ECS spreads PowerVote® in France and in all its European subsidiaries

With a presence in 11 European countries and 7,000 clients, ECS is currently managing more than 20,000 rental contracts. The group is strong in this area, and is in a position to offer its clients, SMEs/SMIs or large accounts, a range of personalised, global solutions which cover the specific problems of each business. Committed to the performance of their employees, ECS uses the PowerVote system on a European scale to establish the level of knowledge of their commercial teams and to optimise the impact of their sales and marketing seminars.

Based on electronic voting, with the PowerVote audience response system, fun, interactive presentations can be created, participants responses can be collected, and those responses can be displayed in real time in the form of graphics, with the aid of a video projector.

Looking for a tool both simple to use and able to be personalised, ECS decided, from November 2003, to use PowerVote in their "International Academy", an internal institute for the training of their sales forces, present in France as well as in each of the groups European subsidiaries (Germany, Belgium, Spain, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland). After each training module, the employees, equipped with voting keypads, respond individually to a series of questions to evaluate their knowledge, and they have to obtain a minimum mark to pass the module.

"We use PowerVote throughout the year to establish the skills of our employees, whether they are experienced or junior. They must follow several training modules which enable them not only to master the latest information technologies, but also to find out what the group offers overall. We therefore had to be able to rely on a solution to map out the level of knowledge of each employee in real time, while encouraging the memorising of the messages, through the fun aspect of the voting keypads", said Laura Barraco, ECS Marketing Director.

PowerVote is adapted to the group?s needs for flexibility, and is used by ECS during its annual seminar for its whole European sales force, ie more than 300 people. This event allows all the action plans which are to be implemented to be presented and understood by the participants. Capitalising on the fun aspect of the system as a lever to encourage learning and memorising, ECS also relies on different interactive games specially designed by La Générale Multimédia. Divided into teams, employees answer several quizzes about the group?s products. The answers and the performances are then displayed on the screen in real time. "Multimedia presentation coupled with the principle of having fun and its unexpected twists make this challenge one of the high points of the seminar, and the involvement of the employees is optimised because they take an active part in this event", continued Laura Barracco.
Enjoyable and simple to use, PowerVote is also regularly used within ECS during its internal meetings. "The management of other departments in the group, for example the Finance Department management, regularly use PowerVote during their meetings. When an opinion on a product or a situation is needed, we use this solution, which means that we can obtain an immediate response from the audience, while at the same time making taking collective decisions easier", concluded Laura Barracco.

Today ECS has 2 PowerVote cases of its own, each containing 20 keypads, and has the facility of renting further keypads when the number of participants exceeds 40 people.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of the Société Générale group, ECS is the leader in France and in Europe in IT asset leasing and the management of IT infrastructures (50 sites in Europe). Founded in 1974, ECS provides a global solution guaranteeing dynamism, optimisation and security for their clients' investment in IT.