Technology Brings Far-Flung Colleagues TogetherTechnology Brings Far-Flung Colleagues Together

Quaker Chemical Corp. proved this fall that technology can easily replace travel when corporate leaders need to meet. The $267.6 million specialty chemical maker in the Philadelphia suburb of Conshohocken had scheduled its annual week-long fall conference of two dozen top executives at its offices in Uithoorn, Holland, near Amsterdam. Because of the terrorist attacks, company leaders decided to cancel the meetings. But CIO Irving Tyler suggested convening the sessions virtually, employing videoconferencing technology where available--several Quaker Chemical offices have maintained PictureTel Corp. videoconferencing systems for years--and teleconferencing for the rest. The company used AT&T's teleconferencing services to link all participants. Conference participants also used Microsoft NetMeeting, a PC-based product that lets people share and view documents over the Web.

Some adjustments had to be made to the original conference plans. The daily virtual sessions lasted six to seven hours; in-person conferences generally last eight hours or longer. The biggest challenge: scheduling the time to meet. Time-zone differences forced participants to work quirky hours, beginning the day's sessions at 7 a.m. in Conshohocken, 1 p.m. in Uithoorn, and 7 p.m. in Wuxi, a Chinese city near Shanghai, where several Far East executives work. Other executives joined in from Lavonia, Mich.; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Hong Kong. Occasionally, the videoconference would recess, as participants at each site broke into small discussion groups, reconvening a half-hour later to share their thoughts.

A few executives found the videoconferencing process awkward at first. Some looked at the camera, although the speakerphone sat on the table behind them, muffling their voices. Others started discussing slide presentations before the image appeared on participants' PC screens around the globe. But the executives quickly adjusted to these minor problems, creating a pace and rhythm that worked well.

The process worked so well that Quaker Chemical might hold other meetings virtually. "It's a hell of a cost savings," Tyler says. Indeed, the company would have spent upward of $30,000 to fly participants to a single site. The videoconferencing and teleconferencing costs are minuscule by comparison--about $2,000, or about $50 an hour for video hookups and $10 an hour for telephone connections. "You do that four or five times a year, you end up saving a fair amount of money for a company of our size," he says.

A New Way Of Getting Together
Quaker Chemical wasn't the only company to discover that it had been underutilizing its conferencing technology. Los Angeles law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP had installed Web- and teleconferencing software from Latitude Communications Inc. in November 2000 that was capable of automatically notifying every office manager during a crisis and setting up an emergency meeting, but it hadn't deployed the feature as of Sept. 11. "We should have been prepared, but what were the chances of all seven U.S. offices being closed?" says Mary Odson, CIO for the law firm. As a result, Odson had to page all office managers to notify them of an emergency teleconference.

On Sept. 12, the firm for the first time used the software to conduct an online meeting among office managers. The meeting, which had been scheduled before the tragedy, was to have taken place in New York. But because no one could travel, the firm set up an online meeting through Latitude's MeetingPlace, which let one manager make the scheduled presentation.

The meeting wasn't perfect. Some managers were in hotel rooms and had to choose between participating through a teleconference or through the Web, and others had slow modem connections. However, the six-hour meeting took place. "It was acceptable," Odson says. "The biggest problem was in the inconsistency with the connections."

As a result of the terrorist attacks, Web conferencing has taken a higher profile at the firm. "We haven't seen a decline in our attorneys having to travel, because that's the nature of the business--to be in front of clients," Odson says. "However, we are considering using this type of technology more because of the uncertainty of travel. Planes can get cancelled." Before Sept. 11, the software was used primarily to handle teleconferences and as a Web-based training tool for staff. Now it's seen as offering a backup to scheduled face-to-face meetings and as a communications tool during crises. By the end of the year, the firm plans to deploy the software in its New York and Tokyo offices.

Circumstances that force non-IT employees to collaborate online may win converts from users to back the purchase of collaborative wares. Cummins Inc., the $6.6 billion engine maker in Columbus, Ind., is exploring the purchase of collaborative tools such as Lotus Notes Same Time or another type of peer-to-peer file-sharing software. "Prior to Sept. 11, it seemed that only IT people appreciated these collaborative tools," E-business director Brad Lontz says. "Functional people looked at them as techie tools; they felt they didn't apply to them. Now, there's a heightened awareness about these tools. People see them as good options and a way to reduce costs."

Technology needn't be very sophisticated to circumvent travel restraints. Take, for instance, Hal Varian, dean of the School of Information Management at the University of California at Berkeley. Varian recently canceled a cross-country trip to Cambridge, Mass., where he was to deliver a presentation to Massachusetts Institute of Technology students on the amount of information the world produces. Instead, Varian E-mailed a PowerPoint presentation to the students' professor, Erik Brynjolfsson, which was loaded onto a projector. Varian addressed the students through a speakerphone, giving commands to switch to the next slide. A videoconference hookup was unnecessary. "Even if I were there, it would have been in a darkened room," Varian says, adding that he didn't think the arrangement hurt the give-and-take with his audience. "Besides, they saved $2,000 in airfare, and I saved two days of wear and tear."

Are you using teleconferencing tools more often? Have they replaced the amount of traveling you do--or do you wish they did? Share your thoughts (remotely) in the Listening Post Talk Shop.