Corps. Gauge Value Of Remote Conferencing Policies

With the next generation of remote conferencing technology hitting the market in increasingly affordable and improved, integrated packages, more corporations are using the technology on a regular basis, but policies governing the use of the tools vary greatly.

Some companies have mandates requiring remote conferencing use under certain circumstances, while others have no formal guidelines at all, leaving the decision to use the technology to individual supervisors.

In some companies, the technology must at least be considered before travel is allowed, said Stacy Saxon, marketing director of California-based remote conferencing company Polycom's Austin, Texas-based Video Services Division. She said some companies have included on their corporate travel authorization forms such questions as, "Can videoconferencing be used for this meeting instead of travel? If not, why?"

"Thus, organizations require justification of travel," Saxon said. "Video- and Webconferencing are not intended to replace travel, but rather augment and enhance communications and reduce the need for travel."

Other suppliers, though, said the creation of formal remote conferencing policies has waned among corporations after spiking immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Typically, we see customers using Webconferencing not as a complete replacement to travel but as a means to reduce travel by about 50 percent while strengthening their current client relationships, improving productivity of their employees and finding new customers," said Brian Burch, chief marketing officer for Louisville, Colo.-based remote conferencing firm Raindance Communications Inc. "A few years ago, when travel fears were at their peak and the economic slowdown was at its deepest point, we saw some of our customers institute Webconferencing mandates, but most of those have subsided. Now Webconferencing simply is part of their everyday business."

New York-based PricewaterhouseCoopers does not have a remote conferencing policy, but all of the company's meeting planners have been taught to recognize opportunities for virtual meetings. "They are all trained on what type of meetings might roll over well into a virtual meeting or to see if they could shorten a face-to-face meeting by using a Webcasting component," said Terry Schmidt, PwC's virtual meetings manager. "We don't have any mandates requiring it. We don't push it on people. It's just suggested to them when we see the right opportunity."

Terri Carlton, BlueCross BlueShield manager of meetings and corporate travel, said her organization also has no policy requiring use of travel alternative technology. "It's at the discretion of the committee chair or the department chair," she said. Currently, BlueCross BlueShield's headquarters in Chicago and its outpost in Washington, D.C., are the only offices outfitted with videoconferencing tools. "On the Webconferencing side, we have one department that is trying to put together the whole package, the dollars and cents, to make sure it's cost effective," Carlton said.

Thus far, BlueCross BlueShield has had only limited success with videoconferencing. Carlton said the technology has worked best for small meetings held by departments that have staff in both its Chicago and Washington locations. "It's not good for larger meetings with a lot of questions and answers, because the way the camera is positioned makes it difficult to scan back and forth from the audience to the presenter."

While PricewaterhouseCoopers uses the technology for many internal applications, such as Webcasting and recording for later playback the monthly staff meetings of some of its groups, the company is "using it much more frequently to communicate with our clients and guests. We use it for marketing efforts, client training, client communication—even on a global level," Schmidt said. "Again, it is not replacing our face-to-face meetings, it's just a new and improved way for our professionals to stay in touch with their clients. It is a better method of communication."

Schmidt said the technology works best when it complements travel. "In the past year, we've seen a tremendous increase in Webcasts and virtual meetings, but we don't believe it's replacing face-to-face meetings. Not at all," Schmidt said. "In fact, if we look at our numbers of face-to-face meetings held in the past couple of years versus this year, they continue to increase, even though we did well over 100 Webcasts last year. What we're finding is that Webcasts are taking the place of audioconferences."

Many companies already say of remote conferencing tools, "We couldn't live without them," said S. Ann Earon, president of Telemanagement Resources International, a Manahawkin, N.J.-based remote conferencing consulting firm.

"This is an evolutionary process that will have a growth in the high-20 percent, low-30 percent range every year, and we're probably in year four of a 10-year cycle before everybody's got the stuff and it's second nature," Earon said.