Staff Meetings: The Next Generation
http://www.telepresenceworld.net/articles/41/1/Staff-Meetings-The-Next-Generation/Page1.html
Anne Meltzer
Anne Meltzer is the Editorial Director of the TelepresenceWorld.net Web Portal. Early in her career, she served as Managing Editor for BioScience Magazineand was Manager of Editorial Operations for the AMA publication Archives of Ophthalmology. Anne has a BS degree in anthropology from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA and received her Masters degree in environmental science from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. As Manager of Computer and Network Services at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins for many years, Anne has substantial experience in computer, networking, and software technologies.
By Anne Meltzer
Published on 09/6/2007
A stunning demonstration by Cisco showcases the utility of telepresence for intra-company communications
Staff Meetings: The Next Generation
Prior to the prolific rise of multinational corporations over the last couple of decades, conducting a staff meeting used to involve nothing more than walking down the hall to conference room at an appointed time. But how do you hold a staff meeting when your workforce spans several continents?
The answer: telepresence. A striking example of this idea is Cisco’s recent use of their own Cisco TelePresence Meeting Solution to host a virtual, global company assembly. Remarkably, joining the meeting still involved little more than walking down the hall to a meeting room at the right time. Yet gave remote participants the experience of being in the same room with their CEO, who might have been thousands of miles away.
The global staff meeting, led by Cisco chairman and CEO, John Chambers, was held on August, 23, 2007, and was linked via Cisco TelePresence from Cisco’s San Jose, CA, campus to seven other Cisco sites, including offices in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and elsewhere in the United States. Over 700 people attended in-person via Cisco TelePresence and the proceedings were broadcast live over Cisco’s internal digital media system to an additional 4,000 employees.
Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers talks to employees in San Jose, CA as well as employees assembled via Cisco TelePresence technology in Bedfont Lakes, UK; Amsterdam, NL; Atlanta, GA; Research Triangle Park , NC; Irvine, CA and Boxborough, MA during Cisco's first ever virtual, global company meeting.
Like any good staff meeting, refreshments were served. During the meeting, employees at all locations had birthday cake to celebrate Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chamber's birthday, which coincided with the date of the global assemby.
Designed as a demonstration, Cisco’s global assembly is undoubtedly one of the largest virtual meetings ever engineered. The event highlighted the integral role telepresence can play in connecting and unifying the many intra-company outposts typical of today’s multinational corporations.
Telepresence systems are ideally suited for modern global enterprises; allowing corporations to cut back on travel, particularly intra-company, saving time and money, as well as corporate and environmental resources. Installations can be tailored to suit the specific needs of the company and can be standardized across all locations so that each site can schedule conferences and access telepresence add-ons and utilities seamlessly and reliably.
But a large reason companies are embracing telepresence, where they had not widely adopted or utilized video conferencing, is that global business is moving faster, and organizations are struggling to keep up. Because telepresence can be a tool to allow companies to collaborate better and make decisions faster, it is seen as an increasingly effective way to do business, while at the same time, controlling the . One customer of Cisco TelePresence said recently, “We installed it so we could get products to market faster and gain competitive advantage, but we are paying for it through reduced travel.”
In an interview for Computerworld, John Chambers estimated that companies who choose to implement Cisco TelePresence could realistically expect to reduce their intra-company travel costs by 10 to 20 percent.1 According to Mr. Chambers, Cisco has already saved over $150 million in travel expenses internally by using its own Cisco TelePresence Meeting Solution to conduct approximately 25,000 virtual meetings. In addition, Cisco is counting on the use of telepresence to help reduce their carbon emissions 10% by year-end.2
Case studies are widespread on the internet about companies that have used telepresence technology to reduce travel and increase collaboration. A number of companies, including SAP, Wachovia, McKesson, NTT, Media Saturn, Telstra, Bell Canada, AT&T, and Sprint have recently invested in Cisco’s TelePresence Solution with the intention of saving travel costs and creating more efficient and effective working conditions. It may be too early to expect hard numbers from these examples, and benchmarks for “increased collaboration” are difficult to measure. However, it is reasonable to assume that as companies utilize the technology further, more concrete bottom-line benefits will be realized and the results made available.
Will telepresence eventually eliminate all intra-business travel? Probably not, since, in many instances, face-to-face encounters and site inspections are absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, Cisco’s spectacular global meeting demonstration and admitted cost-savings are very impressive, proving that telepresence has an important place in multinational corporate strategies of the future.
1http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Internet
_Applications&articleId=9026960&taxonomyId=168&intsrc=kc_li_story
2http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/25/HNciscopreaches_1.html
The answer: telepresence. A striking example of this idea is Cisco’s recent use of their own Cisco TelePresence Meeting Solution to host a virtual, global company assembly. Remarkably, joining the meeting still involved little more than walking down the hall to a meeting room at the right time. Yet gave remote participants the experience of being in the same room with their CEO, who might have been thousands of miles away.
The global staff meeting, led by Cisco chairman and CEO, John Chambers, was held on August, 23, 2007, and was linked via Cisco TelePresence from Cisco’s San Jose, CA, campus to seven other Cisco sites, including offices in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and elsewhere in the United States. Over 700 people attended in-person via Cisco TelePresence and the proceedings were broadcast live over Cisco’s internal digital media system to an additional 4,000 employees.
Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers talks to employees in San Jose, CA as well as employees assembled via Cisco TelePresence technology in Bedfont Lakes, UK; Amsterdam, NL; Atlanta, GA; Research Triangle Park , NC; Irvine, CA and Boxborough, MA during Cisco's first ever virtual, global company meeting.
Like any good staff meeting, refreshments were served. During the meeting, employees at all locations had birthday cake to celebrate Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chamber's birthday, which coincided with the date of the global assemby.
Designed as a demonstration, Cisco’s global assembly is undoubtedly one of the largest virtual meetings ever engineered. The event highlighted the integral role telepresence can play in connecting and unifying the many intra-company outposts typical of today’s multinational corporations.
Telepresence systems are ideally suited for modern global enterprises; allowing corporations to cut back on travel, particularly intra-company, saving time and money, as well as corporate and environmental resources. Installations can be tailored to suit the specific needs of the company and can be standardized across all locations so that each site can schedule conferences and access telepresence add-ons and utilities seamlessly and reliably.
But a large reason companies are embracing telepresence, where they had not widely adopted or utilized video conferencing, is that global business is moving faster, and organizations are struggling to keep up. Because telepresence can be a tool to allow companies to collaborate better and make decisions faster, it is seen as an increasingly effective way to do business, while at the same time, controlling the . One customer of Cisco TelePresence said recently, “We installed it so we could get products to market faster and gain competitive advantage, but we are paying for it through reduced travel.”
In an interview for Computerworld, John Chambers estimated that companies who choose to implement Cisco TelePresence could realistically expect to reduce their intra-company travel costs by 10 to 20 percent.1 According to Mr. Chambers, Cisco has already saved over $150 million in travel expenses internally by using its own Cisco TelePresence Meeting Solution to conduct approximately 25,000 virtual meetings. In addition, Cisco is counting on the use of telepresence to help reduce their carbon emissions 10% by year-end.2
Case studies are widespread on the internet about companies that have used telepresence technology to reduce travel and increase collaboration. A number of companies, including SAP, Wachovia, McKesson, NTT, Media Saturn, Telstra, Bell Canada, AT&T, and Sprint have recently invested in Cisco’s TelePresence Solution with the intention of saving travel costs and creating more efficient and effective working conditions. It may be too early to expect hard numbers from these examples, and benchmarks for “increased collaboration” are difficult to measure. However, it is reasonable to assume that as companies utilize the technology further, more concrete bottom-line benefits will be realized and the results made available.
Will telepresence eventually eliminate all intra-business travel? Probably not, since, in many instances, face-to-face encounters and site inspections are absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, Cisco’s spectacular global meeting demonstration and admitted cost-savings are very impressive, proving that telepresence has an important place in multinational corporate strategies of the future.
1http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Internet
_Applications&articleId=9026960&taxonomyId=168&intsrc=kc_li_story
2http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/25/HNciscopreaches_1.html