Many companies are looking to their webcams instead of their travel agents
Credit crunch driving virtual meetings
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13 Jan 2009, Ian Williams , V3
The economic situation is putting pressure on company travel budgets, prompting many to use collaboration technologies such as video conferencing to reduce costs and increase productivity, according to service provider Easynet Global Services.
The company's latest report suggests that four out of five European firms view business travel as a significant drain on time and budget.
Business travellers, meanwhile, reckon that only just over half of the time spent on a business trip can be classed as productive working time.
However, many are careful to not disregard the value of face-to-face meetings with clients and colleagues, and the importance of a handshake to a business relationship. Two thirds of respondents said that a mixture of physical and virtual meetings would offer the best of both worlds.
Video conferencing has often been sidelined as a technology that could never quite get off the ground, but with the development of telepresence, high-definition video, increased network bandwidth and the pressure on time and budgets, many are looking to their webcams instead of their travel agents.
One in six business travellers in Europe are unhappy with the amount of time they spend on business trips, according to the report.
Geographically it seems that German, French, Swiss and Spanish decision makers are in favour of less travel and more virtual meetings, while this is less of a problem in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium.
Similarly, half of respondents said that frequent travelling affects their work-life balance, either making them more susceptible to illness or putting a strain on their private life.
As well as saving time, six out of 10 managers interviewed see video conferencing as a way to slash travel budgets, one in four calculating the savings at over 30 per cent.
"A lot of companies are unaware that telepresence providers are offering much more than the technical installation," said Denis Planat, chief operating officer at Easynet.
"Full service providers that manage meetings from booking to technical set-up and support ensure that participants are not put off by the technology. Equipment utilisation is high, and significant travel budget reductions result in a rapid return on investment."
Just over a quarter of companies across Europe are already using or planning to implement full service video conferencing, the report found. Spain leads the charge with 38 per cent, followed by the UK and Belgium at 28 per cent each.
© Incisive Media Investments Limited 2010, Published by Incisive Financial Publishing Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, are companies registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 04252091 & 04252093
Do you agree?
Making collaboration available to all
The credit crunch is undoubtedly having an impact on the way people communicate, both within and between businesses, as companies look to cut their cost base without compromising operational efficiency.
As the Easynet Global Services survey highlights, video conferencing technologies are clearly helping meet this growing need. Yet in looking to improve internal and third-party collaboration, why stop there?
Greater bandwidth opens up opportunities for other established communications tools such as web-based and multi-media collaboration, enabling all staff cost-effectively to share and work on spreadsheets, presentations and other documents in real time, irrespective of access to video.
The flexible use of multimedia collaboration technologies - including voice, video and web conferencing functionality, ideally available through a single provider - can impact significantly on the way a business operates, allowing everyone within the business to collaborate online, with or without access to video.
And in so doing it creates that rare thing, the true win/win, enabling both the business to benefit in terms of cutting travel costs and reducing its environmental impact and the individual employee to improve their work/life balance.
Yet it is also essential to remember that any technology, no matter how impressive, relevant or easy to use, is merely an enabler. In order to ensure full usage throughout the enterprise, effective training is key to ensuring maximum awareness and understanding of how such tools can benefit both the individual and the business.
Posted by Johan Oberg, Marketing Manager Europe, Genesys Conferencing, part of Intercall, 16 Jan 2009
Virtual meetings: More effective than you may think
Virtual Meetings and the use of virtual 3-D technology as a whole is the inevitable way business will be conducted in the future. sure, live face-to-face meetings are the most effective way of communicating with each other but the reality of the business landscape of the future is that in the end when we balance the cost and time requirements of most meetings it will force us to settle for an alternative, and once all parties accept that level of communication as the new standard, virtual meetings will become the new norm. Take our passion for music as an analogy. The convenience of listening and carrying around thousands of songs on an MP3 player outweighs the 10-15% loss of quality and so except for the small group of audio listeners who demand the finest in audio quality, the rest of the world is listening to MP3.
This will happen in the way we communicate with each other. If we can conduct a 1 hour meeting in the virtual space and I can get 85-90% of the effectiveness of that communication process to meet the needs of the meeting, why travel across the globe taking days not hours to complete the same meeting. I meet everyday in our virtual space and I conduct tours to potential clients on a daily basis in our virtual environments and I can now conduct 4-5 tours a day that would have taken two weeks to conduct if I had to travel for each presentation. The key to this success is that both parties involved in the meeting accept the virtual format from the beginning. Once this is the basis of our communication their is no feeling that our meeting is less than what it would be if we met face-to-face. I believe cost and time will drive this technology to be an alternative we all can, and will, live with.
Posted by James Parker, 08 Mar 2009