Conferencing and collaboration: tangible benefits drive organizational competitiveness: in an increasingly global, fast-moving, knowledge-based economy, organisations must react to change by processing information and arriving at decisions fast. At the same time, they must cut the costs of doing business as the global slowdown maintains its strangle-hold

Telecom Asia, Dec, 2002

Video conferencing, together with data sharing and collaboration, allows increasingly dispersed organisations to pull their human and information resources together to create new ways of working and new ways of interacting and responding to customers and partners.

Huge sums have been invested world-wide on computers and the communications networks which link them together. Now organisations are focusing on getting even better returns from that massive outlay with new applications which bring real business benefits.

Near the top of that new applications list is conferencing and collaboration. The demand for real-time, high-quality communications tools is driving the growth. No longer just a way of having telephone-style conversations with pictures, video and data conferencing exploit the power of the underlying technology to build stronger, more impactful organisational networks.

* Networks of people

* Networks of information and ideas

* Networks of expertise

Virtual teams replace the traditional workplace

Geographically-dispersed work teams are the rule, not the exception, today. Video conferencing (VC) offers the benefits of face-to-face communication without the inconvenience, wear-and-tear, and expense of travelling to a meeting. But it doesn't just displace travel it's a better way of communicating. The fact is that speech is only a small element of human communication. Without a visual dimension, conversations can do little more than facilitate information exchange. That's because research shows that approximately 80% of what gets communicated when people interact is conveyed visually--through body language, gestures, facial expressions and other visual nuances. And people better understand, and remember more, of what they see, than of what they have only heard.

How do organizations benefit?

Video conferencing is usually adopted by an organisation for a combination of three productivity-enhancing reasons:

* To reduce the need for work teams to physically collocate.

* To enhance teamwork and collaboration within large organisations by engineering a high level of intimacy and interactivity.

* To actually collaborate on a document or graphic creation, with insertions, deletions or alterations made to a document by any participant, in real time.

As a result, executives report such benefits as faster decision-making, improved employee morale, access to the best talent, reduced time to market, better customer responsiveness, more efficient work practices, and a greater focus on results overall. And, of course, there are the very measurable cost benefits as travel, accommodation, and entertainment expenses are significantly reduced.

So, who does it?

Today, people from a wide variety of businesses, educational institutions, government bodies, healthcare facilities, and much more, all benefit from video conferencing and collaboration. Regardless of size or location, today's technologies are within the grasp of any organisation. Also, conferencing is no longer confined to executive boardrooms. Price reductions and connectivity improvements make it available to any conference room, any desktop.

What technology does conferencing involve?

VC systems use video cameras, microphones, display monitors and processing technology to create virtual meetings between geographically dispersed participants. Conferences involve the ability to see and hear other participants and, increasingly, to share data and presentations.

Video conferences can be conducted either `point-to-point,' meaning two locations are connected in the call, or `multi-point', meaning more than two `sites' are on the call at one time.

Video conferencing: What this guide does

We explain why organisations should now assess, or re-assess, video conferencing and data collaboration tools.

The next section in this guide sets out the evolutionary and revolutionary drivers of the huge surge in interest in video-conferencing worldwide.

The guide then explains what video conferencing applications actually are and how they work, so readers can understand the key elements, ask the right questions, and reap the greatest benefits.

Then we look in more depth at strategic directions, particularly the rise of IP, which is now providing an environment of "convergence" where any system can reach and talk to any other, and a variety of media can be used simultaneously.

Because VC is still a new technology to many (remember sending your first fax or email?), we provide a list of do's and don'ts--tips on the etiquette required to make VC meetings work best.

We look at the experience of a few companies in Asia who are already benefiting from early video conference adoption, and we conclude with a glossary of video conferencing terms.