Two major companies are extensively expanding their video conferencing facilities to save money on travelling.
Mark Avery, head of business services at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK, said he was setting up video conferencing at 11 new locations in the country.
This is in addition to the existing facilities PWc has at another13 of its offices.
A second travel manager, who asked not to be named, said he was installing video conferencing equipment at five locations around the world.
Both travel managers were speaking at the ACTE/ITM Partnership Forum held in London last week.
They also both stressed that their decisions were as much about cutting travel for the benefit of employees' work/life balance as in saving company money on air fares and hotels.
The second travel manager said his company had drawn up a global travel policy with contact with regional travel managers done through virtual conferencing. "I never actually travelled once for this," he said.
But he also revealed that a meeting conducted for senior executives by virtual conferencing had saved the company £200,000 in travel costs.
Mr Avery said he had taken over video conferencing from his company's IT department as it was part of the meetings business.
"The technology is stable these days. It is now about people. Technology does not replace client meetings – you can't build a relation through technology. You have to see the whites of the other peoples' eyes.
"But once you have established the relationship, how often do you need to meet? In fact, do you need to meet?"
He said that of the 12,500 city pair flights PWc made each year in the UK at a cost of £3.4m, 40% were for internal meetings. These cost £1.4m.
If these internal meetings were cut by half and replaced by video conferencing, there would be savings of 700 tonnes of CO2 emissions and of £700,000 on travel costs – far more than PWc's investment in the equipment.
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