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Technology
REAL-TIME MEETINGS
Doing Business in a Changed World
Better than Being there
Forget what you think you know about conferencing technologies. Anyone whose last experience with a real-time, virtual meeting took place more than a year or two ago, or who experimented more recently but with older systems, owes it to himself and his company to try it again. Over the past couple of years, the technologies of videoconferencing and Web conferencing have changed radically for the better in terms of quality, functionality, reliability and ease of use.
"The industry has taken kangaroo leaps in the last couple of years toward making all of this simple to use. Not baby steps, kangaroo leaps," says Elliot Gold, industry analyst and president of TeleSpan (www.telespan.com), a market research firm that publishes bulletins, reports and Telespan's Definitive Buyer's Guide to Teleconferencing Products and Services.
Quality and reliability have improved dramatically, according to Gold. And, perhaps even more importantly, vendors of conferencing systems and services are now working to adapt the technology to the user and the business need, instead of the other way around. "It used to be that, when you were participating in a Web conference, you had to call in a half hour ahead and download tremendous amounts of software just so you could see someone's slides," he says. "Now, when you go into a data conference, you click to indicate the browser you are using and it works. In fact, if you don't know what browser you're using, the system will just go ahead and make the correct selection for you. That's my kind of system!"
Technologies That Support, Rather Than Dominate
 Virtually all providers of conferencing, whether audio, video or Web, are also working to integrate their products with other business utilities, such as phone directories and scheduling aids "Everyone is finally beginning to realize that these systems are meeting tools and, as such, have to accommodate the ways that people work," says Gold. Accommodation includes providing a means for tracking down key participants and pulling them into a videoconference on an audio connection if necessary. It also includes offering easy access to the online schedules of group members, typically stored in a product like Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook, so team productivity won't be impaired by an after-the-fact discovery that a key member had another meeting scheduled.
Over the next few years, boundaries will also blur between Web conferencing and teamware/virtual workspace products. "Right now, there tends to be a split in the market, but that is really an unnatural development, says Matt Cain, vice president of Web and Collaboration Strategies at Meta Group in Stamford, CT. "From our perspective, it is quite clear that there needs to be, and will be, a merger of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration tools. In the end, it won't matter how the participants in a project team want to collaborate, because they will have all the tools at their disposal. If they are in a shared project space and notice that someone they want to talk to is online, they'll be able to initiate an instant messaging session, a chat or a Web conferencing session."
As IP networks replace existing infrastructure, audioconferencing and desktop videoconferencing will also become part of this constellation of unified collaboration products. "There's no question about that," says Cain, "although my sense is that we're really not talking about thorough penetration for three to five years."
In the meantime, there is plenty to work with. "What users basically want is the ability to do remotely what they do in a face-to-face meeting, and everything necessary for that is already here," says Dr. S. Ann Earon, president of consulting firm, Telemanagement Resources International (www.triinc.com).
In fact, according to Jeffrey S. Henderson, vice president and general manager of Americas Field Operations in the Semiconductor Components Group of Agilent Corporation, the real challenges are no longer technical, but instead have to do with human factors. "The biggest learning for me over the past year was not the technology, but acquiring the skill set needed to run an effective e-meeting," he says.
Henderson, has been leading geographically dispersed teams for years, first in worldwide R&D and, more recently, in the Americas Field Operation, which includes North and South America as well as manufacturing operations in Singapore and Malaysia. During that time he has worked with various forms of videoconferencing and Web conferencing, always, as he puts it, "hoping for the holy grail of optimal efficiency."
Although he wouldn't say he has reached that elusive goal yet, Henderson and his team of ten managers have moved a lot closer since the beginning of last summer. That is when Henderson began working with Dr. Jaclyn Kostner, an expert on collaborative, high-performance virtual teamwork (www.bionicteam.com) and author of several books on the subject, the latest of which is titled "Bionic eTeamWork."
Virtual Perspective
 Kostner's message is that the technologies now exist to allow scattered teams — commonplace in the new global economy — to collaborate at least as efficiently and productively as they would if they were in the same room; the only inhibitor is the way that groups choose to employ those tools. "Technology is not a differentiator," she says. "It is the ante to get into the game. How people use technology is the differentiator. Many people already use these technologies with little impact on performance, whereas others use them with dramatic improvement in team cohesiveness and results."
What separates these two groups, according to Kostner, is primarily attitude and the angle of approach. Simply using real-time meetings to distribute information in one-way fashion, via oral or slide presentations makes no sense. It is a waste of the technology and valuable team time that could be better used collecting ideas, sampling opinion, discussing issues and solving problems.
Kostner estimates that roughly 80 percent of organizations make some use of electronic media to connect work teams, but are stuck in what she calls the "mechanical stage," a phase in which technology is seen as a necessary evil, communication feels impersonal, and the emphasis is on delivery of information, rather than interaction and collaboration.
The mechanical stage is easy to recognize, according to Kostner. Everyone receives eye-glazing numbers of e-mail messages and during audioconferences or Web conferences, mute buttons are turned on to cover the sound of typing, as people use the time to answer all those messages. "Conferencing technologies — particularly Web conferencing — are revolutionary tools," says Kostner, "because they allow teams to quickly move through issues and topics as they pull up applications, share documents, create white boards, take polls and brainstorm in chat sessions. Not only do they let us interact, but they let us interact with phenomenal speed." That's the potential. But, if the technology is not fully exploited, if it is used as a presentation tool instead of a team tool, there isn't any real productivity gain.
That's what Jeff Henderson says he was doing until recently. "We've been conducting Web conferences in some form or another for a long time," Henderson says, "but I always saw them as push vehicles, a means of getting information out rather than a way of interacting."
When the economy turned sour at the end of 2000 and Agilent began imposing restrictions on travel, Henderson started searching in earnest for ways to make online conferencing a true substitute for face-to-face team meetings. That's when he met Kostner, who works with corporations ranging from Lockheed-Martin to Microsoft, and began to implement her suggestions, which include:
- Design the meeting for interaction, not passive listening;
- Build in warmth and spontaneity;
- Build in motion by using meeting tools to spur lots of interaction;
- Focus interaction on results.
By all measures, using Web conferencing for team meetings seems to be working well, according to Henderson. "It saves me a lot of time. My travel has been reduced by about 40 percent. Plus, I think the quality of interaction is higher and our meetings are more efficient. When you meet this way, you force yourself to get to the point, and the team forces itself to know, ahead of time, what is going to be discussed and reviewed."
The most telling sign that Web conferencing works, he says, is that it is spreading. "I initiated it, but the people who work for me have also begun to embrace it and started doing more with their staffs, which are also geographically dispersed."
Success Factors
 So how can a company make sure that it is tapping the full potential of conferencing technologies? First of all, stop thinking of it purely in terms of cutting costs and travel substitution. "In many instances, both as a result of the economic situation and the terrorist activity, people are being forced to use conferencing technologies," says Earon.
Confronted with the necessity of getting the job done and finding ways to stay in touch with geographically dispersed colleagues, people have little choice but to try conferencing technologies. There is a very big difference, however, between trying these technologies and actually using them successfully and productively. The degree of success depends on a number of factors. These include:
- The vintage of the equipment:Companies that are pulling out and dusting off videoconferencing systems purchased five or more years ago, risk turning off employees and closing a window of opportunity. "Some companies are rolling out systems that are old enough to be in a museum by now, and the users are saying, "This stuff is not very good," says Earon. "Well it's not, but that's because it has never been upgraded and the pieces were purchased at different times and aren't all compatible."
- Whether the technology matches the need: People who have an authentic and pressing need to use conferencing systems or services tend to take to them almost immediately, according to Earon. Problems are most likely to occur when companies simply decide to purchase equipment or force people to use conferencing services without analyzing who actually needs them and for what purposes. "Too many companies deploy technology without identifying the applications," she says. "They figure that if they buy it, people will gravitate to it, and that's not going to happen." What happens instead, is that they purchase inappropriate technology, which is either under-utilized or not used at all.
- Extent of Management Planning: Because, for people with an authentic need, the various collaboration technologies can be very compelling, a company that does not move quickly and impose some sort of standards, risks anarchy down the line, according to Cain. "Many business units are going out and procuring these various tools without central IT oversight," he says, "and this could lead to problems long-term. A company could wake up in two or three years and find out, when they survey the landscape, that they have a multitude of different products of all varieties." The problem this creates is not so much that these products won't interoperate. At least in terms of audio and video, standards now exist to ensure that different systems can work together. The difficulty is that system diversity creates chaos with training and maintenance. "Think of it in terms of owning five different VCRs," explains Earon. "They don't all work the same way. They don't all get set up the same way and the control panel doesn't look the same."
- Quality and Kind of Training: The training required to make truly productive use of conferencing and collaboration technologies falls into two categories: technology training, and process training.
Although current conferencing systems are quite easy to use, they are feature-rich and that abundance can be overwhelming. "Users can now do so many things that it is hard for them to take it all in at once," says Earon. "They need to be eased into using the features, a few at a time."
Perhaps even more importantly, users, especially team leaders, have to learn a whole new set of communication skills if they want to tap the true productivity-enhancing potential of these technologies. "Using the tool may be intuitive, but getting people to use it collaboratively is not," says Kostner.
Quantifying the success of collaborative tools can be difficult, but it is not impossible. Understanding the power and potential of the technology before deploying it is the key. Reducing travel-related expenses is one almost certain payoff, but it is far from the only one. "You may find you are able to reuse knowledge more effectively, because it is captured more effectively," suggests Cain, "or you may be able to react more quickly to changing market conditions or competitive threats." Decisions are made faster when groups meet this way, according to Kostner. "People can reach consensus in literally one-tenth the time," she says. "In fact," she promises, "you'll find that productivity skyrockets because when people can get past information overload and e-mail overload, they can actually participate in more teams, and be less overwhelmed."
WorldCom: Purpose-built Solutions
We are technology agnostics," says Tim Reedy, describing the business credo of WorldCom, where he is V.P. of conferencing marketing and finance. "We don't push one technology over another. We provide them all and we believe it is our job to help customers find the best match for their meeting requirements."
At WorldCom, all conferencing products and equipment come under the purview of the Conferencing unit. This includes audioconferencing, videoconferencing, Net Conferencing and streaming products. According to Reedy, this structure produces a number of benefits for customers. In addition to unbiased recommendations, they get one-stop shopping, tight integration across all conferencing products and global coverage.
Having a common network, a common system platform and a global presence offers a real practical advantage for roving customers, Reedy notes. Setting up conferences is no more difficult for an executive transiting Europe or the Asia/Pacific region than it would be at home; regional reservation centers simply access an existing customer profile.
Even reservations are becoming less of a necessity, however. WorldCom, which closely monitors collaborative work habits through its annual "Meetings in America" surveys, noted a shortening of decision cycles, resulting in more ad hoc meetings. In response, it introduced a password-accessible 'always on' service called Instant Meeting. Now available as an audioconferencing option, Instant Meeting will shortly be extended to Net Conferencing.
http://worldcom.com/conferencing 1.800.475.3555
ReView Video: The Service Difference
Customers considering conferencing systems want a useful and robust meeting tool that will help them become more efficient and productive. ReView Video delivers a premier brand, Polycom, and couples it with award-winning service that makes videoconferencing worry-free.
"We are the market leader in audio and videoconferencing distribution and service," says Marty Karlin, CEO at the Naperville, IL-based Polycom Master Distributor. "Our commitment to customer support offers an extra measure of confidence through our proprietary maintenance program, Gold Seal."
ReView Video's Gold Seal Five-Year Maintenance Plan includes around-the-clock access to technical support, free unlimited user training, use of Review Video's 24-hour test facility and next-day equipment replacement. "If a customer has a problem, our plan will supply new replacement units," says Karlin. Recently added investment protection also provides a safeguard against obsolescence through a schedule of increasing discounts on upgrades. "The plan was designed to make videoconferencing hassle-free," says Karlin, "and is supported through service centers in Illinois, the U.K. and a dealer network that exceeds 400 worldwide."
The company's dedicated dealer network, exceptional growth and outstanding service, have made ReView Video a favored Polycom partner. ReView Video was recently awarded Top Honors at the 2001 Polycom Global Partners Conference, earning the titles of Top Video Channel, Fastest Growing Audio, and Fastest Growing Network Systems.
www.reviewvideo.com 1.877.580.8200
TANDBERG: Makes its Move
Last month, Andrew Miller, a top executive at Cisco Systems, joined TANDBERG as vice chairman and CEO. Here's what Miller has to say about his new role and the future of videoconferencing.
Why TANDBERG? I looked for a company with a business application that increased productivity and efficiency. In these times, businesses must look for ways to cut costs and improve efficiency, while simultaneously expanding customer contact and market share. Videoconferencing can help them do that. TANDBERG is a strong and growing market leader with an incredibly loyal customer base. Half of its sales last year were incremental purchases by existing customers worldwide.
Why do you think they picked you? They wanted an even stronger North American presence to help them increase market share here. They also wanted someone with a background that combined sales, acquisition, marketing and service to assist with their acquisition, direct sales and distribution strategies.
Where do you see the industry heading? There have been huge gains recently in the quality and reliability of videoconferencing. Even more are on the way. As we move from ISDN to IP, there will be major improvements in cost efficiency and capability. Videoconferencing will be deployed from the boardroom down to individual users and we'll see more frequent use of multimedia presentations and multi-site global conferencing.
www.tandberg.net 1.866.775.9699
Kinko's: Accessible Videoconferencing
For companies that aren't ready or able to invest in videoconferencing or those that simply need to connect on occasion with business partners, customers or employees beyond the reach of their existing network, Kinko's networked videoconferencing facilities offer an easy and flexible alternative.
Developed with equipment provider VTEL, and network supplier Sprint, Kinko's videoconferencing allows users to share not only documents and full-color presentations, but also applications and Web excursions, using connected notebook computers. Flat rate, all-inclusive pricing, based on the number of locations, makes the cost predictable.
Although best known as a provider of document solutions and business services, Kinko's has been a videoconferencing provider since 1993. In fact, with 150 U.S. locations, as well as facilities in Canada, the U.K., the United Arab Emirates and Australia, it now offers one of the world's largest public-access videoconferencing networks.
According to Mike Taylor, a senior analyst at Kinko's, interviews with job candidates now generate the most traffic, but demand for multi-point meetings is increasing as companies discover how much time and money they can save and how much they can accomplish via videoconference. "We've handled sales conferences," he says. "Companies have connected ten or so locations to brief regional staff about new products. And, for the past year, one software company has been using our videoconferencing for all of its customer training."
www.kinkos.com 1.800.2.KINKOS (546567)
Produced by: Mary Beth Nolet
Written by: Joanne Kelleher
Edited by: Sigrid MacRae
If you are interested in advertising in the next Real-Time Meeting section, contact Walter Perry, manager Custom Projects at walter_perry@timeinc.com or call 212.522.9374.
Custom reprints of this section are available in quantities of 100 or more. To obtain a reprint order form, fax your request to Randi Bergman at 212.522.0999 or send an e-mail to randi_bergman@timeinc.com.
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