"Adopting GoToMeeting started out as an effort to save money, but the functionality put it over the top.”

For years, Bergstrom Inc. had convened its leadership quarterly for multiday strategy meetings in one of its myriad locations across the globe — Wales one time, maybe China the next. The company, a top international designer and manufacturer of cab climate systems for specialty vehicles, wanted to change. The goal: Reduce travel costs and ease the impact of travel on employees, all while ensuring interactive and successful gatherings.

Having recently adopted GoToMeeting to save money, streamline communication and bolster collaboration across its global community of engineers, Bergstrom brass realized the tool might provide the perfect new format for its leadership conferences. It was worth a shot, said Dan Giovannetti, chief financial officer at Bergstrom.

“We had done video conferences in the past, using a third-party bridge and renting a very expensive room with a Polycom system, and it didn’t work well,” Giovannetti said. “But these are three-day meetings looking at long-term planning, and this year we really wanted to cut travel, to save money and the wear and tear on people. We decided to do it via GoToMeeting using video. We had people from China, Brazil, the U.K, Spain and the U.S. — five different countries on video for three days — and it was absolutely flawless. People left that meeting saying, ‘GoToMeeting is a great tool.’ We didn’t have one hiccup for three days.”.

That first attempt at an online global staff meeting worked so well Bergstrom did it again the following quarter. And they kicked things up a notch by recording the entire three-day session for future reference. GoToMeeting is now the company’s new model for those quarterly confabs and much more, Giovannetti said.

“It’s really become an integral part of how we collaborate globally,” he said. “Every month now we have a global operations review with each entity around the world via GoToMeeting. We do all of our engineering collaboration around the world via GoToMeeting. New product review, sales — it’s everywhere. It has improved communication and is really engrained in everything we do now.”

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