AM heads for the country with its Net conferencing service
A cheaper way of reaching rural advisers around Australia has been launched by AM Corporation with its Internet conferencing service.
The service, claimed to be a first for a fund manager in the Southern Hemisphere, uses Microsoft NetMeeting software and a dedicated Tel-stra website for conferences.
A cheaper way of reaching rural advisers around Australia has been launched by AM Corporation with its Internet conferencing service.
The service, claimed to be a first for a fund manager in the Southern Hemisphere, uses Microsoft NetMeeting software and a dedicated Tel-stra website for conferences.
AM Victorian state manager Paul Medcraft says it took the company five months to develop the service and it is now used for rural ad-viser conferences.
The conference is controlled by AM which uses the Internet link to display charts, programs or a whiteboard for notes on the advisers' screens. The lag time for a command to reach the adviser is about half a second, says Medcraft.
The adviser can then be allowed to make inputs on the display to highlight a particular point. Medcraft says this means an adviser can make changes to client's details while talking to someone from AM.
"We are advising users that a voice link is maintained to talk through any problems or to participate in a discussion," he says.
Apart from presentations to advisers, AM sees the service as being part of its IT support system. A technician can work on the client's program via the Internet and solve any problems.
For an adviser to participate they need a PC with a minimum modem speed of 28K, an Internet browser such as Explorer 5 and NetMeeting software, which can be downloaded from the Internet.
The cost to the adviser for participating in this service depends on the time used on their Internet supplier, Medcraft says. "For the fund manager, the savings of using the Internet to make presentations to rural advisers instead of transporting a team to a particular lo-cation is immense," he says.
Medcraft wants to see other fund managers using this service and hopes to make it an industry standard.
"Because AM does not own any of the software or the website, we are very willing to help other fund managers with the establishment of Internet conferencing," he says.
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