Video Use Case #1 – Geographic distribution

I’m going to take a break from promoting the Wesley Clover companies today to look at a use case for Visual Communications.

I recently visited a company in Northern Ontario that specialized in delivering a number of services. One part of the company did wealth management, one did benefits and human resources management and one did estate planning. Because of the location of the headquarters they had satellite offices in other parts of Ontario to meet the needs of their customers in each geographic area.

The company was considering a visual communication system as a mechanism for making their remote offices feel more connected with headquarters. It is not uncommon for satellite offices to feel out of the loop and the lack of control can adversely effect moral.

While I was there I was given the opportunity to sit in on a weekly update meeting which allowed me a rare insight into the companies inner workings. I realized that visual communication and collaboration could enhance their business in a number of ways that they had not considered.

The wealth management team had regular meetings with their clients which required them to travel considerable distances. The travel limited the number of meetings that they could have with these clients each year. The location of the headquarters also limited the number high net worth individuals that they could reach. By adding a visual communication system at their headquarters and providing a service that included a smaller system at each clients home/business, meetings could be ad-hoc or as frequent as required. Their clients would get to use the systems for other business and the company could expand their services offering to literally span the globe.

The benefits management team was responsible for out-sourced health insurance for a number of local companies. By placing a video system at each of their clients locations they would be able to have a local presence. Employees of the companies that they serviced could meet more frequently with the centralized human resources department and by adding a video centric service, the group could expand outside the local area.

In each case visual communication made it possible to bridge the distances, setup ad-hoc meetings, meet more frequently, give customers the feeling that the adviser was actually there and expand the companies business without the expense of setting up more regional offices.

The employees that live close to headquarters enjoy the benefits of lower housing costs, easy commutes and access to beautiful lakes and recreation facilities.

The company benefits from lower cost rent, happy employees and because of the lower cost of living, access to lower cost highly trained personnel.

The city benefits form lower unemployment, population growth an increased support infrastructure in the forms of shops and services, and an increased tax base.

I was quite impressed with the local surroundings and would have no problem setting up shop there as long as I could reach my global customer base. Visual communications would be a hard requirement for me.

This entry was posted in General and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *