Virtual meetings deliver real savings

By Aaron McCormack, CEO, BT Conferencing

As one business travel adviser noted recently, spending on travel "has become a boardroom issue" since the downturn hit us [1].

Cutbacks in expenditure have been swift and deep. A survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) found that 47 per cent of executives expect to travel less in 2009 - some significantly so. Roughly a sixth of respondents expected the number of trips they made to reduce by 30 per cent or more. [2]

And executives aren't the only ones cutting back. As long ago as October 2008 - when the financial crisis was still very much in its infancy - the Business Travel Coalition, a US-based organisation, reported that almost a quarter of the corporate travel departments it contacted had imposed ­emergency travel cutbacks, and that about 70 per cent of these taking action planned to keep their cuts in place "until further notice" [1]. One in five British businesses plans to implement an outright ban on their employees travelling abroad. [3]

Once, cutbacks of this severity and magnitude would soon have had an extremely damaging impact. Unable to meet with customers, suppliers and partners to discuss contracts and take projects forward, businesses would slowly have ground to a halt.

Now, though, there is a cost-effective alternative to face-to-face meetings - one that works extremely well, even on those sensitive occasions when you need to be able to gauge people's body language and see the whites of their eyes.

Forget about planes, trains, automobiles and hotel rooms. As the EIU's survey highlighted, expensive business trips are increasingly being shunned as companies adopt video-conferencing and other technologies as alternatives to travel. Forty five per cent of respondents expected such solutions to reduce the need for corporate travel. [2]

Among the solutions on offer, Cisco TelePresence conferencing systems are rapidly establishing themselves as the way of choice for executives to meet. They are simple to use. All you have to do is walk into what looks like an ordinary meeting room. There, you'll find the people you want to meet 'sitting' around an ordinary meeting table. You can't shake hands with them - they could be in similar meeting rooms hundreds or thousands of kilometres away - but you can make eye contact, get a genuine sense of their personality and, if you ask a tricky question, even see the beads of sweat on their forehead as they contemplate their replies. Indeed, their presence is so life-like that you very soon forget they aren't actually there.

All of this is far removed from the era when video conferencing meant having to use cramped studios equipped with small screens, often in the service provider's offices. The limitations of yesterday's technologies meant that, even if the people you were 'meeting' were relatively near at hand, the quality of the images wasn't that good and you were constantly aware of all the 'mechanics' involved.

It was a real performance to get everybody connected into the call, for example. More often than not, someone technical had to do it for you. It all took time, and the need for support to be on hand added considerably to the cost. For many - me included - it seemed a high price to pay for something that was often more irritating than effectual.

Things have moved on enormously. Companies like Cisco now make 'TelePresence' conferencing systems that incorporate not only the high-definition displays we are becoming familiar with in television products, but spatial audio systems that make it clear which of the people around the virtual meeting table is talking. The way everything is integrated with the meeting room's furniture and lighting creates an authentic meeting experience.

But slick as all this technology is, you'll need one more thing - a high performance network that's available in all the right places. And I don't mean the internet. To guarantee a life-like experience, you need a high-bandwidth network that offers performance guarantees - BT's global MPLS network, for example. You won't want the screen to freeze every time someone downloads a big file.

Only by bringing everything together can you create the quality of experience business people need and make it business as usual. For example, the TelePresence meeting rooms we supplied to Media-Saturn - Europe's largest retailer of consumer electronics - allow people at its offices in Ingolstadt (Germany), Munich, Paris and Moscow to work together exactly as they could if they were all in the same building.

The icing on the cake is that it's all so easy to use. There's an episode of the American TV series "24" that shows how it works. [4] A fictional US vice-president wants to use a Cisco TelePresence conferencing system to discuss an international nuclear crisis with his fictional Russian counterpart. To start their meeting, all they do is press a button.

Such levels of usability are no longer fiction. These days, you really can go into a room, push a button and see your video conference set up right then and there, in front of your eyes. And it can be even more advanced. For example, systems can be set up so they know exactly which rooms on the network are supposed to be to talking to each other and at what time. That way everything will be ready and working when you walk in - just as it would be when you enter any other meeting room.

It sounds great, doesn't it? But it probably also sounds expensive, and we all know how hard cash is to come by these days. So is an investment in Cisco TelePresence conferencing one you'd be wise to make?

In our experience, the answer for many is a resounding yes. The multi-site firms we deal with tell us their enterprise-wide TelePresence conferencing systems cut spending on business travel by an average of more than five per cent. On that basis alone, they achieve a return on their investment within 12 months.

And this is just one of the benefits our customers tell us about. Productivity goes up - with less need for people to spend time on the road, they have more time to get work done - and the risk that key people will be out of contact in airports and on planes when you need them is reduced. Business moves quickly these days, so delays in making critical decisions can end up costing a great deal.

More and more organisations are moving towards this technology as a key part of their communications strategy. Ensuring you can communicate with suppliers, partners, customers and colleagues through this technology will give you a competitive advantage in relationship building, cost savings and quicker decision making.

Try TelePresence yourself by booking an interactive demonstration at our London Showcase.

Footnotes:

[1] ‘Corporate travel outlook grim’, Flightglobal.com, October 2008, www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/10/28/318016/corporate-travel-outlook-grim.html

[2] 'The austere traveller', Economist Intelligence Unit, February 2009, www.amadeus.com/amadeus/x155700.html

[3] 'Travel ban warning for businesses', Financial Times, February 9, 2009, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/226c7114-f616-11dd-a9ed-0000779fd2ac.html

[4] Cisco Technology Showcase on Fox, http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/telepresence/fox/index.html