There were a number of communication pains that he wanted to solve.
First, travel expenses were soaring, with his management staff constantly
driving hundreds of miles per week for new business and current customer
relations. New business pitches required presentations to effectively seal
the deal. Desktop sharing for joint document editing and product
demonstrations were only possible with everyone huddled around the same
machine. Current customers demanded regular status meetings to discuss
operations and finance.
Management meetings were done through a set of
conference calls, which gave no face time whatsoever, and made voting and
polling almost impossible. Most shared files resided in email, making them
impossible for others to discover without asking around. Many of those files
were finance or personnel related and required extra security. Long distance
bills were piling up, as were conference call fees. Russell prided himself
on providing customers with the absolute best quality services at the lowest
quality prices, and these inefficiencies were starting to eat into his
bottom line badly.
After a week of research, they ended up selecting VIA3 from Viack due to
price, and their relative depth of features for the small to medium
business. They purchased a few seats for Russell, his operations manager,
and his area managers to use. The impact was significant, and immediate,
with 95% reductions in travel and telephony costs. There was also a
significant improvement in productivity and time savings, allowing everyone
to start working normal hours for the first time in two years. The new
business pitches were now done with colorful presentations shown over the
internet, rather than in-person.
Any new customer with an internet
connection could be invited to a meeting or presentation whether they had
VIA3 already or not. Anyone’s desktop could now be shown remotely to anyone
else for training, editing, and demonstration purposes. Employees could stay
in touch with the built-in instant messaging and presence detection.
Everyone could share ideas on the common virtual whiteboard. Secure files
could now be shared in the document workspaces safely due to the built-in
security. Status meetings with customers and employees could now be held on
VIA3, with full audio and video conferencing, as well as voting and polling
functionality.
Face to face was now a virtual face to face experience. Long
distance bills were reduced by 84%, with most employees using the VOIP
built-in to meetings to communicate. Snail mail was no longer needed, and
faxing was also reduced dramatically.
All of these web conferencing efficiencies and savings meant that Russell
could continue offering the best quality service at the best quality price.
The difference now was the margins, time and productivity improvements.
Russell became a large company in appearance, using corporate communication
tools sized for his business.
=========
Brian Back
Brianbackup@hotmail.com
www.webconferencingcouncil.com
Brian is a contributor for the WebConferencingCouncil.com, and power
teleworker / power user.
