Corporations Finding Innovative Uses For Videoconferencing

<H1> Corporations Finding Innovative Uses For Videoconferencing</H1>By Lauren Bielski

<B>A</B> s videoconferencing heads into the business mainstream, it is rapidly becoming yet another part of the meeting planner's repertoire.

Videoconferencing is, as many have claimed, adding value and building attendance for as many meetings as it is replacing, said Sarah Dickenson, a Cambridge, Mass.-based analyst of the videoconferencing market. "Studies have shown that the true value of the videoconference is that it helps to shorten the product-to-market cycle by linking interdisciplinary teams quickly throughout product development."

But it is far from synonymous with the term "meeting." For companies that aren't in the healthcare, chemical or financial industries, which appear to be among the first wave of users, a videoconference remains an infrequent event.

Still, early adopters of the technology say that under the right circumstances, conferencing can enhance productivity by limiting travel time in cases where the meeting is critical but short, and where face-to-face networking is not part of the agenda. It also is useful under circumstances where a very important executive would best serve the organization by being in two places at once.

This is the case for Ernst & Young International, an accounting firm that recently used videoconferencing in a training program at its Canadian offices.

In the Alberta division, videoconferencing was the basis for a "traveling road show" that brought instructors-who typically taught in Toronto for nine months out of the year-out west for a month without them having to leave their classrooms, said manager of national conferences Helen Van Dongen.

The road show, with portable videoconferencing equipment brought to several offices throughout western Canada, added 15 live presenters to the five-day training session.

"In a situation like this, videoconferencing is definitely a boon; without it, the participants simply wouldn't have received the same information in the same way," Van Dongen said. While it wouldn't be possible to run the entire course on a remote basis, the company is using videoconferencing for simpler educational programs, she said.

Van Dongen said videoconferencing is rapidly becoming the method of choice for cross-border interactions between Canada and the United States in the company's North American division. She estimated that several conferences take place monthly among members of interdisciplinary project teams, or where an expert is needed for part of a meeting.

Other companies are using the technology to bring speakers to multiple locations affordably. Wyncom Inc., a Lexington, Ky.-based marketing firm in the adult education and motivation industry, used videoconferencing in a single-to-multipoint broadcast a few months ago. The videoconference, broadcast from San Diego to 100 cities, brought in a panel that included Linda Ellerbee and motivational speakers Stephen Covey, Tom Peters and Dennis Waitley .

Adele Meyer, a planner at the Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.-based planning company Meyer-Manther and Associates, managed the downlink in that city. "I got the lead about Wyncom over MPI Net and figured that it would be a great learning experience," she said. Meyer said that because she left technology to the "techies"-who were on site in abundance-the experience was far more glitch-free than she had expected.

"They had done their homework, and they knew the room before we started, which impressed me," Meyer said. In fact, she has told Wyncom that she wants to work with the company on a project scheduled for this fall.

Still others see videoconferencing as an an enhancement to meetings. Lynne Tiras, president of planning firm International Meeting Managers in Houston, has been encouraging use of videoconferencing as an addition to meetings, particularly for medical groups. Far from being threatened that she will be phased out as technology gets phased in, Tiras is trying to spur demand among her own client base in cases where there would be a clear value-added benefit to a videoconference.

"I am seeing the impact of managed care on the health care industry, and I realize that demonstrating procedures through videoconferencing is an ideal way to increase attendance," she said.

She acknowledged, however, that nobody has yet taken her up on the service. "In the 16 years that I've been a planner, I've only had a request to do a videoconference once, and that was for a client who needed to do one with Russia," she said. "That went off brilliantly, although it was very expensive to do."

While videoconferencing can be a valuable tool, many companies lack the required equipment and are hampered by the fact that the general telecommunications infrastructure doesn't yet support bandwidth on demand, according to Karen Berg, CEO of CommCore Inc., an international communications consulting and training firm based in White Plains, N.Y. "Companies are still talking to me about the costs involved," she said. "I've seen situations where a company will only have three units that are supposed to service the entire organization. That makes it difficult for everyone to use the equipment on demand.