Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about VisitView Corporation.

Q: Who is VisitView Corporation?

VisitView Corporation is a small company consisting of two principals, Howard Lo and Devang Mehta. It is fully owned by Howard Lo who established the company in 1997 and incorporated it in 2000. Our office is located in the south loop of downtown Chicago.

Q: How did VisitView get started?

Around mid 1995, Howard was working for Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) as a Systems Engineer. The corporate headquarters had a briefing center that was growing and Howard, having recently written the Webucator (See People), was asked to write an application to help manage customer briefings. In 1997, Howard left SGI to form his own software consulting company. He was asked again by SGI to update the application with more features and hook it to a database server. He agreed on the condition that a brand new application with a new code base be written and that the newly formed Mastersoft (now doing business as VisitView Corporation) would own the intellectual property related to the application. Thus, the first commercially available VisitView was created.

Q: How do you manage to serve your clients effectively with just two people?

Our operations are very optimized. We have managed to achieve this by keeping things simple and avoiding needless complexity.

Howard and Devang have worked closely since 2001 in all aspects of the business. During this time, we have minimized costs and extended our operating capacity by developing a network of quality service providers. Having these providers helps us to spend most of our time serving our clients and improving VisitView. It also reduces our financial risk substantially (see question on financial viability below).

Q: Why should we choose VisitView Corporation?

We are focused on one and only one market: Briefing Centers. Our unique sauce is our deep understanding of the Briefing Center business accumulated over the course of eleven years and our rock solid dependability and responsiveness.

Q: What is VisitView Corporation's philosophy, culture?

Our philosophy is simple: Solve the client's problem at a reasonable price and minimal headache.

From our experience, briefing center managers want a solution which enables them to free themselves from day-to-day operational headaches and allows them to focus their attention on moving up the value chain in the sales cycle. This is what we aspire to provide and this aspiration has driven our managed service approach with an all inclusive pricing model.

Culturally, we are inclined to keep things simple, resolve issues quickly, develop strong and efficient working relationships with our clients and keep making continuous incremental improvements to their user experience. We are easily accessible via phone or email, we listen very carefully when our clients call us or write to us and we put all our experience and knowledge at their disposal.

Q: How can I feel comfortable that my investment in VisitView is safe in the long term?

The easiest way to feel comfortable with us is to verify our track record (Please contact us for references).

During the last eleven years that we have been in business, we have gained enormous satisfaction from seeing our clients become successful in their endeavors. And we have had lots of fun doing it and learning more about life and business during the process. We want to keep learning and we want to keep enjoying the success of our clients for as long as we can. Don't expect us to try anything "different" anytime soon!

Q: Am I not better off going with a standardized software suite or hiring my own developers to build my application?

The answer to this question requires an analysis of the needs of your organization. But a few general observations can be made.

Generally, running a briefing center tends to be different as compared to something like running an accounting department, which tends to be quite easily automated by using standard off-the-shelf tools.

Briefing centers evolve at a rapid pace and briefing managers are required to be quite agile in that respect. At the same time, even small disruptions in their operations tend to have a big impact on the performance of the sales team. And just like everybody else, briefing center managers are under constant pressure to keep costs under control.

A software suite works in the scenario where you have standardized operations which don’t change too frequently or you have plenty of lead time and budget to make changes. Hiring your own developers works in the scenario where you can have a big budget year after year and the size and scale of your briefing program overshadows the substantial costs and the risks associated with a home-grown application.

Most briefing programs, however, do not fall into either category. Hence, their best option is to find an appropriate application to automate their processes. With VisitView, we strive to achieve the balance which most briefing center managers need so badly. We can provide the functionality and agility that managers need without the cost and risk of a customized software suite or a home-grown application.

Q: Is VisitView Corporation financially viable?

We are often asked this question and the answer is a resounding yes. Here is the explanation of why that is so.

For a small corporation like ours, financial risk comes mainly from two areas: capital investment/long-term leases and employee head-count. We have practically outsourced both areas of risk by building relationships with service providers with much deeper pockets than ours. Both Howard and Devang operate from home offices, which eliminates the need for leasing office space. We do not have any major investments in servers, furniture, office equipment, etc. which could turn out to be non-productive. We have no additional staff or professional helpers to manage the company, which eliminates an entire spectrum of liabilities and risk. We work on an informal profit sharing arrangement and have the wherewithal to withstand short-term revenue instability. We avoid travel, marketing and other discretionary expenses which could eat into our profits. We have no long-term or short-term debt.

Essentially, we run the corporation as a break-even enterprise with expenses and profits settled monthly and basic solvency is practically guaranteed through the way we are operate the business.

Q: What if Howard or Devang gets hit by a truck?

To be completely frank, we are not yet 100% redundant but we are working towards that and we hope that we can change this answer soon. Most of the risk comes from Howard being the main architect of the application and his understanding of the code base being substantially deeper than Devang's. From a legal and financial perspective, we have already put in place measures to guarantee continued operations, should one of the principals be affected by an unfortunate event. We are conscious that some risky activities can put everyone in jeopardy and we refrain from all such activities (yes, Howard has given up scuba diving!).