P&G Implements Telepresence
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Sep 24, 2008 1507 hrs IST

Procter and Gamble (P&G), one of the largest conglomerates in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) verticals has rolled out a state of the art telepresence video conferencing system in Philippines.

The new system addresses a core need for more effective collaboration among the company's 138,000 employees in 80 countries to work more closely and together.

This increased level of co-operation - both internally and with customers - opens the door to greater innovation, faster decision making and significantly reduced travel costs, as executives spend more time in their own office.

Completed in April 2008, the Cisco telepresence system uses sophisticated video conferencing equipment that allows parties in different office locations to talk together as if they were in the same conference room, according to a statement.

Datacraft an indepdent IT solutions and services company has rolled out the system for P&G.

P&G depends on its employees to work closely together in order to build its brand strategy and develop innovative new products, said Tina M. Vaswani, Philippines' Global Business Services (GBS) / Information Decision Systems (IDS) manager for P&G. With the introduction of TelePresence, videoconferencing can now play a pivotal role in building stronger multi-national teamwork because it is easy to use and attracts employees to access it on a regular basis.

A total of 40 Cisco 3000 telepresence studios have been installed throughout P&G's network of offices across the globe featuring high-definition video conferencing technology that runs on a dedicated broadband connection to ensure smooth audio and video feeds. Each system is set up in a special conference room equipped with fixed cameras, sensitive microphones and large flat screens that portray life size images of individuals participating in the conference call from a remote site, the statement said.

TelePresence effectively makes users feel like they are all talking together in the same room and this removes concerns that made people reluctant to make videoconferencing calls on older systems, said Vaswani.

The strong positive response to telepresence has already prompted P&G's management to expand from the existing point-to-point set up to a multipoint system that will allow users in several offices to take part in conference calls at the same time.

Telepresence videoconferencing addresses an important challenge laid down by the company's Chairman and CEO, AG Lafley, when two years ago he mandated that 50 percent of product innovation and development should come from collaboration with partners and customers.

Our vision was to find a technology that would make video collaboration so natural that participants would forget about the technology involved, said Vaswani. I believe that we now have the best solution to meet this goal and we are very pleased with Datacraft's role in helping to implement this system in a matter of just three months.

Beyond its practical day-to-day value in boosting collaboration, telepresence videoconferencing also plays a role in improving quality of life and minimising the company's carbon footprint, by reducing business travel.