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| Swine Flu phobia chalks out success for Video-conferencing |
| Press Trust of India / New Delhi May 20, 2009, 13:18 IST |
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Forced to put off your business plans? Well, video conferencing is here to ensure you don't lose out on important business meetings. As travel advisories and swine flu fears cause a substantial drop in international travel, the video conferencing industry is gearing up to tap the opportunity to generate more business.
"With continued global economic uncertainty, CEOs have realised the importance of Telepresence and Video Conferencing to control costs and manage travel cuts. Instances like swine flu force the organization towards faster adoption of video culture," says Anshul Dhingra, Senior Marketing Manager, India & SAARC, Polycom.
As per the recent Frost and Sullivan report on Videoconferencing, the industry in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23.1 per cent. Technological advances over last few years have enabled adoption of Telepresence and Video Conferencing. "One of the key trends we foresee is that video culture in organizations will remain mainstream as a business continuity enabler and collaboration tool even without swine flu and poor economic conditions," Dhingra says.
Technologies like Telepresence enable seamless collaboration amongst distant team members and deliver real time face-to-face interactions between people and places in their work and personal lives. Companies with global presence are expected to cut costs on travel in future due to the swine-flu pandemic. Video-conferencing reduces the dependence on travel and ensures quick return on investment (ROI), industry sources say.
Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Cisco India and SAARC says, "According to a Zinnov Analysis, even a 10 percent reduction in travel could save $500,000 for a 1,000 employee organization. Telepresence combines rich audio, high-definition video, and interactivity to deliver a unique in-person experience"."People look life-sized and with an easy setup and attendance, launching a meeting is as simple as making a phone call. It's so close to face-to-face that it really can remove the need to travel," says Zia.
But some people feel that fears to swine-flu will only take a toll on people who travel for leisure. "There will naturally be a 15-20 percent decline in travel if swine flu gets spread around the world. But only people who travel for leisure, say with their families to places like Hong Kong will cancel their trips. It would not affect business travel and at best they will postpone their meetings for some time," says Rajji Rai, President of Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI).
Swine flu, which has been declared a Phase 5 outbreak by World Health Organisation (WHO), the second-highest on its threat scale, indicating a pandemic could be imminent and must be taken seriously precisely because of its capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world. Psychologists point out that the fear of an epidemic can make people overly cautious and put off travel plans.
"Epidemics like Swine-flu are short-lived but create a huge psychological impact. Due to fear, people become over-protective and tend to take care of themselves a bit more than usual that leads to overdoing of safety measures. Over-reaction might stop them from travelling abroad," says psychologist Sameer Parekh.
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