Why go for telepresence?
Tech providers argue that telepresence allows users to develop a closer rapport with each other, because everyone can see who is talking, see their facial expression and have eye-contact -- things previous video conferencing systems couldn’t provide.
The global telepresence market is still relatively small, with suppliers emerging from the hardware sector Avaya, Cisco, HP and Teliris. In a 2008 report, industry analyst house Ovum estimated the number of units in operation to be 1,300 but forecasted the market to grow to 5,000 by the end of this year. The report predicted the worldwide customer base would double to 550 companies in the same time frame. Clearly, we are still at the beginning of the life-cycle of the product and many organisations are still piloting telepresence systems, including HSBC and the MOD.
But the potential for saving money on travel alone is compelling, and it has also helped British & American Tobacco move towards an environmental target. Using telepresence over the last year to eliminate over 5,500 flights, BAT has saved £9m on travel expenses and sees the technology as helping it achieve its goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 11,000 tonnes in the next five years.
But it remains a significant investment. So how do you know whether it’s right for your business? Here’s a quick guide.
Assess the business need
If the nature of your business requires a lot of travel and collaboration among different locations and time zones, then telepresence can offer a more cost-effective alternative to bringing people together in the same room. But it shouldn’t replace those regular get-togethers — BT Conferencing’s chief executive, Aaron McCormack, tells customers to reallocate half their travel budgets to tech solutions.
Even then, investing in telepresence will be more worthwhile only if you have a large travel budget, a large distributed workforce or mobile workers who need to communicate with each other and HQ pretty regularly.
If your business regularly works on business problems or develops new propositions across geographical boundaries, email and instant messaging may not be formal enough for ad-hoc meetings.
There’s an added benefit to the technologies. If your organisation has made a commitment to reducing its environmental impact, telepresence can help to remove a reliance on business travel and its associated carbon emissions.
Choosing the right technology
Telepresence systems come in three basic formats which each have benefits and drawbacks in terms of suitability for different sizes of business.
- Desktop models are best suited to smaller offices, ad-hoc use and one-to-many communication. But they can fall down when trying to replicate a formal meeting scenario because they aren’t located in a purpose-built meeting room. This limits their ability to create the conditions of a live meeting such as the illusion of eye-to-eye contact.
- Meeting-room systems are better suited to companies with a large, distributed network of sites that need to hold regular, formal meetings that involve a number of people. On the downside, users may find the numbers of people these systems can accommodate at each location somewhat limiting.
- Boardroom suites have the biggest high definition screens, in purpose-built suites that are designed to replicate the look, feel and even sound of a live meeting. Specialist surround audio and life-sized screen technology is most likely to impress the chief executive but, as such, may be the most expensive option, perhaps prohibitively so.
Getting the buy-in
Getting executive buy-in is essential. As with any technology, the budget-holders will have to be persuaded telepresence actually helps the business prosper.
“Collaboration must happen very naturally, with the technology disappearing into the background,” says Laurie Heltsley, director of strategic initiatives at Procter & Gamble.
At P&G, 50 per cent of innovation and new development comes from partner and customer collaboration. So it needed to install a communications system that allowed for an immersive, collaborative interaction across company and geographical boundaries to accelerate product development and speed to market, while reducing travel requirements.
It has some 40 telepresence studios, where employee use is at around 70 per cent in some situations.
Says Heltsley: “With telepresence, you can be in Rome in the morning and Sao Paolo in the afternoon, and still be home for dinner. That’s priceless.”
Keeping the installation simple will also be a compelling reason for giving a telepresence investment the greenlight. Darren Podrabsky, HP marketing manager for its HALO telepresence offering, says you should ensure there’s only “one neck to choke”.
Where video conferencing systems fell down in the past was that they were technically difficult to set up. The biggest suppliers of the technology have learned from their mistakes and tried to design systems that can be operated without a computing science degree. So now it’s just a question of cost.
