Komatsu moves to telepresence to cut travel costs

Komatsu Forklift Australia has moved to telepresence in a bid to reduce travel costs and increase workplace output.

The supplier and distributor of forklifts and cranes has installed Polycom high definition telepresence rooms in four out of its 11 Australian offices. Komatsu product manager, Gary Hodge, said it would provide greater communication among staff.

“At Komatsu, we value communication highly. With 11 national branches, face-to-face meetings, while vital, are costly and time consuming. We see video conferencing as a tool to increase our communication and enhance productivity, without the associated travel and staff downtime costs,” he said.

Hodge said the clarity of the video has created greater communication among team members who are scattered across the country.

“With high-definition, we can see and hear each other more clearly, which has helped to promote closer interaction between the teams. With the lower bandwidth requirements, we can share content much more easily, which has helped to accelerate decision-making and enhance workflow efficiencies,” he said.

Hodge said Komatsu is considering a move to roll out telepresence across all of its Australian offices, and is using the technology to provide clearer communication between Australia and its head office in Japan.

Komatsu also recently signed a five-year, whole-of-business agreement for Telstra to provide infrastructure-as-a-service in a virtual private cloud, and has renewed its communications contract with Telstra.

Read more about how CIOs are using telepresence and video conferencing in the enterprise.