zu hosted a webinar on November 4th and enjoyed a fantastic turn out of attendees from across North America. Ryan and I would like to thank everyone who attended. We shared insight into how to make online annual reports investor friendly. We looked at examples from Intel, Bayer and PotashCorp among others.
Read the rest of this entry »

“Living” Online Annual Reports (OARS) – What Happened Next?

We’ve been exploring the ‘living’ annual report format and are dying to create one. In our minds a living OAR captures a ‘snapshot in time’ of the official filing but is then updated over the next several quarters to provide current key financials and current links to related information and updates.

A living online annual report takes advantage of the fact that many investors use the annual report as one of the first steps in their due diligence as a way to get up to speed on what your company is about. With this in mind, why not address the visitor’s obvious next question: “What happened next?”

Providing information in this convenient location dovetails with our mission to create Investor Friendly materials. For us this means simply anticipating the next question and the next piece of related information that a potential investor might want. This may include providing other website materials: press releases, links to product announcements, mining site profiles or whatever else is on the site that expands knowledge about this important topic.

Of course with financial results, the main question is: “What are the latest results?”
Read the rest of this entry »

A brief list of reasons why doing a good job of the OAR (Online Annual Report) makes sense:

• Decreases printing costs
• Trains shareholders on the value of the website as a source of information
• Green (environmentally much friendlier than a print version)
• Respects Internet users
• Shows strong desire to serve the investor
• Communicates better (if embracing the best usability practices)
• Can make use of rich media (animation, interactivity, etc.) to demonstrate or explain complex information
• Can leverage the leadership power of a key executive
• Offers the potential for emotional impact via rich media
• Recognizes that the Annual Report is a reference material not just a required filing
• Provides printable options, such as PDF
• Provides analytic aids like interactive graphing of financial information, downloading of EXL files
• Decreases mailing costs (financially friendly)
• Goes beyond the 10-K with attractive presentation, summaries, emphasis on management’s key points
• Investor Friendly
• Provides another reason to come to the site for voting
• Can use decreased print budget as source of funds
• The generation with non-grey hair expects it (their hair will soon be grey too)
• May be the best part of your IR website
• May be the only part of your IR website that pulls together all of your goals and messages, so it should not be locked in a non-Internet format.

Others? Please suggest if you have any!

Listen to my October 24th interview on News Talk 650’s John Gormley Live about iPhone Apps BucksMe and TimmyMe.

News Talk 650’s John Gormley Live Radio Clip

One feature of Online Annual Reports (OARs) often overlooked is ‘execution’. While a lot of investor friendly features can be discussed, designed and even programmed, one aspect that appears to be missing from numerous companies is the ability to complete the report on time and have it ready on game day.

This may be one of the reasons many companies acquiesce to using jpg picture books and other sad imitations of Internet content.

It seems that when evaluating a company for this service (Annual Report conversion to HTML) the client should research the supplier’s process, track record, proofreading capabilities and so forth. While many companies are judged on end results, I’d start by tossing out ones that weren’t ready on time. I’d also seriously question suppliers that don’t have the services done in-house as they will always have less leverage over their suppliers when it comes time to finish things off.
Read the rest of this entry »

Even though zu.com is experiencing significant growth, employees still experience downtime between projects. Sometimes a developer will have an afternoon free or even a day or two to get caught up. What does zu do with that time? We experiment with new technology.

We have coined this research and development time as “zuLabs.” We started zuLabs about nine years ago when we thought of developing a content management system, which has now evolved into EasyUpdater™, and is used on about 70 websites.

Other experiments that have turned into products and services include: our online presentation software EasySlideShow (developed in 2001); our RSS feed creator (developed in 2003); mobile websites (developed in 2006); SMS campaigns (developed in 2006); Facebook applications (developed in 2007); iPhone applications (developed this week). In addition, there are hundreds of smaller ideas sprinkled throughout our clients’ websites as a result of zuLabs.

A number of zuLabs experiments have taught us better programming techniques, new ways of designing sites and how to improve the user experience.

At zuLabs, we meet every other Thursday over lunch for “zuCamp”, a voluntary participation session. At zuCamp we talk about new ideas, trends and how we can utilize them to make our clients’ websites better. Sometimes these sessions are headed-up by one person discussing a new technique, sometimes it’s a group brainstorming session. When you get 45 minds together cool things happen.

Some of the ideas that have arisen from zuLabs show up on the websites we do. Others are tweaked, re-tweaked and possibly used. Some never see the light of day. The work that zu does will continue to be progressive due to the experiments we do in our spare time at zuLabs.

Well, we finally made it back from the NIRI and CIRI conferences. Two weeks of travel, learning more about Investor Relations and meeting lots of people.

We liked both conferences. NIRI was big, with about 1300 people. NIRI had more sessions and more networking opportunities. CIRI was more intimate and friendly as there were about 270 people in attendance.

Many people stopped by the zu booth on the exhibit floor. We set up a del.icio.us page that highlighted zu.com’s work for our demo. We have been asked to provide a link to it, so click here to see some of the work we’ve done with our clients’.

If you have never used del.icio.us, it is a “social bookmarking” website where you can make bookmarks and share them with other people. I use del.icio.us to keep URLs for traveling in case I need to use a public access computer instead of my own.

On zu’s del.icio.us page, you will see samples of some of our most recent work which can be sorted into categories by clicking the links on the right. If you would like more information, drop us a line.

I couldn’t make the final session of the CIRI conference due to blogging duties, but Harely Rivet, from zu.com was there and he gave me these notes to post on the zu blog!

Moderator

Michael Nowlan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Marketwire, Incorporated

Speakers
Tim Herrod - Manager, Investor Relations, PotashCorp
Viki Lazaris - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, BMO Financial Group
Jerry Trites - Project Director, XBRL Canada

Online basics and best practices regarding financial reporting on the Internet were shared by representatives from MarketWire, PotashCorp, BMO, and XBRL Canada.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael E. Roach
President & CEO, CGI Group Inc.

Building positive relations with the public is not as easy as it used to be. Today financial markets characteristics are: short-holding periods, record date capture, massive stock lending, etc. Companies need to target the right potential holders that align with the company’s long-term goals. Michael believes: “The strategy without execution is hallucination.”

The quality of financial reporting matters and will attract investors. Companies need to be accessible to potential investors and provide the feedback and street views to their employees, especially the CEO and CFO. Michael stated: “If you don’t measure for success, you get failure.” CGI may have the only IR department that is ISO certified. They also believe in balancing the interests of employees, shareholders, and owners, which would mean no management bonuses when the company’s performance is down from the shareholders’ point of view. Over the last 15 years CGI has grown their revenue 15 times, and increased their employee base 26 times. The IR team needs to understand the strategy but more importantly the operations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Colleen Vancha, the Vice-President of Viterra’s Investor Relations and Corporate Affairs Division took some time from her CIRI conference co-chair duties to talk to me about the future of IR in Canada, tips for beginner IR people and her busy year merging two companies.