Conferencing Technology Takes Over for Slashed Travel Budgets

By David Dobrin

Fri, March 15, 2002CIO I ONCE MET A WOMAN ON A PLANE heading to Chicago who had logged 275,000 miles so far that year?and it was August. She bought companies for General Electric, and a lot of those companies were in South Africa, Thailand and Brazil. To do her job, she was averaging more than 1,000 miles a day in the air. In Mexico City, she picked up the Airphone and started making calls. Only on the approach to Chicago did she put it down.

I’m not terribly sympathetic to these road warrior heroics. Did she really have to be there in person for all those meetings? The phone is a wonderful invention?something she apparently already had figured out; if she needed to review documents, there’s Web conferencing or videoconferencing.

Before Sept. 11, there was little debate: If a meeting was really important, you had to be there. Post Sept. 11, the travel picture has changed. Yet companies still need to hold global meetings. Now that there is a strong sentiment not to fly, businesses must figure out how else to facilitate important meetings among people in other countries and on other continents.

To hold important meetings among a disparate audience, there are three technologies available: teleconferencing, Web conferencing (using the Internet to share files while talking on the phone) and videoconferencing (which can be combined in various ways with the other two).

None of the technologies is as good as being there in person, especially when the meeting crosses cultures, borders, languages and time zones (in other words, when a meeting is global). Yet when travel isn’t an option, one technology works better than another for specific kinds of meetings. Therefore, treat each technology as having a different kind of business use or purpose. If the CIO can’t get the team together in person, he should run the meeting in a way that recognizes the limitations of conferencing technology.

A lot of CIOs think that their job ends when they buy the right conferencing technology. Think again. CIOs have a responsibility to see that any technology is used effectively. Besides, CIOs are investing IT money (no, it’s not coming out of the decimated travel budget), so they want to make sure their investments are put to good, effective use.

Therefore it’s necessary to recognize where remote conferences?when conducted correctly?are genuinely more effective than the in-person alternatives.

Look at Web conferences. As an analyst, I listen to a lot of earnings reports. Three years ago, CEOs did these meetings in person with key analysts or else did them much less effectively as teleconferences. Now, Web conferencing technology has taken over.With Web conferencing, a company can bring in many more analysts, and indeed, it is now routine to time earnings reports so that they can include the European community. For their part, the analysts can ask questions and listen to answers. From the company’s perspective, no one has to waste time and money putting on an event.


Loading...
Applications MarketSpace
Service Level Reporting and Communication
Service level reporting is the most visible output and often the most time-consuming activity in SLM. Learn more »
Lower IT Costs with Oracle Database 11g Release 2
Learn how upgrading to Oracle Database 11g Release 2 can transform your business, budgets, and service levels Learn more »
Managing Your SAP System
Learn how to more effectively manage your SAP system. Learn more »
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

White Paper: 4 Customer Service Myths

White Paper: Improve Agility with Operational Responsiveness

Removing the Barriers to IT Governance: How On-Demand Software Changes the Game

Cloud Computing--Latest Buzzword or a Glimpse of the Future?

A Balanced Approach to an Application Development Platform

Adobe® LiveCycle®solutions for intuitive user experience

10 Ways Excel Drives More Value from Your SAP Investment

What's New in SOA Suite 11g?

Unleash the Power of Java with Oracle JRockit Real Time

SOA Best Practices and Design Patterns

Application Grid: Ideal Platform for IT Consolidation

Ready to virtualize tier one applications? Check your virtualization maturity.

Learn how to provide complete Business Service Management.

Increase ROI of Your Application Portfolio

See how AT&T can help protect your network.

Top Five CIO Challenges

Streamline IT Costs. Boost Performance with WAN Optimization.

Want to know how you can maximize employee productivity?

Build your 1st app FREE with Force.com

TDWI checklist helps define data readiness for analytics. Download report.

A new fleet of PCs with a total ROI in 10 months. Find your ROI.

eZine: A Roadmap to Reducing IT Complexity

Reduce risk, gain agility. See how Progress can help your business.

Virtualization Technology as a Business Solution

eZine: A Roadmap to Reducing IT Complexity

White Paper: Managed Security for a Not-So-Secure World

SharePoint - Unchecked growth of content is unsustainable.

Focus Under Pressure: Why IT Governance Becomes Mission-Critical in a Down Economy

Should Your Email Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis

Adobe® LiveCycle® solutions for business process automation

Architecting Business Intelligence Applications for Change: The Open Solution

Increase UPS efficiency without sacrificing protection.

Unlocking the Mainframe: Modernizing Legacy System to SOA

State of the Data Integration Market

Enhance Customer Loyalty through Higher Responsiveness

Achieving Business Agility with Application Grid

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn

Four steps to populate your CMDB.

"Enterprise-Proven" is the Prerequisite for Enterprise SaaS Portal Solutions

Join us at the US-Brazil IT-BPO Summit, on November 10th in New York.

Unified Communications: Thoughts, Strategies and Predictions. Join the discussion

Read the RSA report: Security for Business Innovation

Webcast: Looking to the Cloud for Email and Collaboration Services

64-page prescriptive guide to security, compliance, and IT operations.

Keep your IT expertise up to date. Join the Intel Premier IT Professionals.

A Clear View Toward Virtualization

Virtualization Technology as a Business Solution

The rules of infrastructure management just changed.

A Clear View Toward Virtualization

Interactive Q&A helps you discover key ways to maximize IT assets.

 
 
RESOURCE CENTER