|
|
|
 |
![]()
The Big Wow
The Room, Part 1: Executive Briefing
Centers
By
Tad Simons
 Envision the ultimate
presentation. In it, you would say exactly what needed to be
said, at precisely the moment your audience wanted to hear it;
you would anticipate every question and address every need;
and afterward, you would walk out with a deal in your pocket
and a friend for life. Where would such a stellar presentation
take place? In a facility specifically designed to support
your presentation's goals, of course, with fingertip control
of all the technological wonder tools you might need and
instant access to any piece of information you desire.
Pure fantasy? Not to the growing
ranks of professionals who manage and operate what have come
to be known as executive briefing centers. To these folks,
developing such storybook presentations is their job, and
executive briefing centers – a catch-all term for a wide
variety of corporate facilities designed for the dual purpose
of hosting high-level executive meetings and articulating a
company's vision in often breathtaking architectural splendor
– are where those presentations take place.
"Briefing centers are designed and built to support
a company's strategic goals," explains Frank Boschi, executive
director of the Association of Briefing Program Managers
(ABPM). "They do that by providing an ideal environment for
companies to showcase the best they have to offer, in a highly
customized way, to anyone with whom the company has an
interest in doing business, be it executives from another
company, current clients, potential clients or even
dignitaries from other countries."
 |
|
Apple's Executive Briefing Center in Cupertino,
Calif., invites visitors to touch and use Apple's
products firsthand. In the main lobby, a variety of Mac
workstations and notebooks are on display. The iMac
"videowall" is used to demonstrate Apple's network
solutions, and photos from the "crazy ones" in Apple's
"Think different" ad campaign grace the back
wall. |
| Steve Jobs practically lives in
Apple's Executive Briefing Center in Cupertino, Calif. Carly
Fiorina put many of the pieces of her Compaq deal together at
Hewlett-Packard's new briefing center, also in Cupertino. And
for all the time Bill Gates spends at Microsoft's Executive
Briefing Center in Redmond, Wash., he might as well have his
mail forwarded there.
Build it
and you won't be sorry
In
the foyer of Apple's Executive Briefing Center, for example,
the entire text of the poem "Here's to the Crazy Ones" is
emblazoned in the entryway, with enlarged photographs of the
personalities in its "Think different" advertising campaign
lining the wall. At Hewlett-Packard's briefing center,
visitors are immediately enveloped in an entirely
Web-connected and -operated environment designed to emphasize
how thoroughly HP "gets" the Web. In nearby Mountain View,
Calif., those invited to SGI's Customer Briefing Center may
find themselves seated in SGI's spectacular Reality Center,
where the company demonstrates its state-of-the-art "immersive
visualization" capabilities in a specially designed theater
powered by rows of refrigerator-size supercomputers.
Meanwhile, across the country in Tulsa, Okla., visitors to
Williams Communications' national headquarters may observe its
network operations center from the vantage point of a
fiberglass bridge infused with light – a visual metaphor for
the company's leadership toward the fiber-optic future.
Making magic
In each case, these briefing centers
have been designed and built to embody and communicate the
spirit of the company itself, while still functioning as an
effective sales and marketing tool. Striking this delicate
balance of vision and practicality is not an easy task,
however, particularly if the company building the center
doesn't have a specific vision of how its corporate vision
should look in bricks and mortar.
"Fiberoptics"
and "light" were the themes designer Roseanne Bell used
in the Williams Communications Technology Center in
Tulsa. The hallway (right) is decorated with stretched
fabric illuminated by a changing palette of colored
light. Visitors can view the Network Operations Center
(top right) from the vantage point of a fiberglass
bridge (above) that stretches from one end of the center
to the other. |
 | "The most important part
of the briefing-center design process is the beginning," says
Roseanne Bell, president of Bellwether Design, the firm that
designed Williams Communications' fiber-optic-themed center in
Tulsa. "We interview clients extensively about the story
they're trying to tell and the image they're trying to convey.
Very often they don't know."
When
a client company doesn't know what it's about, other than the
standard "commitment to excellence" or "superior customer
satisfaction," the process of designing a briefing center can
be the impetus for some serious soul-searching. In the
worst-case scenario, says Bell, the need for a vision gets
supplanted entirely by functional requirements, and what you
end up with is "some nice meeting rooms," but not much else.
When it all comes together, however – when the design of the
facility captures the essence of a company and articulates
this in a way guests can understand and remember – "it's
magic," says Bell.
Humanizing
the faceless blob
For
example, at AT&T's Global Network Operations Center,
nestled in the New Jersey countryside about 30 miles outside
of New York City, the first thing visitors see in the lobby
isn't a dramatic Dr. Strangelove-like glimpse of AT&T's
communications muscle. That comes later. It's a collection of
the most universal of communication tools: musical instruments
from around the world. The center's "gallery" tour – a
walk-through exhibit of AT&T's history that uses a series
of interactive kiosks to explain where the company has been
and where it is going – gives guests some valuable historical
context. You can even see the first AT&T phone book, open
to the page with Alexander Graham Bell's original phone
number.
All over the world, in
companies large and small, other executives – particularly
those in technology-oriented corporations – are discovering
what Steve, Carly, Bill and many others have known for some
time: Dollar for dollar, executive briefing centers are one of
the best sales and marketing tools ever devised. They aren't
cheap – AT&T spent more than $100 million to build its
198,000-square-foot Global Network Operations Center, or GNOC,
in Bedminster, N.J. But according to Frank Ianna, who runs the
center and is president of AT&T Network Services, the
return on investment in the behemoth center will be more than
a hundred-fold when all is said and done.
"Sure, we spent $100 million to build it," says
Ianna. "But it's not uncommon for a large company to spend
that much on an ad campaign, and what do they have when
they're done? Some old commercials. What we have here is a
live center that we use every day, week in, week out, year
after year. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars
in business will be closed in this center. The ROI is
tremendous."
According to the
latest annual survey by the ABPM, its members report that
anywhere from 70 percent to 90 percent or more of the business
deals discussed within their facilities get closed on the
spot. "There's no substitute for the personalized customer
experience and close human interaction made possible in the
best briefing centers," says Roxanne McCreery, president of
the ABPM. "The reason these centers are becoming so popular is
simple: They work."
In search
of a company's soul
But how
and why they work is different in almost every case. That's
because one of the primary functions of any executive briefing
center is to differentiate a company from its competition. The
common components of a typical briefing center are a variety
of meeting and conference rooms that accommodate groups of
different sizes, some sort of product demonstration area, and
a dining facility supported by either an onsite kitchen staff
or a catering service. That's where the similarities end,
though, because all briefing centers are unique in the sense
that each one is a concrete expression of a company's
personality and vision, if not its very soul.
 |
|
The Global Network Operations Center, or GNOC, is
the nerve center of AT&T's worldwide communications
network. AT&T's Executive Briefing Center is built
around the GNOC atrium, with conference rooms and an
auditorium that look out over the main floor. The
$100-million Global Network Operations Center, which
opened in February 2002, has 198,000 square feet of
floor space. |
| After getting a feel for
AT&T's corporate story, the climax of the tour takes place
in a specially designed auditorium with a curved panoramic
screen, on which a fast-paced video explaining the breadth of
AT&T's networking expertise is projected. When the video
is over, the screen rises, giving way to an awe-inspiring view
of AT&T's Global Network Operations Center, where the
company keeps track of its worldwide operations on a
180-screen videowall three stories high. By the time guests
leave the center, they don't come away seeing AT&T as a
faceless corporate enterprise – they leave feeling as though
AT&T is a company engaged in the world, energized by
progress and spectacularly well qualified to fulfill the
escalating ambitions of communication technology around the
globe.
"When large-business
customers are entrusting a mission-critical aspect of their
company to AT&T, they want to understand the company and
the people behind it," says AT&T's Frank Ianna. "Part of
the reason the GNOC briefing center works so well is that it
humanizes the business, and makes it possible for customers to
get to know us as people. But because it's also the
functioning center of our global network services, it provides
them with that 'Wow' that convinces them we're the company
they should entrust their business to."
The Wow factor
AT&T isn't the only company that relies on the
Wow factor of its briefing center to woo customers and seal
multi-million-dollar deals. SGI's Customer Briefing Center is
critical to his company's sales process, says Greg Estes,
SGI's vice president of marketing. "Because we are such a
visual company, our briefing-center demonstrations are hugely
important to our sales process," Estes explains. "You don't
have to fly to Ford to see a 2002 Explorer, but if you want to
see real-time video flowed at three times the resolution of
HDTV in a completely immersive environment, you pretty much
have to be sitting in our Reality Center. To show people what
our graphics systems are capable of, and to give them some
insight as to what is possible using them, we need to get them
here."
Customizing is
everything
Another reason
executive briefing centers are so effective in getting a
company's mission and message across is that the people who
visit them are often treated to a remarkably high level of
presentation sophistication. "Customization" is the mantra of
the briefing-center world; canned presentations don't cut it.
Most briefing-center programs make it their mission to tailor
the content of their presentations as closely as possible to
the specific needs of the audience being addressed, especially
if there are big bucks on the line. Customization in the
briefing arena goes well beyond sticking a prospect's logo on
a few PowerPoint slides; in fact, many centers have raised
customization to an art form.
At
Apple's Executive Briefing Center, "customization is
everything," says the center's manager, Debi Calder. Briefing
teams at Apple typically spend four to six weeks preparing for
a site visit by an important prospect, which gives them enough
time to interview visitors extensively about their business
needs and put together some extraordinary presentations.
Calder recalls a time when the
superintendent of schools for a northeastern state came to
visit, inquiring about how, among other things, to put
together a Web site showcasing the state's schools. "We could
have just demonstrated what our tools have done for other
people," says Calder, but that's not the Apple way. Instead,
the briefing team flew out to the state, shot some video of
the school campuses and interviewed principals about why their
schools were superior, then put together a sample of what the
Web site might look like using Apple's tools. "When we showed
it to [the client], the guy was floored," says Calder. "His
response was, 'You just showed me what I've been trying to get
my people to create for the last six months.'" The deal was
closed then and there.
At SGI,
products don't just get demonstrated, they are painstakingly
applied to a client's problem to illustrate how SGI might
provide a solution. "It's not just the Wow factor that sells
them," says SGI's Greg Estes. "You can get Wow at Disneyland.
It's combining that Wow with the insight that allows customers
to quickly see and understand how they might solve a problem
using our products." For example, NASA engineers might be
trying to figure out how to visualize air traffic patterns
over Denver, where a lot of wind sheer occurs, but they don't
quite know how. "We would bring them in and, using their own
data, show them how it can be done," Estes says.
At AT&T, in addition to
meticulous preparation for individual customer visits, the
center has on file more than 50 video modules, in six
different languages, addressing various aspects of AT&T's
business. If an off-topic question comes up, or if a presenter
wants to elaborate on a point using a module, the entire
database is accessible via touchscreens in any of the center's
conference rooms and other presentation facilities. The
modules also allow AT&T presenters to put together
impressively "customized" content at a moment's notice.
Redefining the art of the
presentation
In many ways,
executive briefing centers are in fact redefining what a
professional business presentation is and what it can be.
Almost all of them are decked out with the latest presentation
technologies – projectors, interactive whiteboards,
videoconferencing equipment, document cameras, sophisticated
lighting systems, room-control touchscreens and more. And
because many of the major companies that have state-of-the-art
briefing centers also happen to be in high-tech industries –
companies such as Apple, AT&T, Boeing, Cisco Systems, HP,
Microsoft and SGI – they also have the expertise to utilize
these technologies at the highest possible level. In many
cases, the Wow factor so many centers desire is provided by
the artful use of the company's own technology, and the
intense level of customization to which the clients of these
companies are being exposed is raising their expectations
about presentations elsewhere.
"In the Silicon Valley, it's not uncommon for
people to fly in from another country and visit 10 or 12
different briefing centers, so companies have to do something
to stand out," says the ABPM's Frank Boschi. "The competition
demands it."
The 21st-century
handshake
Of course,
high-level executives and sales personnel have always found
ways to get together with potential business partners to
discuss business on the one hand, and to develop key personal
relationships on the other. In the past, those conversations
might have taken place at an upscale restaurant or on the golf
course. But these days, multimillion-dollar handshakes on the
18th green are increasingly giving way to business concluded
after a day or two of meetings at the host company's executive
briefing center, where the company's core values and products
are showcased in an ideal meeting environment, and where the
entire concept of a "briefing" has evolved from that of a
nuts-and-bolts business meeting to a carefully planned and
choreographed "experience," customized to ensure that all a
visitor's questions are answered and their every need and
concern is addressed.
To take
matters a step further, the "presentation" doesn't begin when
the clients or visitors take their seats in a conference room;
it starts from the initial point of contact, is developed in
the weeks leading up to the visit, culminates at the briefing
center itself, and continues long after the visitors have
gone.
More on the way
Put all of these elements together
and what you have is some extraordinarily effective sales and
marketing tools whose results speak for themselves. Sprint was
so impressed by the results of its executive briefing center
in Washington, D.C., that it built nine more around the
country last year. Besides its briefing center in Cupertino,
Apple has opened six others since the beginning of the year.
Many international companies, including Avaya, IBM, Lucent
Technologies, Nortel Networks and Sun Micro-systems, are
opening briefing centers all over the world.
The ABPM's Frank Boschi confirms that there has
been a surge of interest in the briefing-center phenomenon in
the past couple of years, during which his organization's
membership has doubled to almost 400 members. "Yes," says
Boschi in a characteristic moment of understatement, "this
briefing center thing seems to be catching on."
Tad Simons is
editor-in-chief of Presentations magazine.
Originally
published in the June 2002 issue of Presentations
magazine. Copyright 2002, VNU Business Media.
Sidebar to Part
1:
Working
and Living the HP Way (sidebar)
Other articles from the series "The Room":
Introduction
Shhh,
We're in a Collaboration (The Room: Collaboration)
Putting
It All Together (The Room: Systems Integration)
The
Latest Picture Show (The Room: Display &
Projection)
The
VC Factor (The Room: Videoconferencing)
Sound,
Without the Fury (The Room:
Sound) | |
|
|
|
