One of the first groups at Dow to take advantage of NetMeeting was a group working on the company's collaborative computing project. Team members came from Texas and from Dow's Michigan headquarters. They collaborated online on the project plan and schedule as well as various components and network designs. One of the team members from Texas estimated that being able to use NetMeeting and edit documents online in real time with the other team members saved him from two to three trips to Michigan. The cost savings, according to Vander Wall, adds up to as much as two thousand dollars saved per trip in travel costs and time.
Users simply click on the install button and the installation and setup is done automatically.
After they run the installation package, NetMeeting is integrated into on their start menu. They can connect to whomever they need to just by clicking on that name. Little training has been required for using the conferencing software, according to Clara Dannhaus, Dow Information Systems Specialist. It's really the etiquette that we're training users on. Most of the training covers the etiquette of how to run a meeting with NetMeeting and how to maximize performance under those conditions rather than the nuts and bolts of the application.