Meetings In Profile: Verizon Drives Remote Meetings
Telecommunications company Verizon has wielded the power of senior-level buy-in to further increase its remote conferencing use in an effort to reduce meetings spending and unnecessary travel and support green initiatives.
"Let's face it, we have to be cost-conscious and environmentally smart, so that needs to be mirrored in the way we travel," said Debra Goldmann, senior specialist for Verizon Travel Services. "We took a look at how much people actually spend for a certain type of meeting versus how much they would spend for a virtual meeting. We found that a face-to-face meeting is between five and 35 times more expensive than a virtual meeting."
Verizon got senior buy-in to inform employees about the reasoning behind the initiative in late spring.
"When we decided that we wanted to drive up our usage internally, we wanted to have it be a top-down message to demonstrate that the leadership was driving this personal accountability," said Mara White, executive director of Verizon Business Conferencing and Collaboration Services.
The chief financial officer of Verizon Business—who owns the budget—sent a message addressing budgetary challenges and the benefits of going green and using the company's conferencing services.
Travelers also are reminded of remote conferencing options when booking trips. The company's intranet travel page has windows that pop up when an employee logs in to remind them to use Verizon's conferencing and collaboration services and the benefits of going green. The window also pops up each time a decision is made on the page and is included in the notes section.
"The goal is to, three or four times during the experience, gently suggest to the person, 'Hey, remember that there's alternatives. Do you really want to do this? Are you sure?' " White said.
However, the pop-ups can be bypassed.
"It's not an edict. It's just sort of that gentle reminder to ask yourself if there is a better way to manage it," White said.
The company also includes a link to conferencing services' intranet page in e-mail confirmation of travel itineraries, and provides a script for the company's travel counselors to highlight alternatives to employees who call in to make reservations.
The pop-ups, as well as the CFO's e-mail, contain a URL directing employees to Verizon's conferencing Web site, allowing employees to either go online or call a toll-free number to get set up for audio or Internet conferencing. There are flash tutorials on the Web site as well.
The conferencing and collaboration services team has worked with the CFO in each business unit to send out communications. Once they have senior-level buy-in, they preregister all employees to use the appropriate tools and follow up with online training opportunities. There are weekly or biweekly live training courses that combine audio and Webconferencing for internal and external users. Executives have been alerting people to the benefits of conferencing as well.
"They're taking it and evangelizing it themselves more aggressively, because they know that by helping to drive down some of their travel cost budgets and moving it towards using these conferencing and collaboration tools, it's going to have a direct impact on their own business unit's profitability as well," said Bill Versen, director of conferencing and collaboration services for Verizon. Each unit—Verizon Telecom, Verizon Wireless, Verizon Business and Verizon Corporate—is run like a separate business and is responsible for its own budget.
Added White: "The senior execs are actually stopping their face-to-face staff meetings in favor of an immersive video experience. Aside from the financial savings of not traveling, they save so much time by not having to bring everybody to one location for what could be a two- or three-hour meeting."
Verizon offers audio and Webconferencing, as well as traditional videoconferencing rooms and immersive rooms. The new measurements already have shown results, as the company has seen a 20 percent annual increase in the minutes employees spent using remote conferencing since the campaign began.