Supporting Meetings Through Electronic Meetings Software

Given that some managers can spend more than half their working lives in meetings, there are big savings available in efficiency if meetings can be made more productive. Consider these statistics from David Coleman's book on groupware applications:

Electronic meetings software can also reduce some of the problems of traditional business meetings such as: a lack of information, dominance by one forceful individual and the boredom and frustration of diversion onto irrelevant matters. Additionally, psychological studies have shown that decisions made through electronic meetings produce improved decisions which are more radical and polarized than those achieved face-to-face, possibly through greater equality and less inhibition of team members.

Electronic meetings software or systems (EMS) can also help with more mundane aspects of meetings through ensuring that an agenda is available, action points are noted and distributed to participants. This software is also commonly known as group decision support (GDS), although this term is somewhat dated now and EMS usually is used instead. Chapter 9 gives more insight into the psychology of group working, which should be considered by all embarking on the introduction of a new system. The paper by Nunamaker et al. (1991) offers...