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Telepresence: Business Drivers, Benefits and Solutions

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Two weeks ago, we hosted an event with Polycom at our corporate headquarters in Cleveland called Transformation to Visual Collaboration. A lot of great information was shared regarding the business drivers and benefits of telepresence solutions. In this blog post, we’re sharing the Cliff’s Notes version — key details and takeaways from the event.

What is Telepresence?

First and foremost, it may help to answer the question: What exactly are we referring to when talking about telepresence?

Videoconferencing, which is defined by Wikipedia as “a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously,” has been around in business IT for several years. Essentially, videoconferencing is simply the ability to include live video as an element of phone calls.

Telepresence, on the other hand, takes videoconferencing a bit further by integrating new technologies for a higher quality experience. With telepresence solutions, businesses can connect their employees, customers, vendors, prospects and other audiences via high-definition, high-speed connections. At its best, this can cause users to forget that a screen exists between themselves and the people with whom they are communicating. This highest level is sometimes referred to as immersive telepresence or visual collaboration. 

Due to advances in technology and IT infrastructure, immersive telepresence is becoming a reality for many businesses. Though enterprise adoption is leading the pack, these solutions are becoming more affordable — and valuable — for smaller organizations as well.

Why Now?

A key support for telepresence is the convergence of voice, video and data networks within the IT environment. As the Converged Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network has largely eliminated the need for separate audio-video, voice and data infrastructures, organizations have taken advantage of this framework to reduce staff overhead, network management and operating costs. It is this simplified infrastructure, with inherent priorities in place for different data package types, that lends itself well to support immersive-telepresence solutions.

In addition to this core infrastructure, Dan Lejeune, Regional Channel Member, Cincinnati area, Polycom, shared some additional advances that not only make telepresence possible, but make it a strong solution for businesses looking to advance their collaboration abilities and improve operational efficiency.

• Growth of unified communications portfolios and infrastructure
• Improved networks and availability of bandwidth
• Accessibility of telepresence within enterprise, SMB and service provider networks
• Mainstream acceptance of visual communications
• Advancements in high-definition voice and video technology

So, not only is the infrastructure in place to support telepresence solutions, but cultural and global expectations are further pushing the desire for these services. In essence, people’s comfort with using video to communicate — largely thanks to consumer software such as Skype — has made video phone calls a common activity for many, and thus a growing expectation in business settings.

Key Benefits

Thanks to this combination of technology support and end-user acceptance, we are at a point when telepresence solutions can truly be widely adopted by businesses to save time and costs in critical areas. As found in the July 2009 Wainhouse Research report, Benchmarking the Benefits of Videoconferencing Deployments, enterprises and SMBs alike see similar benefits from implementing videoconferencing solutions in six key areas:

• Travel: 30% cost savings
• Time-to-Market: 24% reduction
• End-User Downtime: 25-27%
• Training: 22-25% cost savings
• Recruitment: 15-19% reduction in time spent
• Sales-Related Costs: 24-26% reduction

Often, the first area identified — reducing travel costs — is the impetus behind organizations installing telepresence solutions. However, as shared by Brian Gilman, Global Director, Enterprise Solutions, Polycom: when asked how they want to further deploy, many IT directors will admit that though they’ve successfully reduced travel costs, they are only using their current system at 20 percent capacity and don’t see any additional uses.

Interesting note: Gilman’s entire segment of the day was delivered via Polycom’s HDX 4000, from his home office using a standard cable modem.

Optimizing Your Business with Telepresence

This is, as seen in the Wainhouse research, a somewhat shortsighted approach. According to Gilman, there are several stages in video deployment. As organizations move through the stages, additional benefits are realized until the true goal — achieving a collaboration culture at your organization, no matter the geographical location employees and audiences — is reached. 

Image source: Polycom

Gilman shared several hypothetical situations to illustrate the benefits that organizations can realize through telepresence outside of travel cost savings. Consider how much time and money your organization could save in the following scenarios:

• Your organization allows employees to work from home and communicate via videoconference, thus reducing office space needs by10 percent.
• A 3-day training program for 100 employees becomes a virtual event, rather than your organization paying for hotels, flights and daily cost-of-living for those individuals.
• Top candidate job interviews are completed via video and recorded for review by executives.
• Development time for a new product is reduced 10% by holding high-level feature/functionality review meetings over a telepresence system, rather than mailing samples back-and-forth or sending R&D personnel to manufacturing facilities.
• HR and sales trainings are recorded and saved on an employee intranet and viewed by employees within an allotted timeframe. Instructors are able to see who has completed trainings via a content management system.

So, at the end of the day, we learned that in addition to time- and cost-savings, telepresence solutions can provide organizations with a competitive edge in multiple areas, including:

• Ability to gain a competitive advantage over competitors through innovation and time to market
• Improvements in employee morale due to work/life balance options, which can reduce turnover and increase productivity
• Improved external communications, resulting in customer/partner satisfaction and long-distance trust building
• Social consciousness — environmental benefits are achieved through reduced travel, both long-distance and from work-at-home employees

Your Thoughts?

What telepresence solutions are you considering for your organization? What benefits do you hope to realize?

Are you a business leader in Northeast Ohio interested in learning more about collaboration, cloud computing and other advanced technologies for your organization? Join us for the Modern Technology Lessons Summer 2011 Roundtable Series. This three-session series includes Path to the Cloud (7/19), Mobile Device Explosion (8/10) and Intuitive Collaboration (9/29). All three events will take place at our future headquarters, 1801 Superior Ave. in downtown Cleveland. You can attend all three or any combination of sessions. Click here to learn more and register.