Goodbaby Group, Kunshan City, China
Established in 1989, Goodbaby Group is China’s largest and the world’s leading provider of infant and children’s products such as strollers, car seats and child safety devices, with customers located in more than 70 countries and regions worldwide. Currently, Goodbaby Group owns five global R&D centers, 11 subsidiaries, has 35 branch offices and more than 20,000 employees worldwide.
With branches located all over Japan, the Netherlands, the United States and China, constant communication and meaningful collaboration is key. In fact, the company has been using video conferencing systems for nearly a decade. The first investment, for their R&D centers in China and the United States, was upwards of $100,000. But the results with these legacy systems were inconsistent. High costs, audio and visual sync problems and difficulty in usage caused Goodbaby Group to simply return to old methods of communication -phone, e-mail and personal visits. Obviously, this was not an ideal situation.
Unification of Goodbaby's globally dispersed teams is critical. And as the company grew, so did the need for daily point to point discussions as well as developmental and technological communication between design, R&D and management teams across continents.
Goodbaby decided it was time to find a better way. They needed a communications solution that could provide crisp, rich audio and video capability with an easy to use, intuitive interface. Designers in the US needed to share schematics and drawings with managers in China real-time, as if they were sitting around the same conference table. Executives in Japan needed to be able to speak face-to-face with managers at the factory in China.
Goodbaby Group's Key Needs:
Trusted manufacturing partner and current LifeSize customer, Cannondale Bicycle Corporation, understood Goodbaby's need for meaningful communication and recommended LifeSize HD video to executives at Goodbaby. After conducting a thorough evaluation of the products, Goodbaby Group selected LifeSize as the best solution to meet their needs. More than 10 LifeSize® Express™ and LifeSize® Room 200™ HD video communications systems were soon implemented in key Goodbaby offices and design centers in the US, China, Japan and Europe.
"We are quite pleased with our decision to purchase LifeSize systems," said Michael Qu, Vice President, Global Operations at Goodbaby Group. "Now, senior leadership is able to meet with the president on a monthly basis. Before, we did it through conference calls or I received the meeting minutes when I was unable to take part in the meeting. With LifeSize, communication is convenient and completely seamless."
Now, meaningful, face-to-face meetings across continents are an everyday occurrence for Goodbaby Group. In the company's R&D center, a circular table was created to conveniently display all views of a particular product to a roomful of people, allowing everyone to get a detailed understanding of its form and function. Now that LifeSize systems are in place in key offices, a true on-site meeting environment is created for all participants around the globe to be able to view the same product at the same time. Goodbaby is also using LifeSize's built-in H.239 capability extensively, sharing presentations and schematics during meetings.
"During a product discussion, you're able to directly display three-dimensional engineering drawings and can engage in direct interaction," Qu said. "When we discuss product details, such as the structure of a wheel, or the grafting, we can see exactly what we are discussing thanks to the HD video. The efficiency increase is indescribable."
Before LifeSize, executives based in the US would travel to China roughly four to six times per year, depending on business need. Since their introduction to LifeSize in late 2008, Michael Qu and other colleagues have only made one trip to China as of July 2009.
"Because we're using it globally everyday, there just isn't a need to travel as much as we did before," Qu said. "We've saved a lot of money in travel-related expenses and recovered our costs in just two to three months since deployment. In the past, when we wanted to discuss something, we had to launch a lot of conference calls and ship the product design sample at least 72 hours in advance via Federal Express, which was a big expense. After the LifeSize deployment, we no longer have to send samples, as we can see them over video. The time saved is huge."
Goodbaby Group has also extended usage of the technology not only to external partners, but up to their president, Song Zhenghuan. Now, in monthly meetings with Mr. Song, each design center reports on their individual design tasks, as well as the next 3-6 months of designs and planning across continents.
"It is literally just as if we are sitting together in the same room," Qu said. "The future impact is limitless. We have not yet explored its maximum potential."
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