What will the next graphical interface look like? Try a Calendar!
By Charles J. Cirronella
Equity Calendar Suite allows Sales force to Leverage the Net. An Equity Sales force is
driven by events and scheduling. Therefore, it is very important that they have the most current information for their clients at their fingertips. A calendar is one of the most basic
forms of organizing events and schedules.
Calendars not only tell you when
and what, but now, with the advent
of internet technologies, they can also tell you where,
who, why and how
and link you to a other important information as
well. The internet has transformed calendars into
three dimensional communication interfaces.
HTML linking makes it possible to "drill
down" to see the information behind
the days and dates. In addition, you can use a
calendar as an interface to other applications,
information or web sites. Internet based
calendars are posed to become the graphical
user interface of the millennium.
One example of how this
is currently being done is the Equity
Calendar Suite used by Equity Sales, the
Syndicate Desk and Research at a major investment
bank. The Equity Calendar Suite is
a set of four calendar applications helping to
provide a seamless communications interface,
replacing static paper and leveraging the desktop
technology. Let's consider how the "golden
circle" of Equity Sales, Research
and the Syndicate desk conducts its business.
When an investment bank
completes its due diligence on an IPO, it runs a
series of Road Shows to showcase
the company and its management. The Road Shows
are conducted as group functions
(breakfast, lunch or dinner) or one-on-ones
(meetings with the company's management). The
investment bank wants to be certain that it sells
all the company's securities, so it will offer
the one-on-one meetings to the most appropriate
clients. As a result, sales people compete for
the one-on-one meetings for their favorite
clients. The syndication desk and sales
management have the final approval as to which
clients get the meetings.
The syndicate desk puts
together a deal book. This paper document (many
pages in length) contains all the scheduled
events (group functions and one-on-ones) and the
travel logistics for each city. A road show
schedule (also paper based) is created and
distributed to all sales people so they can call
their clients and sign them up for the events.
The deal book and road show schedule changes
several times during this process and can change
multiple times within a day. Each time
there is a change the entire sales force must be
notified and a new road show schedule must be
produced and distributed. Sales people
become very frustrated because they must contact
their client to reschedule. Additional
frustration occurs because the meeting
confirmation process can take several days. Sales
people must constantly check with the syndicate
desk for status of their meeting request. Bear in
mind that there can be several deals going on at
the same time. Therefore, changes in deal books
and road show schedules and approval request
status can be difficult to coordinate.
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