96
ROUNDTABLE
Place-to-face Evolving technology and the recent Icelandic ash cloud disrupting travel has brought the issue of videoconferencing into sharper focus. CXO hears four industry experts discuss the business benefits offered by videoconferencing technology.
Clive Sawkins brings a wealth of experience to BCS Global as CEO and Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing. Sawkins’ previous position was at Cisco Communications, where he was responsible for the Unified Communications and Telepresence Video Collaboration business across Europe. He has also held senior positions at Avaya, where he was Vice President, and at Nortel Networks.
VID CONF RT P96,97,99,101.indd 96
How can today’s videoconferencing technology enable companies to save travel and communication costs? Clive Sawkins. As the environment for collaboration is changing, the ‘tried and true’ collaboration method of face-to-face meetings has become too costly and has a huge impact on employee productivity. Companies now need collaboration technologies that allow anyone, anywhere, anytime and on any connected device to work together. With the potential for significant reduction in travel expenses and the ability to conduct productive meetings leading to efficient and effective decision-making, videoconferencing is fast emerging as one of the most feasible enterprise collaboration technologies. Today’s videoconferencing and telepresence solutions enable companies to have an immersive experience that is very close to a face-to-face meeting experience. While face-to-face meetings require customers or employees of a company to travel, arrange for hotels and transport – in addition to the productivity loss and stress resulting from airport security and delays, traffic, spending hours just to get to a business meeting lasting an hour or two – a video conference meeting can be conducted with greater ease without leaving the comfort of one’s office. In addition to this, if a company has implemented the right video infrastructure and has also engaged with a managed service provider to manage their day-to-day visual collaboration needs, the managed service provider
“Today’s videoconferencing and telepresence solutions enable companies to have an immersive experience that is very close to a face-to-face meeting experience” - Clive Sawkins can provide the company with videoconferencing services that are easy to use by their employees at all levels, irrespective of their technical knowledge, resulting in enhanced employee productivity, improved collaboration, and reduced business costs. Anthony Finbow. Globally active and distributed businesses are increasingly turning to IP-based videoconferencing – a key pillar of the new enterprise communications architecture – as a mechanism to significantly reduce travel costs and achieve working productivity gains. There is a clear business case for various industry verticals from manufacturing, where globally distributed design teams are able to collaborate more effectively in real time using the medium, to legal services where witnesses may be required to testify remotely, before a jury, over videoconferencing
18/08/2010 16:44