Next-Gen Video Conferencing Enhances Collaboration and Productivity

Challenge

With rising travel costs and poor adoption of their current video technology, a global Pharmaceutical Company was seeking a new video conferencing solution to help reduce costs and increase the productivity of their global workforce.

"The reason behind the need for a new video solution was really the poor user experience," said Darren Roback, principal consultant with WWT. "The system was hard for their employees to use and people would hold meetings in conference rooms where the system would fail."

At the helm of the initiative was the organization's new CIO, who had previous experience using Cisco's Telepresence. With new leadership and their current video license coming to an end, the company knew it was time for a change. It simply needed an integrated conferencing platform that was easy for their workforce to use.

An Integrated Solution

With an idea of what kind of solution they were looking for, the organization attended an executive briefing at WWT's headquarters in St. Louis, where we demonstrated an integrated solution that included on-premise Cisco Telepresence with Cisco Webex in the cloud.

"By using our Advanced Technology Center, we were able to leverage our Integrated Meetings demo to really show the organization how easy it is to book and join meetings and collaborate virtually within the organization and with customers," says Brandon Echele, video practice manager with WWT.

Impressed with the ease of use, the customer also requested to see the integration between the video platform and Cisco Jabber.

Making the Switch

To ensure this platform would be a smart investment for the company, WWT and Cisco worked together to provide a financial analysis of the savings they'd realize by launching the new solution.

"We were able to present the organization with a cost savings analysis comparing this new solution to their current video conferencing agreement," says Roback. "This analysis included a cost comparison based on minutes used per month and licensing fees per user."

Once it was time to switch platforms, WWT engineers and adoption services specialist began working with the customer to deploy the new technology and create successful adoption.

Our engineers transitioned 3,500 users from the legacy Microsoft Lync application to Cisco Jabber and did all the Telepresence installs at the customer's regional headquarters. Then our adoption services specialists held on-site Jabber and Webex trainings with users to demonstrate the capabilities of the platforms.

Looking to the Future

Now armed with a holistic video solution, the company expects to see a 25 percent decrease in travel costs and a 10 percent reduction in training.

Not only is the company seeing an increase in employee productivity and operational efficiencies, but they have a standardized architecture in place that will allow it to easily grow their collaboration solution as they continue to expand globally.