Gen-i benefits from telepresence videoconferencing

Savings estimated at $210,000 in first year

Saving on travel costs and time was the core of the business case for telepresence installations in Telecom division Gen-i’s major offices, but with just over a year’s experience of the medium the company has found it is holding productive meetings that would not have been possible or even thought of with physical travel.

More short meetings are held where a “reasonable sized group of people” reviewing a plan or progressing a project can hold direct discussions with one another and the managers to whom they report, rather than sending one of their number to another centre to represent the team.

“We would never have considered three to five people travelling to be part of a team for a half-hour meeting,” says Selwyn Rimmer, Gen-i’s head of integrated communications services.

On some large projects, the minor members of the team might never meet each other without the telepresence facility, Rimmer says. With telepresence everyone can attend the meeting, without taking too much time out of their day. They become more in touch with the project as a whole.

The first telepresence rooms went into the company early last year; there are now rooms in Auckland Wellington, Hamilton, Christchurch Sydney and Melbourne, and one is being established in Tauranga. The main suites in the larger centres have three screens together covering the whole width of one wall, presenting high-definition (1080P) images of the remote participants with two rows of seats, so local and remote participants appear to be seated around a continuous elliptical table.

Two smaller screens at the sides of the main array and one below it, near the floor, show any documents that are necessary to the discussion. These are the only add-ons to a standard configuration supplied as a package by Cisco.

Secondary rooms in the main centres and the rooms in smaller centres have one screen and one row of seats each.

Set-up problems were few, once the staff involved had been on a course to become qualified implementers. Finding and setting up the physical space for correct lighting and acoustics was a bigger challenge than any of the technology, Rimmer says; “we got to know our lighting supplier very well.”

Lighting and colours are significant for good performance, he says; both for quality of image and speed of transmission of the signal. Cisco dictated which colours to use in the rooms for best effect.

Gen-i tracked the usage of the rooms closely over the first year, ensuring they were not lying idle for too long. In the event, occupancy has grown quickly to high rates; the main Wellington room is in use 50-60 percent of the time, says Rimmer; The Sydney centre is running between 48m and 49 percent occupancy.

The focus is no longer on measurement but on prioritisation, to ensure important meetings get first access. A booking can be made from any authorised PC in the company, via Outlook and the call is set up automatically. On entering the room the participants simply touch the record of the booking on a screen to activate the connection.

An estimated $210,000 has been saved in the first year, Rimmer says.

The telepresence rooms are now being used not only for internal meetings but for discussion with customers. A customer can be in instant touch with the leading experts in the company.

Of course telepresence doesn’t entirely eliminate travel, says business manager Peter Haigh. If someone has appointments with several people in one centre and is able to fill a full day, a physical trip will probably still be worth the fare.

Gen-i already makes extensive use of ordinary videoconferencing, but telepresence is a much more comfortable and natural environment and a prolonged meeting is not so much of a strain, say Rimmer and Haigh.

Stereo “positional audio” is one of the important contributions to the natural feel of the medium. Speakers’ voices come from the part of the room where their image sits; in Gen-i’s experience this is less disorienting and tiring than the limited sound facilities of ordinary videoconferencing.

Surveyed about the benefit of telepresence, Gen-i users identified enhanced opportunities for collaboration and increased productivity. Avoiding travel ranked only third in priority on average.