Bell Business Markets is seeing this trend manifest as interest from its customers in two areas of technology: virtualization, and unified communications and collaboration tools.
Virtualization allows a business to have components of its information technology, such as servers and storage, consolidated over the network to reduce infrastructure costs, data centre real estate and power and cooling expenditures. The cost savings from these factors can be remarkable; however, it is important that the network which supports this be reliable, with strong controls in place to ensure the service levels employees and customers expect.
To that end, many businesses turn to system integrators and solutions companies like Bell Business Markets to ensure the bullet-proof reliability and security needed for virtualized IT services is in place.
From the perspective of collaboration and interaction between employees, or with suppliers and customers, businesses are closely examining and implementing unified communications and visual communications tools (like video conferencing) to increase productivity, reduce costs and shrink carbon footprint.
Imagine being able to decrease travel expenses, help the environment and still have strong collaboration between your employees. Video conferencing and telepresence—boardroom suites of video conferencing equipment designed to create the next best thing to being there—can be added to a company’s communication mix to accomplish just that, says Sandy Gillis, Associate Director, marketing at Bell Business Markets.
Bell Canada last year reduced its transportation costs alone by $11 million through the increased use of conferencing and collaboration tools. Those same activities also led to a reduction of 4,700 tonnes of green house gas emissions. It’s hard not to proudly trump that as a green win-win and to strongly advocate it.
Savings from communications and collaboration come not only from video conferencing. Use of all communications technologies is important: e-mails, instant messaging, video and audio conferencing, mobile phone calls and IP telephony are all parts of successful unified communications. Like a carpenter looking into his or her kit, it is all about using the best and most efficient tool for each task.
This sort of unified communications solution can also enables businesses to set up virtual offices staffed by occasional teleworkers, further cutting energy costs, real estate and environmental impact.
As well as welcome savings and green benefits, this approach can also enable productivity, greater job flexibility and employee satisfaction. Just ask yourself: how many of the hours an employee has happily saved by not driving to and from work—also cutting GHG emissions—will they find spent productively on business matters? Half? One quarter of the hours? Surely more than they would have otherwise spent unproductively trapped in gridlock, Gillis adds.
As attrition and skills shortages takes root in many Canadian businesses, they are finding unified communications and video conferencing are becoming more important to attracting and retaining talent.
On the one hand, employees (like customers) are looking for responsible companies with the sustainable green practices that unified communications and video conferencing brings. On the other hand, the youngest generation of Canadian workers, more intimately familiar with instant messaging, video conferencing, social networking and collaboration tools, have come to expect immediate access in the office to the efficient and flexible communications found in their personal lives. So, unified communications becomes a powerful recruitment tool for Gen Y talent.
The bottom line is that good sustainable practices from efficient technology and communications tools strengthen both the environment and business.
For more information visit www.bell.ca