While some companies successfully have integrated
videoconferencing into their travel programs as a means to cut costs and reduce
strain on frequent travelers, many others can tell tales of expensive equipment
sitting in lonely conference rooms under a thin layer of dust. Harman
International director of global corporate travel Sally Abella saw that
equipment as an opportunity and in 2013 deployed a system that helps would-be
users locate, book and use that equipment.
Due not entirely but at least in part to the initiative,
total hotel room nights in the audio and electronics firm's five largest
corporate locations—where the initiative was emphasized most heavily—last year
declined 27 percent year over year, Abella said. That expenditure was
redeployed elsewhere, she said.
"It really didn't reduce our travel costs but it did
reduce the number of trips that were going to Harman campuses," she said. "In
other words, our employees are now out there in front of people and spending
money in front of people, like our customers, or maybe spending money on
educational programs."
Hear Sally Abella in her
own words:
2014 Best Practitioner Sally Abella
Abella worked with Harman's IT department to find and
catalog the company's videoconferencing equipment, giving each room that housed
it a descriptor in the company's Microsoft Outlook system so that employees
could easily find and reserve such rooms. Abella also deployed Sabre Virtual
Meetings to further make available internal videoconferencing rooms for booking
online, and developed detailed, laminated instruction manuals to ensure any user
would be able to figure out how to use Harman's 48 video endpoints.
"The IT group would send us a photograph of how they
placed it in that videoconference room, because we wanted to make sure it was
there," Abella said. "They bought Plexiglas stands, stuck them to the
walls, and put my laminated instruction sheet there. It was really important
for us that we were able to do that."
Harman does not mandate use of videoconferencing (though it
does mandate pre-trip managerial approval), so communication of the benefits of
the initiative was key. This effort was helped by a direct message to employees
from Harman's chairman, she said.
"I was delighted when we presented it to our executive
committee [for approval] because they
completely supported the idea," Abella said. "Our chairman actually
put out a communication globally to all Harman campuses stating that although
face-to-face is always important for internal meetings, we would like you to
consider meeting with your teams more often virtually.
"We market it as balancing your work and life,"
she continued. "Being on the road is very difficult."
This report
originally appeared in the Aug. 25, 2014, edition of Business Travel News.