CIO — 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.
