SPEAKERS AND FACILITATORS

"We recently celebrated our 11th anniversary," said Bernhardt, "and we have had strong member retention. That says something about the value the members perceive. Their biggest investment is not the fees their companies pay to participate but rather their time."

Debra Semans, a 1978 graduate of the RCB and now a senior brand consultant, has remained a RoundTable member through three career moves. An early RoundTable experience convinced her of its value. She was working on product development for Holiday Inn when a Marketing RoundTable speaker facilitated a discussion in that area. "I couldn't wait to get back to my office," Semans said, "to start applying my new ideas right away. It was so energizing, the missing piece."

"To sustain the highest-quality professional development over the course of 10 years is challenging," said McLean, "particularly in a field such as information services where there is such a high turnover." One way the I/S Executive RoundTable hooks its members is to bring internationally respected speakers to Atlanta. Rather than hear these presenters as part of a large conference audience, they encounter them in a more intimate setting allowing for personal interaction. Recent speakers include Richard Bahner, senior vice president for human resources at Deutsche Financial Services, and Donald Ratajczak, former director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State.

The Marketing RoundTable solicits facilitators rather than speakers. "Our members as marketers are used to giving speeches themselves," Bernhardt said. "They don't need to hear someone give another speech, but they do need the highest-caliber experts leading a discussion in which they can participate." These facilitators have included faculty members from premier business universities throughout the United States as well as CEOs for America's top national corporations.Their discussions have run the gamut of topics from new product successes and failures to electronic commerce and included guests like former director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census Barbara Bryant, Earthlink CEO Charles "Garry" Betty and Harvard Business School Professor John Deighton.

These facilitators reinforce members' knowledge of developing trends. A recent meeting on the Internet's influence on sales forces contributed to Mike Harrell's reevaluation of training of the sales staff at Bell South Mobile Data. "Sales forces are the equivalent of information providers:' Harrell said. "They supply you with answers to questions. However, with the advent of the Internet, consumers will use that format to find answers, particularly younger people who are comfortable with technology. That leaves your sales force vulnerable to becoming obsolete.''To prevent that, Bell South Mobile Data is implementing plans to expand the responsibilities of its cellular sales force to consultants who can handle more complex data projects.

A CASE STUDY

Rob Palatino, president and CEO of Lighting Products Corporation, met Deborah Butler through his membership in the Society of Entrepreneurs. During one meeting, Butler proposed having her management class prepare a business analysis of Palatino's company, and Palatino agreed, Throughout the fall semester of 2000, Butler's students studied his lighting distribution business, taking notes, interviewing employees and analyzing distribution patterns. At the end of the course, the students prepared individual consultants' reports on what they had learned,

"They pointed out some things that we didn't see - the forest for the trees," said Palatino. "When you are in a rapid growth mode like we have been, you tend to think you're doing fine, but we realized after reading these reports, there were some obvious improvements we needed to make in some areas." Palatino was so impressed with the class's thorough and careful examination he wrote a letter that students could add to their resumes. One student even landed a job based in part on Palatino's recommendation. "It was a mutually good experience for me and for the class," Palatino said.

RoundTable connections have led directly and indirectly to other hiring opportunities for members - Semans, vice president of the Brand Consultancy, for one. "It's hard to find someone with the smarts, drive, intellect and business sense to thrive in a small company like ours," noted Semans. ''When you see someone like that, you hire them." Semans did just that when she recruited Chandra Glascoe-Atherley, an MBA student who plans to graduate from the RCB in 2002, during her internship with the Brand Consultancy Glascoe-Atherley has yet another roundtable connection as a recipient of the 2001 Minority Marketing Scholarship, presented annually to two outstanding minority students selected by Marketing RoundTable members and made possible by the Marketing Awards for Excellence.

Scott Seydel, a sponsor of the Society of Entrepreneurs and a member of the RCB Board of Advisors, sees his RoundTable membership as "a good opportunity to get good people." He has not only employed RCB graduates for sales and design positions at his company, EvCo Research, but also he has served as a mentor in the classroom. As an occasional lecturer at Georgia State, Seydel teaches students the nuts and bolts of being an entrepreneur: How do you talk to banks? What is sweat equity? And he learns from his students as well. "Our corporation is anchored in the fashion textile industry, and we need to stay in touch with young people, fresh people with fresh ideas," said Seydel. "They let me know what's going on."

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

RoundTable member companies often become sites for professional research, said McLean. For example, when Holiday Inn moved its headquarters to Atlanta from Memphis, it had recently implemented a multimedia system for training its employees. What it didn't know was how well this new system was working. Through a connection made by a member in the I/S RoundTable, Holiday Inn recruited an RCB doctoral student to compare its traditional training method with the multimedia approach. According to McLean, Holiday Inn gained some valuable information from the study, while the student had access to a research site that provided thousands of subjects at hundreds of hotels.

Similarly UPS and an RCB doctoral student are teaming up to understand how knowledge sharing works in short-term computer projects. At the UPS E-Solution Center in Alpharetta, web developers work together on projects that average less than six months in duration, with approximately 125 developers currently engaged in implementing 25 projects.When employees work as a team for longer periods of time, trust and confidence build and knowledge pooling results. However, in these short-term projects, no one has yet studied how knowledge sharing actually takes place. This dissertation, again an outgrowth of a RoundTable connection, will help UPS and the broader business community better understand the process of knowledge sharing in e-commerce projects.

ADVANTAGES ALL AROUND

Having seven RoundTables has enabled the College to form links with the CEOs, ClOs and COOs in the Atlanta business community, resulting in strong relationships not only with a single person in a company but throughout the company. These strong links give the RCB numerous advantages, spawning a host of class projects, bringing mentors from the business community to teach in classes and giving interns a variety of hands-on opportunities. The membership fees paid by organizations provide the largest single source of discretionary income for the RCB and have enabled the endowment of five marketing professorships and two annual minority marketing student scholarships.

For the business community, the university is providing continuing professional education, personal contact with the top business experts in the country, a network of colleagues for discussing cutting-edge issues and a pool of students for filling internships and recruiting for employment.

"The RoundTables are a wonderful vehicle for both the College and the members," said Bernhardt. ''It's a win-win partnership.''

by Rhonda Mullen