A global meeting place

Cathy Ham, VP Global Portfolio & Marketing at BT Conferencing, on why conferencing solutions can bring the right people together at the right time no matter where they are located in the world.

Conferencing solutions help people get their work done without the need to travel as much. Travel costs for face-to-face (F2F) meetings are a major avoidable cost, but only if the alternatives are easy to use, reliable and offer a concrete financial saving. With the right partner, audio, web and video conferencing meet all of these criteria. Now, more and more organisations - of all sizes and across all sectors - are discovering the business benefits conferencing solutions can deliver. Over our years in the conferencing business, we have developed a 'business benefits' survey tool to demonstrate the time and cost savings our customers are realising by using our services. This also gives us an insight into the kind of savings all companies could be making. For example, for an organisation with 10,000 people, the typical travel cost for a F2F meeting is around €114. Conferencing typically replaces 52 percent of these meetings, yielding a €1.3 million P&L saving. Once you add in the avoidance of unproductive travel time, this can extend the overall savings to almost €2 million.

Other benefits

Using conferencing solutions to reduce F2F meetings doesn't just deliver financial savings. Even in today's economic environment, sustainability is still a key consideration. Travelling only when it's essential means we produce less CO2. For the average business traveller, conferencing solutions can typically save around three tonnes of CO2 per year. Collaboration tools allow you to bring the right people together at the right time, no matter where they are based. They can collaborate instantly, just as if they were sat next to each other, working together on global projects across multiple time zones - without leaving their desks, or even their homes. Such business agility and flexibility drives innovation, customer service and cost efficient business operations.

When people do need to travel, conferencing solutions help them stay in touch easily and effectively. Anyone can join an audio conference call from virtually anywhere in the world for the cost of a local phone call. Add an internet connection and they can talk and share documents or slides in much the same way as they would in person. We all know that travelling to meetings doesn't just confine itself to working hours. So for the individual, a more flexible working policy means that work/life balance is easier to achieve. And if people are happier in their working lives, you see better employee retention rates and a more motivated workforce.

Obstacles to adoption

In today's business culture, working together usually involves meetings and their associated travel. As human beings, we are most comfortable working with people we can see and shake hands with. Using a conferencing service to hold meetings and work remotely can seem like an alien concept. To get widespread adoption, people need to see the benefits for themselves; less travelling and less impact on their personal time; easier project management; faster decision making; relief from complex diary and travel arrangements.

We feel it's important to help our customers create a real culture of collaboration. Because if your employees aren't using their conferencing accounts, you won't see the savings you expect. So our teams work with your business to help set up adoption programmes, training, helpdesks and proactive service monitoring: to make the difference between success and failure of widespread adoption. So what does the future hold for conferencing solutions? We believe the next five years will see the further shrinking of global geographical and cultural boundaries, with virtual meetings over telepresence and other forms of unified collaboration becoming commonplace. The global economy will recover and return to growth, but with the advantage of advanced conferencing solutions, this doesn't have to be at the expense of the environment.

Cathy Ham is the General Manager of Global Portfolio and Marketing at BT Conferencing. Ham has held the position for almost two years and her portfolio of responsibilities include governance, the video unit, and audio and web (collaboration). She has over 20 years' experience in the telecommunications industry across a number of disciplines ranging from sales through to legal.