In By and large it is the finance function within the company that frets and fumes over inter-office travel. Keeping in mind, the high costs of air travel and hospitality, these concerns are not altogether unjustified. But such costs should also be the IT managers concern because of the environmental impact due to the huge carbon footprint associated with it. As most top executives in any organisation are frequently on the move from one office to another. Thus, as an organisation assesses the need and invest in collaborative tools that will reduce the need for such travel. And this is where video conferencing and other solutions come into play. By efficient communication, the need for constant travel can be reduced to a large scale and thus bringing down the carbon footprint as well.
Previous conservative estimates have suggested that tele- and videoconferencing could replace between 5 and 20% of global business travel. Advanced videoconferencing applications in the early stage of adoption could have a very significant impact in highly distributed service industry environments in both the private and public sectors. Video conferencing is being used heavily by every sector of business, education, medicine and government. These days tele-presence is quite popular among the big corporates, evident from the TP (or tele-presence) rooms that can be found in many.
Yet, dont be bogged down by the grandiosity of video conferencing and the benefits it offers. Besides the high-grade solutions, there are many low cost versions that are freely available. For instance, Skype and Google Video Chat can be a good starting point for VC. And there is a word of caution as well, while VC might be great for the finance departments wallet, it is not so good for an enterprise networking bandwidth. So, pay close attention to who is allowed to VC and who is not. The best way would be to draft a policy of the same that clearly defines all the issues.
Step Guide:
- Evaluate conventional travel costs versus VC solutions
- Test waters with free or low cost versions like Skype and Google Video Chat
- Pay attention to the bandwidth usage by VC
- Go for Tele-presence
Green factoid:
Conservative estimates have suggested that tele- and videoconferencing could replace between 5 and 20% of global business travel.
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