The alternative to business travel

Popular Articles

Recognising the damage business travel is doing to our climate, business leaders are increasingly looking for cost effective alternatives, such as audio, web and video conferencing. For the vast majority of internal and external meetings, says Carolyn Campbell, Senior Director of Marketing Communications at InterCall, a web conference can be the best solution to save money, cut down on unproductive travelling time and reduce carbon emissions.

PLANES, TRAINS AND WEB CONFERENCING?

We all know how much damage travel, and its accompanying carbon dioxide emissions, cause to the environment. We know that a flight from London to New York emits carbon dioxide (an average of 1.2 tonnes) into to the upper atmosphere and that this is very bad for the environment. This is why a growing number of informed and conscientious consumers now think carefully about the environmental effects of their holiday destinations and modes of transport.

Yet, how many of those consumers think about the effect of their business travel? According to Wagonlit Travel the global travel market is now worth approximately US$870 billion, of which US$350 billion is business travel. So, around 40 per cent of our travel related emissions comes from business travel. However, few of us can simply decide not to visit clients, attend overseas internal meetings, or only liaise with suppliers by telephone.

Furthermore, there appears little we can do about the environmental damage we cause travelling to and from work. Using an average commuting distance of 18 miles each way and an average mileage of 23.4 miles per gallon, the daily fuel consumption due to commuting is at least 1.5 gallons for a round trip. So, a five day commuting working week releases more than 5,154 lbs
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, per employee.

Increasingly, then, businesses are looking at these figures, recognising the damage they are doing to our climate through business travel, and looking for cost effective solutions that not only reduce emissions, but also maintain employee productivity. For a rapidly growing number of businesses, the answer is found in collaboration tools such as audio, web and video conferencing.

THE VIRTUAL MEETING

Most businesspeople are now familiar with the concept of virtual meetings. Many of us have attended them and we all tend to think we know what they are. However, according to Carolyn Campbell, Senior Director of Marketing Communications at InterCall, the world- leading conferencing company, there is confusion and misunderstanding about the different types of conferencing.

She explains: “Video conferencing has been around for a long time and has an image of being expensive and cumbersome. It uses specialised video equipment and is helpful in situations where high definition visuals are useful. However, people are increasingly using web conferencing. It is all done over the web with plug-and-play technology that allows people to talk to each other, see each other, and even collaborate on documents.”

Over the past few years, as internet connections have grown faster and broader, the quality of web conferencing has vastly improved. This is encouraging a growing number of companies to spend more time in virtual meetings and less time on expensive and polluting journeys. Web conferencing is also enabling more and more people to work from home. According to research conducted by WorldatWork through The Dieringer Research Group, the number of Americans whose employers allow them to work from home at least one day per month increased from 9.9 million to 12.4 million in 2006.

Campbell comments: “Web conferencing can’t replace every type of meeting. It’s still helpful to meet in person to kick off a new team, for example, or to get together if the event will take the better part of a day or many days. But for the vast majority of internal and external meetings a web conference is now the best solution. You don’t need anything more complex than a webcam to get started. It saves you money, cuts down on unproductive travelling time and, because it uses computers and telephones that would be switched on anyway, has almost no impact on the environment.”

CHOOSING THE RIGHT PROVIDER

Like many of its competitors, InterCall began offering conferencing facilities in the early 1990s and saw steady growth during the economic globalisation of that decade. It was no surprise that demand soared in the wake of 9/11. What has surprised Campbell and her colleagues is how that demand has continued to grow even after people have once again become comfortable flying.

Between 2001 and 2003 business travel dipped, but since 2005 it has risen by 24 per cent. Yet, according to Wainhouse Research, more than 60 per cent of all meetings today are done virtually, and that number is expected to rise to 70 per cent in the next two years. The conferencing industry has grown to US$3.7 billion, a 32 per cent increase in revenue from 2000. This growth is apparent at InterCall as well. With its 35 sales offices worldwide and more than 500 Meeting Consultants, InterCall generated US$439 million in revenues in 2005 and exceeded US$600 million in 2006.

Today, Chicago based InterCall serves more than 400,000 individual conference leaders in more than 70,000 organisations. Its global operations reach Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China and India. The company handles more than three billion minutes annually and provides conferencing services to 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies and 50 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies.

A GROWING MARKET

To some extent InterCall’s growth has occurred as a result of growth in the market as a whole. However, Campbell believes that there are three factors that have set it apart from the competition. She says: “Firstly, we’re the world’s largest conferencing provider because we’re not tied to any one system. We work with all the major systems available in audio, web and video services. Also, we offer our customers a fully integrated global VoIP system that allows easy connections to meetings without the usual hassles of international dialing. Wherever you are in the world, you can be confident that InterCall will be able to meet your needs in the way that you need it to.”

She continues: “Secondly, there’s a perception that virtual meetings are cold and impersonal, but we’ve invested in an extensive global service network. This ensures you are taken care of and feel comfortable with your service technicians and sales teams at all levels of the provider relationship. Thirdly, we’re solution evangelists. We have a passion for training people on how to use our products. We know all the tips and tricks to make the technology work as well as possible, and we’re keen to share them with our customers.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Campbell expects the market for web conferencing to continue to grow. “The use of conferencing has grown at over 15 per cent a year since 2000 and doesn’t show any sign of slowing,” she says. “It’s growing at different rates in different regions. Most notably Europeans and Asians are now realising what North Americans have known for some time – that it’s just not feasible, economically or environmentally, to get in your car or on a plane and see everybody. Especially not when there are such good alternatives out there.”

She expects that, aside from this increased take-up in Europe and Asia, the main development in the web conferencing market will be the increasing focus on unified communications. Campbell explains this by saying: “At the moment, my system knows, from looking at my Outlook Calendar, that I’m in a meeting. So, it’s ensuring that I’m not disturbed. In the future we’ll be seeing more of this sort of integration between programmes, allowing us all to focus on the job rather than the technology.”

So, there clearly are options for businesses that want to maintain their productivity while also minimising the environmental impact of their business travel. Forward looking businesses are rapidly adopting technology that in the space of a few years has become more effective and available. As the rest of the business world joins them, so we will all become as environmentally responsible in our working lives as we already are in our personal lives. That can only be good for everyone.

INTERFACEFLOR

InterfaceFLOR is the largest manufacturer of modular carpet in the world. Based in LaGrange, Georgia, the company creates tiles for commercial use. It prides itself on its ecofriendly manufacturing process, which incorporates everything from using corn fibre as its raw material to using methane gas from a Georgia landfill and solar power as its energy source.

Every creative, manufacturing and business decision is guided by its ‘Mission Zero’ commitment: to have zero harm on the environment by the year 2020. As one of the first in its industry to make this commitment, InterfaceFLOR is not only manufacturing high quality carpet, it is also working to reduce its footprint on Earth.

Twelve years into Mission Zero, InterfaceFLOR integrated its two websites into one. This new site contains interactive features and allows customers to have a more sensory experience when choosing their products. The challenge the company faced was training its 120 salespeople, who are scattered across the US, without producing harmful carbon emissions by flying or driving.

With help from InterCall’s Meeting Consultants, InterfaceFLOR set up Microsoft Live Meeting web conferencing. This allowed executives to give a live tutorial of the new web site to employees right across the country.

During the tutorial, instructors gave real time demonstrations of how the site works, and gave immediate answers to employees’ questions. The web conference even allowed leaders to poll participants or monitor their engagement with the mood indicator button.

InterCall’s web conferencing solution enabled InterfaceFLOR to hold four training sessions for 30 employees at once, altogether training more than 120 company employees. As a result, the company avoided more than 120 plane flights and prevented the release of thousands of pounds of harmful carbon emissions in the air.

Organisation

InterCall provides the broadest choices of audio conference calls and web/video conferencing for business collaboration. Using InterCall, you can connect with your customers, teams and vendors without the significant carbon footprint (and expense) caused by commuting or air travel. Collaborate better, communicate faster and reduce environmental impact with InterCall.

Enquiries

InterCall
8420 West Bryn Mawr
Suite 400
Chicago
IL 60631
USA
Tel: US: 800 820 5855;
Canada: +1 877 333 2666
APAC: +612 8295 9197;
UK and EMEA: +44 1452 556200

Climate Action - Assisting business towards carbon neutrality