The Compelling Case for Conferencing
How Conferencing Can Help Organizations Improve Business Outcomes While Reducing Costs in Challenging Economic Times

Organizations of all types and sizes are looking for ways to improve their business outcomes while reducing costs and encouraging environmental sustainability. To help meet these goals, many of these organizations are turning to new software-based conferencing and collaboration solutions for audio and Web conferencing as well as continued face-to-face conferencing via video. Companies who use these capabilities report achieving measurable improvements in their corporate performance including increased business efficiencies, total cost savings, and environmental footprint reductions. This paper outlines some of the business benefits realized by companies who have deployed conferencing and collaboration solutions. It provides market data on the growth of unified communications (UC) and collaboration systems as well as end user feedback on which groups receive the most benefit from these solutions. It also describes factors companies will want to consider when selecting and deploying a conferencing solution, including accounting for all conferencing costs and how to look at ROI, which may go beyond just hard dollars. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis will show that an integrated hosted conferencing solution can save up to 95% of the costs of using separate audio, video, and Web conferencing service providers and that a premise-based UC solution can save as much as 97% when compared to using separate hosted service providers for an organization’s conferencing needs.

Conferencing Is Compelling
As the global supply chain for labor, goods, and services has been flattened and accelerated, it has become more complex, creating an exponential need to communicate and collaborate globally between suppliers, manufacturing, R&D, sales, marketing, finance, and others. Similarly, service oriented organizations, government and education, need to increase their agility and optimize their use of information to serve their clients and constituents most effectively. Organizations of all types and sizes are acknowledging the competitive need to streamline the flow of knowledge and expertise within the enterprise, i.e. their knowledge chain, regardless of where in the world that knowledge and expertise need be applied. In the current economic conditions, the big economic wins will likely go to those companies, and their key partners, who are able to flatten and accelerate their knowledge chains.

Types of Conferencing
Conferencing and collaboration are keystones to accelerating knowledge chains and business processes. There are four types of real-time conferencing technologies most organizations deploy as shown below. An integrated environment that enables a seamless choice of these conferencing modes for the users could be termed “Unified Conferencing.”

• Instant Messaging – The simplest form of conferencing is text-based instant messaging between two or more parties. Instant messaging is very useful when transactional types of communication occur; it is typically used when short questions, answers, and/or comments are sufficient to handle the needs of all parties. When longer dialogs are needed among larger numbers of participants, persistent group chat provides an extended multi-party conference environment.
• Audio conferencing – A much richer conferencing experience occurs when people participate in an audio conference. The audio conference provides more meaning and voice inflection in the dialog which can enhance understanding and speed the successful outcome. A major advantage of audio conferencing is easy access from essentially anywhere over the public switched and cellular telephone networks as well as through the global Internet using Voice over IP (VoIP).
• Web conferencing –Web conferencing enables the visual sharing of documents and applications between two or more parties and locations. This real-time information sharing is a major enhancement to an audio conference because participants are able to visualize, contribute to, and/or document topics that are being discussed, which enhances both focus and long-term memory.
• Videoconferencing – The richest type of conferencing, from a content perspective, employs video in combination with audio and Web conferencing. In the business market videoconferencing solutions range across four tiers: 1) desktop video running on personal computers; 2) self-contained video appliances on the executive desktop; 3) meeting room systems with enhanced screens, cameras and microphones; to 4) half million dollar telepresence solutions that use high-definition (HD) audio/video to create the perception of a single physical space.

The use of each type or combination of conferencing depends on both the purpose and the facilities. Audio conferencing is the most widespread, requiring only a voice end-point; IM and Web conferencing from any PC are rapidly expanding in popularity and use due to convenience and cost advantages. Many conferences start out as an IM session which is escalated to include other, richer forms of conferencing including audio, Web, and video conferencing. Historically, these four types of conferencing have each been separate infrastructure silos. Users had to decide in advance which type or combination to use; the user interfaces were different and confusing for each type, and they usually required separate access IDs and passwords; and separate, often specialized, equipment was needed for video conferencing. This “siloed” environment restricted the use of the most appropriate format and also added significant staff and administration cost. There is a compelling need in most enterprises to eliminate silos while reducing cost and improve outcomes.

Skyrocketing Conferencing Use
Recent market data indicate that audio, video, and Web conferencing are all seeing tremendous growth in terms of total use and frequency of use. For example:

• The number of bridged audio conferencing minutes increased by 55% worldwide between 2006 and 2008 approaching nearly 60 billion minutes.
• The number of named end users for premise-based Web conferencing solutions increased by 48% during the period to reach 31 million.
• The total number of business video endpoints sold increased by 43% to 235,000, of which a significant and growing number are high definition (HD). (Data compiled from 2007 and 2008 Unified Communications Products and Services forecasts published by Wainhouse Research. See http://www.wainhouse.com/reports/ucfcst2008.html for more details. 2 “2008 Unified Communications Survey”, Wainhouse Research, July 2008. There were 112 respondents of which 43 were from companies with over 10,000 employees and another 35 were from companies with over 1000 employees. The other respondents were from small- to medium-sized businesses.)
  

Clearly, conferencing use is skyrocketing in the enterprise, and it is providing real business impact.

The Business Impact of Conferencing Solutions
Organizations are adopting conferencing capabilities because they have significant impact on the business. Recent end user survey data indicate that by far companies are adopting conferencing technology as a way to improve productivity and control costs.

Improving Business Outcomes using Conferencing
Organizations use conferencing to enhance business results by communicating and collaborating faster with team members, partners, customers, and everyone in the value chain, often across multiple geographies and time zones. Major areas of improvement include:

• Improving Productivity and Accelerating Results Among Individuals and Operational Teams – Our research indicates that many conferencing and communications solutions allow people to be more productive by making it possible to contact colleagues for information more quickly, to perform project-oriented work more effectively without delays, and to make decisions more rapidly. Operational teams are able to convene the necessary skills and resolve issues much more quickly, as well. Figure 3 illustrates which internal functional groups will see the most benefit as reported by actual users. The benefits will appear both as faster time to results, to market, or to revenue, and as lower costs per project. (“2008 Unified Communications Survey”, Wainhouse Research, July 2008. Ibid. 4 “2008 Unified Communications Survey”, Wainhouse Research, July 2008. End users were asked, “If conference and collaboration solutions were deployed in your business, which user group(s) would derive the greatest benefit for your company? Select all that apply.” The chart represents the percentage of respondents that selected that particular user group as one that would receive benefit.)
• Shortening Sales Cycle Times – Sales persons can be more productive when they are talking to customers and potential customers via conferencing versus spending a significant amount of time traveling. Clearly some in-person interaction is required, but conferencing and communications solutions enable sales persons to reach more people more rapidly and to close more deals than ever before.
• Attracting & retaining employees – The new generation of worker has grown up with instant messaging, presence, rich media, and Web/video conferencing and look upon the availability of these tools as a must have in both their work and private life. Work is no longer where one goes, it is what one does, and working moments regularly occur outside of normal business hours and away from normal business settings.
  

Reducing Costs
Along with efficiency and productivity gains, reducing costs is another key reason why enterprises adopt collaborative communications.

• Reducing Travel Costs – Web and videoconferencing, as well as other UC capabilities, can connect participants with meetings, training, or “events” when they do not necessarily need to be physically present. The use of multi-party video at all four tiers (see pg. 2) is proving a very valuable tool for organizations that have implemented travel restrictions or just want to be more efficient. Video conferencing provides individuals with a rich sense of interaction without the need to travel. Several companies have reported that in a video meeting, participants pay more attention than in a Web conference alone because they know others are watching them and how they react to the information being discussed.
• Lowering Real-Estate and Facility Costs – Some companies are realizing that tremendous savings can occur if employees are able to work from home or from less expensive locations. Conferencing tools enable these teleworkers to effectively join meetings and participate in collaborative projects from their home location. Other companies are reducing facility costs in new and existing locations by eliminating headcount at expensive facilities and instead using “remote” personnel who are instantly available over voice, video, and/or web.
• Resolving Customer Issues More Quickly at Lower Cost – Call centers have long had escalation procedures so that customer inquiries can be responded to rapidly. The ability for customer facing personnel to see the presence of their colleagues and instantly bring them into a meeting or launch a multi-party conference with subject matter experts allows customer issues to be resolved more quickly, which in turn reduces the cost of “maintaining the customer”.
• Lower IT and Telephony Infrastructure and Administration Costs – A key element of a UC and conferencing deployment is its ability to integrate with existing directories, messaging systems and telephony infrastructure. Organizations can simplify the management of collaborative capabilities, optimize their IT resources, and eliminate silos with the increased flexibility of a premise-based software conferencing solution.

Environmental Sustainability
Many organizations have made environmental sustainability part of their overall mission statement or policies for corporate and social responsibility. These companies have set goals for reducing their carbon footprint, and conferencing and collaboration can help them achieve those goals.

• Reducing Carbon from Business Travel and Commuting – We are seeing more and more organizations reporting their carbon reductions as part of their normal quarterly or annual reporting process. These reductions are primarily achieved through more efficient energy use and travel reduction. Clearly, reducing travel by relying more on conferencing technology can reduce the amount of fossil fuel consumed and the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere.
  

Key Factors for the Best Conferencing Investment
Organizations considering a robust collaborative communications environment will need to look at a variety of factors that will impact both the solution and the decisions the organization makes with regard to costs and ROI. We outline several of the major factors as follows.

Understanding the Current Costs for Conferencing and Meetings
As organizations consider the type of conferencing deployment that would best meet their needs, it is important to create a cost baseline. This may require diligence, since conferencing costs are often dispersed throughout the enterprise, with different systems and service provider contracts in each division or department, and with occasional conferencing use charged to credit cards or submitted on expense reports. Suggested approaches follow. It is usually possible to gather the following information from your current systems or services:

• Voice, Video and Web Services Usage and Costs: Service provider contracts usually provide monthly reporting in support of the invoices that will document the usage in terms of total minutes of time used, total numbers of conferences held, and the average duration and attendance of the conferences. If information can be obtained for a number of months or quarters, a usage trend can be determined. When conferencing costs are reported on reimbursement requests, they need to be captured and rolled into the total costs numbers.
• Internal Server Usage: If your enterprise has begun to use in-house conferencing systems, whether the legacy hardware-based versions or some newer software-based systems, usage data is available from the system reports. It is also helpful to understand the peak periods of usage, since that is a major factor in planning for conferencing system capacity. Look for the trends which will reflect conferencing growth rates and indicate capacity requirements.
• Meeting Room and Conference Room Usage: If your organization uses any form of meeting room scheduling software, you can usually get reports that will show the usage levels of those rooms. This is particularly important for rooms equipped with video systems and telepresence solutions, where usage can be promoted to offset travel. Also, the finance staff may be able to determine the monthly or annual expense for off-site meetings, which may lead to an assessment of whether those events, and the related travel expenses, could be reduced or eliminated by better conferencing software.
  

All of this information will support informed decisions about how to achieve both the productivity gains and cost savings the new UC and collaboration tools can deliver.
Decision-Making Criteria for Conferencing Solutions

In addition to defining the capacity and sizing of a new conferencing system, a number of other criteria are important to guide in the purchase and deployment.

• User Experiences and Roles: Perhaps the most important factor in a conferencing and collaboration solution is that the user experience is convenient and familiar, providing both flexibility and consistency for all participants. Users will create the greatest outcome improvements and cost reductions if the conferencing tools are accessible directly from their business tools such as e-mail, calendars, tasks, collaborative workspaces, document creation and analysis tools, and application portals. The conferencing solution should provide for the intended user roles: most information workers as well as transaction oriented workers (e.g. logistics, help desks) will want PC-based conferencing. Teams, managers and process leaders (e.g. quality management) will also want meeting room conferencing. If you plan to use conferencing with customers and for advanced decision making, then some amount of telepresence investment may be justified.
• Anywhere Access: As an extension of the user experience, it is crucial to provide the optimal level of functionality for each mode and venue, with consideration for the economics as well as the security of each of the access modes. Voice, video and Web conferencing should be available to the participants through the device that is most appropriate at the time, including PC clients, Web browsers, conference rooms, and to the extent possible, mobile devices and telephones. Security of the conference should be preserved as appropriate to the conference type, with the option of encryption of all media streams, with the exception of PSTN voice calls. Similar functionality should be available to non-employees, e.g. customers and partners.
• Applications for Enterprise Operations and Business Processes: To be most valuable, the conferencing solution should be capable of being well integrated into the employee’s daily work flow. This should be supported in three ways: (1) specific uses of the conferencing systems within a documented procedure, such as using conferencing tools to resolve and document quality management events; (2) integration of the conferencing tools with other applications such as collaborative workspaces, so that conferencing is as natural as typing an e-mail; and (3) the transparent integration of conferencing with other business applications (e.g. such as linking video conferencing directly into a medical lab application for ease of consultation between the radiologist or pathologist and the physician).
• Flexibility in Deployment Options: Preferably, the conferencing solution will offer a variety of deployment options such as on-premise, hosted or hybrid, to allow for the most efficient, effective, and economical operations. While an on-premise option provides tight, seamless integration with the users’ complete UC environment and is often preferred for reasons of control and security, a hosted option is usually required for large conferences and peak loads. In either case, it is important to provide the same user interface and clients to assure transparency for the user. Also, it should be possible to scale an on-premises solution from small to large configurations, both to allow for broader deployment and growth, and to enable the best mix of centralized and distributed or regionalized deployments.
• Single Vendor Support: For many customers, it is preferable to have one consistent infrastructure for the conferencing system in order to minimize costs for both implementation and operation. Single vendor solutions will require less investment in planning and professional services when interfacing with existing communications infrastructure. Also, a single vendor solution will be easier to maintain and troubleshoot than a system with multiple parties or technologies to service.
• Architecture and Roadmap: An architecture is required that will support the highest reliability and security levels in order to serve the enterprise’s needs and to protect the enterprises’ information. Scale and flexibility, as defined above, are required to allow for graceful upgrades as technologies, functionality, user interfaces, and standards evolve. Generally, a software-based architecture with modular components will provide the most sustainable value. In addition, the vendor should be able to provide an appropriate investment roadmap, to deliver a reasonably long life cycle in support of a positive ROI.
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): While TCO is not the only criteria, it is a very important one, since it reflects the financial impact of the system within IT and the operating departments. An optimal TCO gives the enterprise a business advantage as well as a foundation for additional or future investments. TCO will include the costs of selection, implementation and deployment to the users; the costs of maintenance and ongoing upgrades to the systems; and the costs of administering and supporting the system, including the costs of supporting the users with ongoing help desk and training services. In some cases, where a complete UC rollout is not yet approved, or where IT priorities, resources or capital budgets are constraints, the best TCO may come from beginning with a fully compatible hosted solution in advance of an on-premise installation.
• Operations, Governance and Compliance: As with any technology, the conferencing solution must fit smoothly and synergistically into the operational, governance and compliance policies of the enterprise. For example, the conferencing systems should include the ability to log activity and, if required, record the communications for compliance with certain regulations. Also, the conferencing system should support effective controls on authentication, access and audit to assure secure and appropriate use. Effective tools in this area will avoid major costs or even penalties for remedial action.

Source: Wainhouse Research and UniComm Consulting, LLC