The bigger picture

Janne Lauanne, Business Area Director at Videra, discusses about the new way of producing high quality remote work services

“In everything we do, we strive to be our customers' valued partner and help our customers to develop and expand their own business”
-Janne Lauanne, Videra

CXO. Videra has a new idea of how to provide videoconferencing to customers, right?
Janne Lauanne. Yes, we do. We have travelled a long way in the videoconferencing business, from an equipment manufacturer to a full-service provider. What we have learned during this time is that customers only seldom need mere videoconferencing equipment, which still is the most common way of doing business in our field: to sell equipment and possibly support services. What customers actually need, as simple as it sounds, is to meet each other as if they were in the same room and never mind the technology. This is what we decided to do by providing our customers with top quality connections with each other, regardless their geographic locations. In other words, the underlying idea of our fully outsourced Virtual Office service is that Videra becomes the customer’s videoconferencing resource – their videoconferencing department, so to speak, and takes care of all technological details on behalf of the customer.

CXO. How did you end up with this kind of a solution?
JL. It was as much a change towards an even more customer-oriented organisational culture as a strategic decision. We discovered that our customers do not want to pay considerable amounts of money just for the mere joy of having videoconferencing equipment in the corner of a meeting room. Customers simply want to have remote meetings, pay for the added value they gain and forget about technical or support aspects.

From our point of view, customers have more important things to do than worry about videoconferencing and telepresence equipment. We let them do their work and take care of remote meeting arrangements on their behalf. This was the basis for developing our Virtual Office service, which has been quite a success story ever since. Videra strongly emphasises the importance of creating long-lasting customer relationships that create a genuine win-win outcome. In everything we do, we strive to be our customers’ valued partner and help our customers to develop and expand their own business. Creating tangible added value for our customers is at the core of our business.

CXO. What is the major difference between your service and other solutions on the market?
JL. The biggest difference is service. The other is cutting-edge technology which is, of course, critical to our Virtual Office service, but what really counts is that everything our customers needs for videoconferencing they can get from Videra. And they only pay a small fee for using the service, or a fixed monthly fee if that suits them better. This means no major investments, no problems with networks, no pressure for IT-personnel, and no problems with installation. We deliver everything that is needed, from conferencing equipment to displays and installation. We also teach our customers to use the service, and our support services have a very good reputation among our customers. Our own R&D department also plays a key role in developing new service features that the standard products on the market do not offer by default.

CXO. Could you tell us a bit more about your customers?
JL. We serve a wide range of customers from education to multinational corporations and from government to small-sized businesses. Our customers include several multinational companies such as Fortum, which is one of the major energy producers in Europe, which is an excellent example of our high-quality delivery and support services on the European level. Geographically speaking, we have provided our customers with service sites on nearly all continents. We have a global network of trained installation and on-site support personnel for international operations, even though our home market is in central and northern Europe.

CXO. How does Videra’s future look?
JL. Videra’s future is very bright. We are growing steadily but rapidly, both organically as well as through corporate acquisitions, and we are expanding our operations in Europe. There is a growing demand for high quality remote meeting services in the markets, and we are happy to meet that need.

Janne Lauanne is Business Area Director for Videra in Stockholm, and he is also Senior Partner. She joined Videra in 2001 and became partner year 2003. As a Virtual Office business area director, Lauanne is in charge of expanding Virtual Office business to new markets and developing remote conference services that create added value to the customers.