The bottom line benefits of collaboration technologies

What solutions does Polycom provide to those organisations struggling to reduce costs and environmental impact. By Polycom

Polycom is unique in its breadth of solutions to allow teams within organisations to work together regardless of location. The Polycom offer starts with the great voice products, offering much improved voice quality compared to normal telephones. We can then introduce a High Definition video component to the solution, whilst maintaining the ease of use of the telephone, and the really neat thing with these solutions is that when you add the video, even the audio gets better. With our Ultimate HD solutions, we have introduced the highest quality audio (just like your home hi-fi system) and importantly we offer stereo sound, so that you notice which side of the room the person is speaking from, just like you would if you were in the same room as them. And these days it is so easy to get your presentation materials into the meeting with our HD content, and you can rest assured that if you can read the information on your PC screen then people will be able to read it at the far end of the call, so another old concern of using video conferencing has been removed. We have done all of this to ensure that what we have called "the barriers to naturalness" that have plagued videoconferencing for some time, are being systematically removed. We may not have quashed them all at this time, and we continue to listen to and rely of our customers to drive us to ever better solutions, but we are proving that we have the innovative ability in the company to continually raise the bar within this industry and deliver systems that people like to use.

Also, these days we can support the largest of meetings, with hundreds of people joining a call, and our solutions will allow a mix of voice only and video participants in a meeting, so that no matter where you are, or what communication device you have in your hand, you can participate in the meeting and share your expertise over distance.  

Can you give some examples of companies using your solutions to reduce cost?
A large global partner recently reported some very impressive figures around there use of conferencing technologies, with $247,000,000, yes - $247mUSD saved by the company through the use of conferencing technology!!!! This was achieved by replacing over 1million meetings that would have occurred face to face with voice and video conferencing.  The savings in travel time for employees and the saving of travel costs of the company combined to generate this very significant gain for the organisation. And the really nice thing about this is it allowed the organisation to simultaneously achieve a 62,000 tonnes reduction in its carbon footprint.

Another interesting example on a smaller scale is from the UK, where the customer was concerned about the level of travel between their UK offices, the lost productivity and their travel related carbon footprint. Through the use of conferencing technology, they have taken many tens of tonnes of carbon from their footprint whilst providing a 150 man-week productivity gain from a small deployment of solutions. That's three man-years of productivity gained by the organisation, and a conservative estimate of the value would be in the range of $300,000 so $400,000.  So, we think it is clear that the solutions have an increasingly significant part to play in today's business climate, where particularly the conservation of cash whilst still chasing business growth is a primary concern. Couple this focus with the requirement for an environmentally sustainable implementation of business practices and the case for examining the Polycom solutions becomes even more compelling.

What are the benefits for companies looking to enable a more dispersed workforce in order to improve both their bottom line and their environmental footprint?
Companies want solutions that yield very significant cost savings whilst allowing the reduction of travel related carbon footprint. Allowing your workers to work from the location they choose, close to customers, and in a manner which is sympathetic to the family and caring responsibilities is important. The daily slog along the highways and city streets to the office is becoming more and more unattractive, and with the advent of new technologies, more and more unnecessary. Now, the most progressive, and the most attractive companies (from an employee's perspective) allow this sort of flexibility and gain great benefits in recruiting and retaining the best talent. The tools that Polycom provide allow the flexibility that many organisations and their staff demand, whilst providing the means for team relations to be built so that the team continues at high performance, despite the barriers of distance. Some large organisations have started to factor in the attendance rate of staff at the office when planning their real estate, and are finding that office space requirements, and of course car parking space requirements, can be reduced when you drive up the percentage of people who can work remotely from the office and thus reduce the cost of office space. 

Now consider that the new solutions from Polycom can allow a remote worker to have very high quality meetings over the network at a cost for the equipment of around $150 per month. So if the system can be used once  a month to save a day's travel  then it is likely to pay for itself with ease. Factor in the productivity gains from not having your people travelling so much and the Return on Investment starts to look very compelling.

Getting people to use the technology appears to be a challenge, how have you addressed this?
We have literally made it as easy to use as a telephone. We have engineered our phones and video systems to allow a user to start a video conference as a simple phone call, and for the phones to then invite the user to add video, if they wish and remember, as an added bonus, the voice quality increases at the same time. For those people who want to have absolutely no interaction with the technology, we also have a solution!!! Polycom can now set up the whole conference remotely for the user, so that user does not have to touch a single button, and the only skill required to attend the conference is finding a seat!!!!

Which particular types of businesses tend to benefit from the technology you're offering? Has the profile changed of late?
There is a wide range of businesses and non-profit organisations that have reaped considerable benefit from conferencing technologies. In the past the adoption was limited to the largest multinationals, but now the profile is changing so that the suppliers and customers of these MNCs are using the technologies to maintain and build business relations. Schools are using the technology to allow specialist teachers to reach many hundreds of kids in tens of schools every day, and attainment levels have been seen to increase as a result. And medical practitioners are similarly using them to reach remote patients in rural areas, to allow quicker access to specialist clinicians for more accurate diagnostics, for example tele-stroke practices, and in Finland we see systems being used to allow quicker release from hospital beds as patients can be cared for in the comfort of their home whilst specialist advice is available over home based video systems.

Do you see video conferencing becoming as mainstream and ubiquitous as web-based and voice solutions in the workplace?
Yes - because video communications is growing fast within youth culture, with MSN, Skype, gaming, mobile telephony, and social networking sites all allowing a video component to the interaction. I am told by my kids that email is "something only old people do" so the world is changing fast. Now when the teenagers of today hit the workforce and are asked by their bosses to go and build customer relationships through phone calls and email - it's not going to be met with a positive response - instead they will ask "where's my video "- a tool that they will have been using for years for the same purpose of building and maintaining relations. So the companies who wish to attract this talent pool of the future will embrace video and let the creativity of the next generation of workers loose on it.

Finally, looking to the future, how do you believe the solutions will progress over the next five years?
It is a really exciting time now for voice and video conferencing, and some large players in the ICT space have recently entered the market, a sign that there is confidence in its future. We expect an ever larger number of people to embrace the power of visual communications as we make systems easier to use, more natural, and more scalable across thousands of office and home office desktops. The culture of video usage within young people will drive growth. How will they use the technology - well who knows - the preponderance of texting and IM, rather that speech comms in youth culture is interesting - shall we move to a video+text mode of comms in the next 10years - only time will tell !!!!!

Contact details:
Dharmendra Parmar, General Manager, Marketing
T: +971 4 4294900, E: parmar@fvc.com