Historically, the biggest advantage of videoconferencing was minimizing the travel budget. This will always be a big advantage of video conferencing; however, there is a much bigger impact in productivity. One of our clients needed are large deployment of room systems in South America. Their primary driver was productivity. At the time the company was downsizing and expertise in their process engineering was running thin. Also, it’s very difficult to travel from Brazil to Chile for example. Plant managers and project engineers were able to collaborate and trouble shoot quickly and efficiently. The video conferencing technology minimized production downtime in six countries. This client was able to leverage engineering expertise at light speed through their network. The bottom line was minimized down time and increased productivity with less people.
Think about how email affects your productivity. Proposals, purchase orders, instructions, photographs all can be sent easily through email. Imagine how productively would slow down or even stall without email. Video conferencing will certainly have a similar impact on productivity. Ninety percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have enterprise, standards based video conferencing. Initially many of these companies used the video conferencing technology internally as in the above example. Today there is a drive to connect outside of their networks to the supply chain; key customers; and other critical stakeholders. All these constituencies impact productivity.
Here are some examples on the advantages of video conferencing as is relates to productivity: One client is using the videoconferencing for focus groups. They can get a much broader sampling without the constraints of time and travel. Another company is using video conferencing mobile apps to support field engineers. Senior engineers can see problems and diagnose solutions in the field in real time without being in the field. One company is using video conferencing in their sales department. Salesmen are using the conference room or their own computer with a free downloadable app for the far end participant. They can make face to face sales calls all day long at light speed. The prospect on the far end needs no subscription or license because they use the free app. As enterprise video conferencing technology develops more productivity applications will evolve.
J.W. Hornyak Videoconferencing & Telecommunications
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