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An electronic meeting system (EMS) is a type of computer software that facilitates group decision-making within an organisation. To work with such a system, networked computers, a projection screen, and EMS software are required.
Before beginning a meeting, outlines are drawn regarding what is to be discussed. Then, using the EMS software, all partcipants have a brainstorming session in which ideas and alternatives are discussed and put forward. These ideas are projected on the big screen in front, and further discussion might take place to explore each relevant idea. Also, to organise ideas, some EMS software has a vague issue-analyzing function which helps to identify and consolidate key focus items that resulted from the session.
This type of software is also capable of maintaining a poll, or a voting system, in which participants can vote on the best options. One very important factor of EMS software is its ability to allow participants to be anonymous. This helps avoid a lot of interpersonal issues. Human emotive factors such as embarrassment, reluctance to change a viewpoint, etc. are discarded with this. Also, decision-making can be aided by allowing ideas that are generated during the session to be taken on their own merits rather than their authorship. EMS software keeps minutes of meetings that can be printed out and distributed among particpants or saved to disk.
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