Technology bringing savings - case study by Andy Chew of Cisco on 12-Dec-2011

C ost and efficiency are critical to success in today's market. Future Publishing, the special interest media group, has two main locations in the UK: one in Bath and another in London. With editorial, marketing, publishing, advertising and digital staff housed in both offices, meetings across the London and Bath sites take up a lot of time during the working day. Travelling time for each journey takes around 90 minutes and the company was spending a significant amount of money each year on train tickets.

A full-scale overview of its travel expenditure was conducted with an overall aim to improve efficiency, improve staff communications and reduce train travel times. A large focus of the internal audit was to address the complexity of the current video conferencing systems. Staff were becoming increasingly frustrated with the system and the management team made the decision to implement a unified Cisco TelePresence solution.

"To put the benefits in context," said Andrew Hudson, Future's IT project manager, "what used to take three meetings and up to nine hours travelling can now happen in one meeting and has dramatically reduced the costs associated with train travel. The benefits of using video collaboration have been reinforced by the management team and staff instantly recognised the cost savings and increased levels of productivity as a result of using the technology."

"This is a great example of a company that has recognised the transformational effect of the technology," said Andy Chew, Director of Sales Collaboration at Cisco. "The solution has streamlined the video conferencing process by making meetings between staff more productive. Collaboration between the London and Bath sites has resulted in a better use of resources and highlighted how natural communication can flourish. The company also has offices in Australia and America and, due to the scalability of the software, colleagues from across the globe can easily be connected through the one easy-to-use interface."

For more information on Future Publishing, please visit: www.futureplc.com and for Cisco www.cisco.com.

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