20. Work/life balanceFaster Team Process Location Flexible/Lower Overheads Faster Implementation Better Output Include the right people Cheaper/No Travel Costs/Downtime
Good Morning everyone and welcome to this session. My name is Stephen Partridge and I am a Lead Account Manager for Citrix Online.I am really excited to be here today and have an opportunity to speak to you all, as I am a strong advocate that online collaboration can make a real difference to businesses and people, as it directly meets the needs of today’s environment by enabling people to work more flexibly. So how do you save time and money whilst also increasing productivity through web conferencing?I’d like to set the scene on the various factors both external and internal that are affecting companies whether you are a global enterprise or a local small business, and how there is increasing pressure to reduce costs and improve productivity. I’d like to then demonstrate why tools such as GoToMeeting are a great way to reduce travel costs immediately, and that will increase productivity by your people travelling less and collaborating online.
…we have just launched GoToMyPC® for iPad® in the App Store, giving our customers the ability to easily and securely connect to their Mac® or PC from an iPad. Within 24 hours of launching we were the number 1 App in the Business category!So there are a lot of exciting things happening within Citrix at the moment, but today, we are really here today to talk about web conferencing.
Shift in workforce dynamicsGrowth cannot be limited by geographically restricted talent.Economic crisis, workplace disruptions and next-generation workstyles show the need for maximizing an increasingly dispersed workforceSaaS access and collaboration takes the physical location out of running a business. I’d now like to consider some of the external and internal factors….The impact of the global recession over the past couple of years has caused a shift in how we conduct our business. There has always been pressure to keep costs in check, but now we really need to drive cost out of the business… and this is driving people to change their behaviour and think differently – what is the opportunity cost of you being out of the office visiting a customer, for example?How else could you be using your time, can your business afford for you to be out? Of course we all need to meet with our customers and be out of the office, but when we are can we be more effective and by that I mean with web conferencing it really doesn’t matter where you are. You can now collaborate anywhere – all you need is your laptop and a web-browser.But thinking about your own experiences of travel – how often have you had disruptions that have cost you time and money?How many times has travel disruption such as tube strikes air strikes impacted what you needed to do?
Who could have predicted the Volcanic Ash last year? The volcanic ash cloud caused major disruption to air travel across Europe, paralysing more than 300 airports and leaving an estimated 150,000 Britons stranded abroad. More than 6.8 million passengers were affected. You cannot predict natural disasters, but how did that affect your business? Business cannot stop. I know my targets didn’t change! But what was really interesting for us, was that our usage doubled during the Volcanic Ash weeks as people were forced to conduct business another way…. What is the next event???
Then we have the accelerating trend of mobile and distributed workforces. As businesses become more global and as employees demand more control over where and when they work. This will fundamentally change the business landscape… creating significant implications for organisations and employees.Collaboration technologies can enable businesses to transform to meet this trend. For this model to succeed the organisation must be agile in the tools employed and their cultural environment – no more 9-5 but more thinking around the task, your customers and what needs to be achieved….
Shift in workforce dynamicsGrowth cannot be limited by geographically restricted talentEconomic crisis, workplace disruptions and next-generation workstyles show the need for maximizing an increasingly dispersed workforceSaaS access and collaboration takes the physical location out of running a business. NEW It’s no longer just for the MD now – it is a necessity for all!
The cost of travel as you know is increasing – not just petrol, but train fares, air travel and of course the taxes! Then think about the opportunity cost and the impact to you travelling and the work-life balance cost.HIGHLIGHTS FROM ADVERSE WEATHER PRESS RELEASE (snow in January)78% of British SMBs Say They Were Prepared for the Adverse Weather, yet 57% Admit Their Business Suffered Up to 124 million working hours lost in just one week equalling £1.47bn in lost productivity74% of British workers affected by snow chaos last week
Simplicity = Adoption = ROIWeb-based services have borrowed what make consumer applications such as Instant Messaging, Skype, Hotmail successful and translated it into successful business applications: SalesForce.com, SuccessFactors, Google Apps.What are the drivers of adoption? Ease of use, Ease of use, Ease of use. Also: no capital investment, cost effective and infinitely scalable.NEW But to really drive adoption things need to be simple – for you and your businesses to really change the way you do business even given all the benefits I mentioned previously ….it needs to be simple.Ease of use … without this people just won’t get started and you won’t see the ROI benefits.
Web conferencing enables companies to stay connected internally and externallyLets talk about the how..
With web conferencing tools, such as GoToMeeting it’s easy to conduct on-the-fly or scheduled presentations with customers… perform live demos, collaborate with colleagues or provide training to customers and employees – within seconds you can improve your productivity and be generating more revenue.A great example of this is one of our customers, the Home Group who are one of the UK’s largest regional social landlords. The Home Group are using GoToMeeting to help transform the way they do business. GoToMeeting is enabling 4000+ employees to communicate online across the Home Groups 500+ locations which has reduced their £1m travel expense budget in half! And that’s without factoring the benefits of increased employee productivity customer service and customer satisfaction…A great result!
So with web collaboration you can remove the need for non essential travel by conducting meetings online. Also because meetings can be started instantly from any PC, you can eliminate the time and hassle of organising complex and costly meetings.Sessions can be arranged with ease whenever they are required and at short notice.You and your attendees can join meeting is seconds and simple features let you show your screen, share keyboard and mouse control or switch presenters.. you can even record!Plus free VoIP means no phone charges for you or your clients.