BACKGROUND

Forest City Enterprises, Inc., www.forestcity.net, is a diversified real estate company that acquires, develops, owns and manages commercial and residential real estate properties throughout the United States. With corporate offices based out of Cleveland, Ohio and regional offices in seven other cities across the country, Forest City Enterprises, Inc. strives to maintain efficient and effective internal communications with its three strategic business groups and more than 4,000 employees.

Doug Bardwell, Director of Internal Communications for Forest City Enterprises, Inc., heads up the often challenging role of employee and departmental communications. The Internal Communications team handles a variety of corporate projects including the company newsletter, quarterly employee magazine, website content and presentations. The team is also charged with choosing and implementing technology that allows the staff to create and execute communications strategies.

THE CHALLENGE

One of Forest City Enterprises, Inc.’s core strengths is that it operates with a consistent focus on its strategic plan. To generate ideas and develop consensus, the company conducts a variety of staff events including a bi-annual Leadership Conference. During each Leadership Conference, approximately 200 Forest City employees representing each of the company’s business units work together to develop, prioritize and establish strategic planning ideas.

For the last three years, Forest City Enterprises, Inc. had rented an audience response system to capture the thoughts and opinions of conference attendees. Doug explained, “Audience response systems are ideal for gathering this type of data. The conference is not a scenario where you can rely on a show-ofhands for a response.”

However, there were drawbacks to their current solution. Doug stated, “We wanted to find a do-itourselves system rather than continue to work with our current vendor.” With a price tag of $10,000 per event, the need for two on-site technicians and bulky equipment, there was a strong argument for investigating new audience response options.

THE SOLUTION

While at InfoComm 2005, a conference dedicated to the audiovisual communications industry, Doug researched several audience response systems including Turning Technologies’ TurningPoint 2006 and ResponseCard^® solution. After having the opportunity to compare a variety of products, Doug decided that Turning Technologies was the right choice for his company’s needs.

One of the most attractive features in the Turning Technologies solution was TurningPoint 2006, an addon to Microsoft^® PowerPoint^®. TurningPoint seamlessly integrates into Microsoft Office products, nearly eliminating the learning curve for users already knowledgeable in PowerPoint, Excel^® and Word^®. TurningPoint software installs as a toolbar within PowerPoint. Doug was pleased to find that he didn’t have to embark on a learning curve. “I know PowerPoint inside out and didn’t want to be forced to learn an additional software program. With TurningPoint I was able to get up to speed very quickly.”

Following InfoComm, Doug received notification that his entry had been drawn from the nearly 600 attendees to win a 50-seat Radio Frequency (RF) Turning Technologies audience response system. While the 50-seat system didn’t solve the challenge of collecting data from hundreds of participants at corporate conferences, it did provide Doug with an opportunity to work with the system and use TurningPoint in his team meetings to improve the decision-making process on a small scale.

THE RESULTS

With the research gathered from InfoComm and the 50-seat audience response system on hand, Doug and Forest City decided to implement TurningPoint and ResponseCards at the next corporate conference, a Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Day for the various Forest City accounting departments. The in-service training conference hosted 225 participants and included classes to maintain certification and presentations by subject matter experts.

Doug downloaded TurningPoint 2006 two weeks before the event and read through most of the user manual to familiarize himself with the software and prepare for the event. Two days before the conference, Doug called Turning Technologies support team for assistance in finalizing the conference presentations. Doug stated, “The customer support personnel were absolutely phenomenal! They really paid attention to what I was saying and offered excellent solutions.” Doug also had Turning’s technical team help out with last minute changes. “We got up to speed that night and the morning of the event— only15 minutes and the presentation was up and running.”

Doug was thrilled as he summarized the results of the event. “We looked like real heroes! The [Turning Technologies'] audience response system was very good for coming to quick decisions, especially for big groups and gaining consensus. Two hundred people could respond within seconds.”

With the success of the CPE Day, Doug began to incorporate TurningPoint and ResponseCards into his department’s decision-making process. During internal department meetings, his team of thirteen often evaluates materials for use in the company newsletter, website, and quarterly magazine. To determine whether designs or video footage would be published, the team had used the traditional show-of-hands approach, but the results were never accurate. “Using a show-of-hands, only 50% of the team would immediately respond. The other half would wait to see how the others felt,” Doug stated. Since the audience response system was on hand, Doug decided to use TurningPoint in the evaluation process and has been pleased with the outcome. “Everyone is impressed with the technology. With TurningPoint, staff members’ participation level has increased to 100% with no peer pressure, especially when new employees rate the work of their peers. The team has become totally honest in their opinions.”

The impact of TurningPoint and 100% participation in decision-making was clear—the Internal Communications department now produces even better products more efficiently. Doug feels that the TurningPoint process “avoids repetitive meetings to go over previous results.” “I know for a fact that we’ve re-created some projects from scratch that might have been approved with a show-of-hands vote.” The new internal reviews sparked the redesign of several communications projects that the team might have previously approved using the show-of-hands technique.

Whether the objective is to gather aggregate data and determine strategic planning with large audiences or improve business decisions with a small team, TurningPoint and ResponseCards have demonstrated the ability to improve a company’s efficiency and effectiveness—a powerful tool for any business.

For more information about purchasing or renting Turning Technologies’ audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.