Virtually Possible

“It is exactly like sitting across the table except you can’t pass the coffee!”
-Jamie Thomson

Without traveling to disparate locations, contacting your business partners is normally done via phone or email. However, a new alternative to meetings has become increasingly available – in a virtual format.

There is no dispute as to how valuable face to face contact can be, however, telepresence can offer this and may even boost your business’s productivity and allow you to avoid extended trips and unnecessary travel costs. For companies who may have offices globally or geographically dispersed over several countries telepresence could make sense. It offers huge benefits that telephone or email just cannot compete with because it allows you to be effectively face-to-face with someone.

Video conferencing
In the past the in-person experience was not delivered by video conferencing, which was notoriously difficult to use and unreliable. Even if your call connected, it was hard to see people in your meeting. The resolution was so poor that face-to-face contact was impossible, so users did not feel they would recognize someone if they met them for the first time in video conferencing. In video conferencing, voice calls or e-mail it can be impossible to ascertain people’s true feelings, as these are revealed by body language. The power of visual communication can often avoid misinterpretations; studies have shown that 63 percent of communication is non-verbal, so being able to see how people are reacting while you speak to them is vital. Telepresence offers an in-person experience and allows body language to be interpreted.

Service
Telepresence is a reliable technology combined with a service, unlike previous videoconferencing technology. Companies like Teliris keep the technology in check and make sure that everything works on time, every time.

Going green
Telepresence promises to reach further into everyday life than just improving global business relationships. Any business that chooses to use the technology for meetings will also be doing business in an eco-friendly way (over the next year, for example, Cisco, a telepresence provider, will save over 200 million miles in air travel because of TelePresence, and will meet their target of reducing their carbon emissions by 10 percent as well as saving money on air travel). Using the technology, companies can be green, reduce costs and make their best employees more productive.

Healthcare
As well as being an eco-friendly business solution, there are implications for use in other areas. As costs come down, it is conceivable the technology will be adopted in the home, making communications with globally scattered relatives a more tangible and rewarding experience than a phone call. Marthin De Beer, SVP of Cisco’s Emerging Markets Technology Group, also expects it to play a role in the medical field for healthcare. “In India there is very poor healthcare available in the rural areas, so the idea was to implement a single screen unit in one of the hospitals in Bangalore, and then implement more single screens out in the clinics in the rural areas. That way they can set up appointments for patients in rural areas with doctors here in medical hospitals in Bangalore, and can do consultations using the technology.”

Future
It seems that telepresence technology could start affecting several different areas of the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry from meetings to virtual consultations. It could also impact on productivity and even the future of the planet - welcome to the future of business.