bar Association conference in Vienna was the perfect place to launch with 6,000 attorneys from all over the world. One of the things that we are hoping for is that as people use Select Your Meeting, and invite other people to meetings, other people will see just how effective it is and want to use it as well. In that way the product will sell itself.
CEOCFO: How are you handling security issues? Mr. Brandon: One of the key features in Select Your Meeting is that although people can see your availability, they cannot see any other meetings that you have or are arranging at the same time, and they cannot see any of the other people that you have invited to meet with. Invitees can only see that the invitation is from you and your dates and times available. When someone selects a meeting, that date and time disappears from the schedule, so no one else can actually see it or select it. They only see your availability, not what you have on your schedule. There are no files to download to use SYM, the system is web-based and hosted by Amazon, so there are no concerns about access to users devices or networks.
CEOCFO: Do you see the potential for licensing, so that other organizations might include Select Your Meeting with their offering or is it too far down the line to consider that yet? Mr. Brandon: It is still early days, having only launched the product on October 5th of this year (2015). We are just delighted to get SYM off the ground and as with any product, hopeful to capture a large portion of the market share. One of the key things that we thought about was pricing and we decided to go for a low pricing model of $25 per year, so that people would feel it is a no brainer, being so good and such good value. This pricing hopefully will not only encourage people to try, but to buy as well and to continue to use it.
CEOCFO: What surprised you in this whole process so far? Mr. Brandon: The biggest surprise is the investors. When I came up with the idea and founded the company earlier this year, I reached out and gave a few demonstrations of the concept module that I had put together, and was surprised by the number of people who wanted to invest. In fact, I had to turn investors away. That was something that I had not anticipated. The enthusiasm of the developers and the investors has been quite amazing. I have also been surprised by the number of users of who have contacted me to say how much they like the product providing very positive feedback along with ideas for other features we might like to add in the future. All very encouraging.
CEOCFO: Why use the Encrosoft product Select Your Meeting? Mr. Brandon: Select Your Meeting will not only save you an incredible amount of time arranging one to one meetings, but allow you to schedule more meetings in the time you have available for considerably less than the cost of a cup of coffee a month. I would encourage people to look at the video on our website, selectyourmeeting.com, and give it a try. |
“Select Your Meeting will not only save you an incredible amount of time arranging one to one meetings, but allow you to schedule more meetings in the time you have available for considerably less than the cost of a cup of coffee a month. I would encourage people to look at the video on our website, selectyourmeeting.com, and give it a try.”- George Brandon
Encrosoft LLC
Contact: George Brandon 628 333 9570
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George
Brandon
