Q4 Blog » General

Buy-Side seminar points to the web and social media as prime channels of communication

Karen Adams — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:09:47 +0000

I attended an interesting CIRI (Canadian Investor Relations Institute) round-table luncheon yesterday, and the topic of discussion was Understanding how the buy-side makes decisions . The format of the session was great; it was almost entirely Q&A and provided the opportunity for participants to openly dialogue with the speakers.Â The panelists were Stephanie Griffiths, Lead Portfolio Manager for Mackenzie Ivy Enterprise Fund, and Craig MacAdam, Portfolio Manager with the Aurion Capital equity team. Both were frank and concise in their answers, and while much of the information they provided was fairly intuitive, I did find some of their comments surprising and interesting.A lot of the discussion centered around the ways in which the panelists access information regarding the companies they invest and seek to invest in, and how IRO’s can assist in keeping them informed. Some of the things I expected to hear included financial statements and disclosure documents; however, one panelist also reads every annual report cover to cover, noting that occasionally one may find very relevant information important to a buying decision buried deep within a report. In an era of need for greater transparency, it was reassuring to hear it said that the more rules & regulations surrounding the disclosure of information, the better!

Access to management and senior executives is obviously most helpful. Some of the other tools that they find particularly useful include investor days, where they are able to get a sense of a company’s culture through speaking in-person with management, and get a chance to see a hands-on demonstration of the product or service they provide. Packaged information on a company website, including company presentations, are particularly helpful in advance of such events as they provide the opportunity to prepare questions that aren’t covered in other material made available.

Some of the efforts that may not be so useful industry sponsored broker conferences, and the four to five hundred emails per day that contain information that they already receive from other sources.

And finally, what role does social media play in keeping them informed? One panelist confirmed that a vast amount of key information is getting pushed through social media, and sees it as the communication way of the future. The other panelist uses blogs often to find out real information about companies; competitive pressures, the way they and their products/services are regarded in the industry, finding out the right questions to ask, etc.

This makes a lot of sense of course; when I think about making a major purchase or contracting a service personally, I simply put out the word to my contacts to ask for advice, input and any information I can, and what I gain from these conversations always factors largely into my buying decisions.

These conversations are taking place constantly, in real time, on the web through Twitter, Friendfeed and various other social media channels. It is critical for companies to take part in those discussions. That this was confirmed at the luncheon yesterday wasn’t rocket science social media is shaping the buy-side’s decisions and its day is coming

CIRI Ontario Seminar – Using Advanced Technologies Effectively CIRI Ontario opened the fall season at the Albany Club...
IR Best Practice: Get to know the Buy-Side Recently, I responded to a discussion on LinkedIN entitled “Required...
How the Buy and Sell Side Trade your Stocks Today Live from NIRI ’09 – Session: How the Buy and Sell...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A Great Social Media Release Example

Jason Little — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:02:35 +0000

When the SEC announced the new Reg. FD guidance, a flow of blog posts followed – many speculating on the net result of these new changes. More than one purported that the announcement would spell the death of the press release.

I’ve been following numerous bloggers and Social Media Release (SMR) folks on Twitter for several months now and I don’t think the new Reg. FD guidance will kill the press release. If anything, press releases will evolve and take advantage of new media technologies such as SMRs.

Reg. FD states that an issuer doesn’t need to release ‘paper friendly’ disclosure, which leaves the door wide open for video, audio and more interactive press releases. Anyway you slice it, at the end of the day a press release is all about marketing, plain and simple. What better way to market your company than through a concise press release that includes a 2-minute video or audio clip of the release?

This really hit home for me when I read Overstock.com’s latest press release in SMR format. Have a look at that link quickly, then come back, it’s ok, I’ll wait. Great, now that you’ve seen that release, take a look at the text version Overstock.com posted on their site.

Which do you think is more effective?

On the SMR version, you can:

print it
email it
share it through any social network
comment on it
watch a short video overview
get related links
view press contacts
see a quick overview of the release
view images that augment the text

As an investor, this gave me a more favorable opinion of Overstock.com. Here we go again… praising the distribution power of Twitter, but my network on Twitter brought this to my attention. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about it.

The rise of SMRs and the use of social media as an IR marketing tool is inevitable given the new Reg. FD guidance. When presented with a choice of viewing a quick summary and video clip over reading a press release, I would gladly watch the video and jot down notes, while still having the ability to view the full release if I wanted. SMRs allows both and it’s a much better marketing tool than plain text.

Announcing the September 2008 Release of Q4 PRESS We’ve been hard at work over the last couple of...
Barrick Gold Goes live with Press Release RSS feeds Barrick Gold (TSX, NYSE: ABX) officially launched Q4’s RSS feed...
Successful Integration of Social Media Tools in IR Websites [caption id="attachment_260" align="alignright" width="320" caption="NIRI Webinar - Trends in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Q4 closes $1.2M to Fund Web Disclosure Efforts

Darrell Heaps — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:05:06 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that we have closed our latest round of funding, bringing the total raised to $3M (CDN) since the fall of 2006. Investors include a mix of institutional funders and angels. You can access the full press release on our web site:

Q4 Web Systems Closes $1.2M in Funding for Web Disclosure

Here are a couple of my quotes from the release:

I’m very pleased to close this latest round of funding in this current market climate. We continue to receive validation for our business model from the addition of new clients, business partners and our ability to attract investment. This latest round of funding will enable us to continue scaling the business while we roll-out our next generation platform in 2009.

This regulatory guidance is a significant change to how material information is distributed to the market. Not only does it lower costs for issuers, but it also creates opportunities for a number of companies, of which we are one. This investment is a validation of the market potential for our platform and web disclosure in general.

Q4 Closes $1.8 Million in Private Placement Financing Earlier this week we announced the closing of latest round...
BFI Income Fund (TSX: BFC.UN) goes live on Q4 Web Last week BFI Income Fund (TSX: BFC.UN) went live on...
Sentry Select selects Q4 Fund Edition to reduce Disclosure Risk related to Bill 198 Recently Sentry Select went live on the new Fund...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to make your website a “public” disclosure channel under new SEC guidance and RegFD

Darrell Heaps — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:57:32 +0000

If you’ve had a chance to go through the 47 page guidance and specifically the section regarding “dissemination” of information and what “public” means in the context of RegFD and the corporate web site you’ve likely been left scratching your head thinking “ok, so now what?”The issue of what constitutes public information is one of the grey areas of the latest guidance. The purpose of this post is to try and provide some additional color to the guidance and help you understand what it is going to take in order to use your website as your “public” channel of disclosure under this new guidance.

To be considered “public” the corporate site needs to meet 3 criteria.

a company web site is a recognized channel of distribution
posting of information on a company web site disseminates the information in a manner making it available to the securities marketplace in general, and
there has been a reasonable waiting period for investors and the market to react to the posted information.

For the purpose of this post I’m going to focus on the first two criteria.

From the guidance: Whether a company’s web site is a recognized channel of distribution of information depends on the steps that the company has taken to alert the market to its web site and its disclosure practices, as well as the use by investors and the market of the company’s web site

In general, for you to use your site as the main channel of disclosure it requires that you act like it is the main channel and that the market recognizes it as such. This means that you need to change the behavior of your company along with the perception of the market – which is going to take some effort. Here are a handful of suggestions (along with language from the guidance) for you to get started with:

Plan to transition to a web disclosure model over the next year. As you just read, this is about the market seeing your corporate site as the main channel of disclosure and knowing that your web site is the first place to go. This means you’re going to have to work and changing the market perception along with (likely) making improvements to your site. Setting a timeline over the next 4 quarters will allow you to establish some clear milestones and to use traditional means (see below) to condition the market to go to your corporate web site for disclosure.

Act as if your site is your only method of disclosure – even while using all traditional methods. Treating your website as the main channel for disclosure is the first and most obvious step to take. And it’s also the one that takes the most sustained effort. More on improving your web site below. In addition to this, reference your web site in all of your disclosure such as press releases, reports, webcasts, presentations etc. Routinely post critical information to your web site in a prominent location. Ensure your disclosure and methods of subscription are front and centre on your site – push people to sign-up for email and/or subscribe to RSS feeds. Look to the leaders in the industry, site’s like Sun Microsystems and others – how can you get closer to these standards?

From the guidance: Whether and how companies let investors and the markets know that the company has a web site and that they should look at the company’s web site for information. For example, does the company include disclosure in its periodic reports (and in its press releases) of its web site address and that it routinely posts important information on its web site?

Transition the market to go to your web site as the starting point. Here is a suggested path to transitioning to web disclosure.

Include links to your site in all reports, press releases, etc., condition the market to come to your site (Updated Oct 21, 2008 – Include at the bottom of each press release/report that as of a specific date, your web site will become your recognized channel of disclosure and provide links to subscribe to RSS and/or email.)
Make RSS, Email alerts and other subscription features prominent – own your list (don’t let the newswire do this for you)
Move to a Notice and Access model for the distribution of your news – send notices via newsires, not news - see the Notice and Access model just posted by IR Web Report for a great model to follow
The notice and access model may be the end point for a while until new methods emerge or your company is very well followed

From the guidance: Whether the company has made investors and the markets aware that it will post important information on its web site and whether it has a pattern or practice of posting such information on its web site;

Use the Internet standards of distribution like RSS and Email alerts to connect with the market and get your message out. Use RSS, Email alerts and other options as they emerge to get your content out to the Internet and into the hands of the market. Add rich content to your IR site, think of yourself as an investor – what are you looking for. Work with your vendors, push them to improve their products and help you achieve more –it’s a competitive industry and we all want to help.

Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your peer companies – start using RSS today and see what a difference it makes in staying connected. By using RSS you’ll want to have this on your site tomorrow and you’ll see the potential of using it to drive your disclosure. Subscribe to the feeds from IR experts and from vendors, keep an eye on what’s happening in the industry and what the options are for you to do things better.

Why should you move to a web disclosure model?

From the list above you may be thinking “looks like a lot of work” and the reality is that it will take a commitment from you and your vendors to building the new standard of disclosure. The SEC has opened the field for innovation to drive the market. Being a part of it has a number of benefits:

Gaining complete control over your disclosure and establishing a direct connection to the market. In today’s world you have very little knowledge as to who is interested in your disclosure. Yes there are media monitoring services out there, but these provide an aggregate view of the market’s interest. The more you are able to use your web site as the podium for your disclosure you will find your subscriber lists growing and your understanding of the market improving by having a direct connection, rather than through intermediares.

Reduce or eliminate newswire distribution costs. Although newswires will provide a long list of reasons for why you should continue to pay for the distribution of data (such as editorial quality, catching errors, availability, and their long list of distribution options) you know that there is a finite universe out there that needs to know about your disclosure. You also know that your internal processes (due to SOX) now force you to check, recheck and obtain extensive internal approvals on material information and the newswires can’t help you there. The SEC guidance now makes it possible to move to a “notice and access” model and drastically reduce the size and number of press releases you put out over the wire. By redirecting just a portion of the savings to a web disclosure initiative you’ll be able to build ongoing sustainable value with your stakeholders. Do you find yourself thinking – “I’d love to do more with my site but I don’t have the budget?” – reducing your spend on newswires now gives you that budget.

Companies that focus on disclosure and transparency have been proven to maintain value during quarterly earnings. In a world driven more and more by automated trading IROs need to focus on fundamental investors who view disclosure, transparency and a connection with the company and it’s business a key aspect. By focusing on web disclosure you will create a direct connection with these valuable long-term investors that help you weather the storm as you ride the quarterly roller coaster.

We’re very interested in hearing from you on the above. If you have additional thoughts or completely disagree please comment or send me an email at darrellh@q4websystems.com

SEC Guidance enables corporate websites and blogs to be fair disclosure Late last week the SEC issued guidance on how companies can use corporate...
RSS feeds and email alerts increase after SEC guidance Although we are not a proxy for the entire market...
Q4 WEB – An Important First Step in the New Reg. FD Web Disclosure Model Every now and then something happens in the market that...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Rockefeller Habits meet SCRUM

Darrell Heaps — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:29:09 +0000

As Jason mentioned in his previous post, we are getting ready to kick off a busy summer quarter. With this, we have a new set of priorities and goals that we want to achieve. This is going to be our second quarter implementing the Rockefeller habits, we learned a lot the first time around and will be aiming to improve the way we track and score our progress.

One of the biggest changes we are making this time around is in the area of product development, implementations and support. Historically we have divided our development efforts into 2 distinct teams, a Product team that focused on building new features for our products and an implementation team that worked on implementing our products for clients and supporting those installations. As part of our recent re-adoption of Scrum project management, the entire group of developers were given the task of deciding on what kind of team structure we should work under. To make a long story short, the team decided on one group after much discussion, but the really great thing I’d like to point out is that we were given the option to chose for ourselves, this shows an amazing level of trust that is often times hard to find in the corporate world.

Photo credit: roy_mac_an_iarla

Another big change is that new team will be sitting together in one room, we feel this will not only help us as a group work together, but also to foster creative thinking and continually improve our products and processes. This also allows us to learn and feed off each other on a day to day basis. Learning is a never ending job for software developers and being surrounded by other smart people makes learning easy and fun!

We are all really excited about the coming months, and excited to be working on more great features for our clients.

A Year Later: Living with the Rockefeller Habits Ok, it’s been almost a year but nonetheless, this is...
Busy Summer Ahead for Q4 Fresh off my vacation, I was pretty excited to get...
Q4 is Looking for Senior Agile .NET Developers Q4 Web Systems is looking for senior .Net developers with...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Busy Summer Ahead for Q4

Jason Little — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:54:51 +0000

Fresh off my vacation, I was pretty excited to get back to work this week with new found knowledge from the Certified Scrum Master course I took a couple of weeks ago. We have a couple of big release projects starting this quarter for both Q4 WEB and Q4 PRESS and there are a few new Q4 WEB clients in development right now so it’s shaping up to a busy summer for Q4.

Q4 PRESS was very well received at CIRI and NIRI 2008 and we’ve got a whole host of new features that are being planned out which will become part of the next release at the end of Q3 2008. Stay tuned for the list of features and more detailed release information.

We’re also in progress with moving to a new data centre along with the next release of Q4 WEB as we’ve simply outgrown our current solution.

I feel like I say this quite a bit, but this is a very exciting time for Q4 and I’m glad I had a chance to get away for a week and recharge for this quarter!

SEC goes ahead with mandating XBRL During this morning’s Open Meeting the SEC said that it...
Summer ‘09 Preview bring social media and xbrl to IR websites Summer ‘09 Preview Earlier today we released our Summer...
Announcing the September 2008 Release of Q4 PRESS We’ve been hard at work over the last couple of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Darrell’s Live Blog from CIRI 2008 on Zu Blog

Jason Little — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:39:52 +0000

If you weren’t able to attend CIRI 2008, you can catch up with Darrell’s live blog during the “Capital Markets Fraud Investigations – White Collar Crime” session which has been reposted on Zu Blog Related posts:CIRI Conference Review This year’s Canadian Investor Relations Institutues conference was held in Whistler,...Darrell Heaps, interviewed at NIRI 2008 The folks over [...] Related posts:

CIRI Conference Review This year’s Canadian Investor Relations Institutues conference was held in Whistler,...
Darrell Heaps, interviewed at NIRI 2008 The folks over at zu.com were doing interviews with some...
CIRI Ontario Seminar – Using Advanced Technologies Effectively CIRI Ontario opened the fall season at the Albany Club...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Q4 Datacenter SAS 70 Certified and Sarbanes-Oxley compliant

Darrell Heaps — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:19:07 +0000

As part of our ongoing effort to improve and upgrade our infrastructure I’m pleased to announce that the new Q4 data center is now fully redundant and SAS 70 TYPE II certified.

SAS 70 is an internationally recognized auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Our data center’s SAS 70 certification enables us to further our expansion into the enterprise market by delivering certification of the controls needed for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

This certification deals with the controls related to service delivery, operations, infrastructure maintenance, change management, backup of programs and data files and logical and physical data center access.

Over the next couple of months we’ll be transitioning all clients over to the new data centre. Q4 has always provided a highly secure service delivery but now our customers will feel even more confident that our services are safe, secure, reliable and compliant with regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley.

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, Disclosure, Disclosure controls, Compliance, SAS 70, Sarbanes Oxley, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites

Automation drives down Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs I just came across a great article on computer world...
SEC accredits Sarbanes-Oxley to returning $350M to Fannie Mae investors On October 19th the SEC announced that checks totaling more...
Only 10% of top executives feel their peers are compliant with C-SOX legislation A study commissioned by Symantec Corp. revealed today that only...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

BFI Income Fund (TSX: BFC.UN) goes live on Q4 Web

Darrell Heaps — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:10:34 +0000

Last week BFI Income Fund (TSX: BFC.UN) went live on Q4 WEB. We’re thrilled to add BFI to our growing list of clients looking to increase the efficiency of managing their corporate web site disclosure.

“We are very excited to be using Q4’s content and disclosure management system to easily manage and control changes to our corporate website,” stated Chaya Cooperberg, Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for BFI Canada Income Fund. “In today’s regulatory environment, it is very advantageous and reassuring that the system automatically tracks and logs all changes and approvals, ensuring greater protection and compliance. We were extremely impressed with Q4’s ability to smoothly implement their solution in conjunction with our site re-design, and we are pleased to be at the forefront of using this technology.”

BFI’s web site can be found at: http://www.bfi.ca/

Full Press Release

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Disclosure, Compliance

Newport Partners Income Fund (TSX: NPF.UN) goes live with Q4 It’s an exciting time here as we continue to bring on...
Sentry Select selects Q4 Fund Edition to reduce Disclosure Risk related to Bill 198 Recently Sentry Select went live on the new Fund...
Forsys Metals Goes “Live” With Q4’s Disclosure Management Software Press release went our yesterday announcing that Forsys Metals had...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Q4 Closes $1.8 Million in Private Placement Financing

Darrell Heaps — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:15:05 +0000

Earlier this week we announced the closing of latest round of funding. Here’s the full press release:

Financing to fund ongoing development of innovative workflow compliance and disclosure solutions and expanded sales and marketing efforts

Q4 Web Systems Inc. (“Q4 Web Systems” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has closed $1.8M CDN in private placement financing from investors including a Schedule A Canadian bank. The proceeds of the financing will be used by the Company to expand sales and marketing activities and accelerate the development of Q4 Web System’s innovative suite of workflow and collaboration solutions for managing capital markets disclosure and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
“We’ve grown rapidly over the past year and are pleased with our investors’ confidence in our company, our products and our plans for expansion across North America,” says Darrell Heaps, President and CEO of Q4 Web Systems. “Increased regulation has strained the resources of issuers who are challenged to balance Sarbanes-Oxley compliance with corporate disclosure and the expectations of real-time transparency “ said Mr. Heaps. “Our suite of innovative solutions addresses the management, tracking and distribution of disclosure and automates many tasks, saving time and money while speeding the delivery of material information to the market. “

Q4 Web Systems’ products aid in the certification of disclosure controls and procedures as specified in Sarbanes-Oxley Act section 302 and Canadian Securities Administrators’ Multilateral Instrument 52-109 and streamline compliance with CEO/CFO certification and Bill 198. They do so by automatically routing information upward and generating time-stamped, auditable records of all viewers, versions, comments, edits and approvals.

About Q4 Web Systems
Q4 Web Systems is a leading provider of end-to-end disclosure management software. help publicly-traded companies increase efficiency, reduce compliance risk and gain complete in-house control over their disclosure. Q4’s innovative solutions automate many of the manual tasks related to disclosure, saving issuers time and money while speeding the delivery of their material information to the market. Companies across North America rely on Q4Web Systems to manage their disclosure more efficiently, more effectively and with less risk.

For further information: please visit http://www.q4websystems.com/ or contact: Darrell Heaps, President and CEO, Q4 Web Systems Inc., darrellh@q4websystems.com, Tel: 1-877-426-7829, or (416) 626-7829 ext. 222

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, Venture Capital, Disclosure, Investor Relations, financing, software

Q4 Datacenter SAS 70 Certified and Sarbanes-Oxley compliant As part of our ongoing effort to improve and upgrade...
Crystallex (TSX: KRY) Goes Live with Q4 We’re please to announce that Crystallex International has selected Q4’s...
Automation drives down Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs I just came across a great article on computer world...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.