Many public and private sector organisations have critical needs to transform, and it won't be done by doing the old stuff harder. The rollout of UFB across New Zealand opens up opportunities for ICT leaders to lead change within their organisations as new business models turn just "fast" into "what fast can do for your business". There is much more technology around today than people have a need for, and one of the key technologies that will be most valuable over the next few years will be video. Organisations will use video to replace travel and improve the quality of meetings. It will be used in high definition Telepresence suites and on iPads and laptops, and it will have a tremendous impact on how we communicate, collaborate and work. Videoconferencing technology and quality have developed rapidly over the years, with the cost of equipment coming down. In addition to the traditional meeting room videoconferencing solutions, video is increasingly being used in personal desktop systems comprising either video phones or laptops with webcams. Both solutions are simple to use, easy to implement, scalable and affordable. One organisation that has become a poster child for state-of-the-art video communications is New Zealand Nursing Organisation. A videoconferencing network throughout NZNO's offices and on key people's laptop computers by Gen-I. Each of the offices has a large-screen TV for access, while the laptops are equipped with videoconferencing software and a broadband data connection enabled by the XT Mobile Network. Staging a meeting is now as simple as scrolling through a directory and clicking to establish a connection – and calls between NZNO and outside parties are just as easy. Enabled via voice over IP technology and Gen-i's One Office network, the solution means staff and board members can hold meetings and training sessions without needing to travel and, as often happened previously, spend nights away from home. Videoconferencing has enabled NZNO to slash its travel budget in half – and just as importantly, it's cut the time the organisation's largely female staff need to spend away from their families. NZNO has also seen a dramatic improvement in productivity, with staff having more time to do the work they need to do and senior managers hardly needing to travel at all. What's more, the investment payback time, which was originally estimated at 18 months, has been achieved in a year. Fletcher Building is another prime example of how a business can take advantage of fibre-based products and services to increase productivity and support exporting to the rest of the world, creating economic value for New Zealand. Fletcher Building has deployed Gen-i's SmartMeeting service to its offices in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Cincinnati. Based on Cisco's TelePresence, Gen-i's solution takes advantage of fast fibre networks to deliver a videoconferencing service that will significantly improve the flexibility and robustness of Fletcher's operations, and reduce costs. Delivered via large screens, the service provides high quality 'virtual meeting' communication with life-sized images of meeting participants from multiple locations. The lighting, cameras and microphones also preserve eye-lines and audio location between users in the room and on screen. Fletcher Building CIO, Paul Knight, says the new deal would result in significant improvements to the way the business conducted its day to day operations and support its ambitious growth objectives. "Our decentralised structure with over 40 independent businesses within a global operation brings about its own unique challenges. We're constantly looking to innovate and find new ways to bridge the organisational and geographical divides through streamlining our approach to communications across all our offices. With offices across New Zealand, Australia, Asia, North America and Europe, Knight says that enabling conversations is vital for efficiently managing the group's total operations. "The advantage of high quality videoconferencing is not just solely in the reduction of travel times and costs. It's as much about the improvement in the quality of conversations. "Gen-i's SmartMeeting service removes the need for unnecessary travel, accelerating our decision-making processes, reducing costs and ensuring we minimise our carbon footprint." Knight says. Gen-i installed Telepresence videoconferencing across its own offices in Australia and New Zealand to save on travel costs and time, but quickly found that it was holding more productive meetings that would not have been possible, or even thought of, with physical travel. A key benefit is the ability to quickly get a dispersed group of experts together. When implementing the solution over two years ago, Gen-i mandated a 20 percent reduction in travel budget across the company. Seventy-five percent of this saving was used to fund the initial project, which consisted of four Telepresence rooms in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Sydney.
