Save on travel with virtual meetings...
Jill Smart, an Accenture executive, was sceptical the first time she stepped into her firm’s new videoconferencing room in Chicago for a meeting with a group of colleagues in London. But the videoconferencing technology, known as telepresence, delivered an experience so lifelike, Ms Smart recalled, that “10 minutes into it, you forget you are not in the room with them.”
Accenture, a technology consulting firm, has installed 13 of the videoconferencing rooms at its offices around the world and plans to have an additional 22 operating before the end of the year.
Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May 2008 alone, saving countless hours of wearying travel for its workers and millions of dollars a year.
Accenture, a technology consulting firm, has installed 13 of the videoconferencing rooms at its offices around the world and plans to have an additional 22 operating before the end of the year.
Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May 2008 alone, saving countless hours of wearying travel for its workers and millions of dollars a year.
Replacing travel
As travel costs rise and airlines cut service, companies large and small are rethinking the face-to-face meeting — and business travel as well. At the same time, the technology has matured to the point where it is often practical, affordable and more productive to move digital bits instead of bodies.
Past predictions that technology could replace travel have been frequent and premature. The main difference today, analysts say, is that the technology is finally catching up to its promise. The results can be seen not only in the expensive new telepresence systems like those from Cisco Systems or Hewlett-Packard, but also in more mainstream collaboration technologies — Web conferencing, online document sharing, wikis and Internet telephony. The audio and desktop presentations in Web-based meetings, for example, are now more likely to be in sync and interactive. Companies of all sizes are beginning to shift to Web-based meetings for training and sales presentations. No one suggests that the face-to-face meeting is becoming obsolete, or that it is time for a requiem for the business trip. Companies talk about using digital tools mainly as a way of making business travel more selective and more productive. Still, the potential for digital displacement of business travel is substantial. A recent report estimated that up to 20 per cent of business travel worldwide could be replaced by Web-based and conventional videoconferencing technology.
The most dedicated business travellers tend to be management consultants, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers and technology services consultants. Much of their work has to be done in person with clients. But these professionals are increasingly using online collaboration tools for work within their firms.
At IBM, Michael Littlejohn, a work force and technology expert in the company's global services unit, said that two years ago he was on the road 13 to 15 days a month. These days, he says, he travels eight or 10 days a month. “But my time spent with clients is not less,” he said.
Corporate training and education is a field many companies are moving online, in part to trim travel costs. A range of companies offer the mainstream online communications and collaboration tools, including WebEx, Citrix, Microsoft, IBM and others. The most rarefied offering, though, is telepresence videoconferencing. Today, it is an elite product supplied by a few companies, including Cisco, HP and Polycom. Complete telepresence rooms, typically with three huge curved screens (and a fourth screen above for shared work), custom lighting and acoustics, cost up to $350,000— though that is down from $500,000, when HP sold its first system in early 2006. The resolution on telepresence screens is even sharper than on high-definition televisions, and images can be magnified to inspect products. And the images of people on screen are life-size.
Cisco, which has more than 200 telepresence rooms, figures it is avoiding $100 million in yearly travel costs, and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from air travel by 10 per cent. HP says air travel among its offices with telepresence rooms is down 25 per cent.
When used regularly, the rooms pay for themselves within a year, analysts estimate. Sales of telepresence systems will more than double this year to 627, estimates the market research firm IDC, and reach more than 8,000 by 2012.There is a certain paradox in telepresence, in that it is all to simulate the richest form of human interaction: people talking to each other, face to face.
As travel costs rise and airlines cut service, companies large and small are rethinking the face-to-face meeting — and business travel as well. At the same time, the technology has matured to the point where it is often practical, affordable and more productive to move digital bits instead of bodies.
Past predictions that technology could replace travel have been frequent and premature. The main difference today, analysts say, is that the technology is finally catching up to its promise. The results can be seen not only in the expensive new telepresence systems like those from Cisco Systems or Hewlett-Packard, but also in more mainstream collaboration technologies — Web conferencing, online document sharing, wikis and Internet telephony. The audio and desktop presentations in Web-based meetings, for example, are now more likely to be in sync and interactive. Companies of all sizes are beginning to shift to Web-based meetings for training and sales presentations. No one suggests that the face-to-face meeting is becoming obsolete, or that it is time for a requiem for the business trip. Companies talk about using digital tools mainly as a way of making business travel more selective and more productive. Still, the potential for digital displacement of business travel is substantial. A recent report estimated that up to 20 per cent of business travel worldwide could be replaced by Web-based and conventional videoconferencing technology.
The most dedicated business travellers tend to be management consultants, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers and technology services consultants. Much of their work has to be done in person with clients. But these professionals are increasingly using online collaboration tools for work within their firms.
At IBM, Michael Littlejohn, a work force and technology expert in the company's global services unit, said that two years ago he was on the road 13 to 15 days a month. These days, he says, he travels eight or 10 days a month. “But my time spent with clients is not less,” he said.
Corporate training and education is a field many companies are moving online, in part to trim travel costs. A range of companies offer the mainstream online communications and collaboration tools, including WebEx, Citrix, Microsoft, IBM and others. The most rarefied offering, though, is telepresence videoconferencing. Today, it is an elite product supplied by a few companies, including Cisco, HP and Polycom. Complete telepresence rooms, typically with three huge curved screens (and a fourth screen above for shared work), custom lighting and acoustics, cost up to $350,000— though that is down from $500,000, when HP sold its first system in early 2006. The resolution on telepresence screens is even sharper than on high-definition televisions, and images can be magnified to inspect products. And the images of people on screen are life-size.
Cisco, which has more than 200 telepresence rooms, figures it is avoiding $100 million in yearly travel costs, and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from air travel by 10 per cent. HP says air travel among its offices with telepresence rooms is down 25 per cent.
When used regularly, the rooms pay for themselves within a year, analysts estimate. Sales of telepresence systems will more than double this year to 627, estimates the market research firm IDC, and reach more than 8,000 by 2012.There is a certain paradox in telepresence, in that it is all to simulate the richest form of human interaction: people talking to each other, face to face.
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