High definition video delivers highest ROI and drives improved business performance
Business travel keeps getting harder. Airlines are grounding planes, offering fewer flights and collecting new surcharges for fuel, checked bags and weekday flights, making air travel less convenient and more expensive than ever.
More and more, businesses are turning to Lifesize for a powerful and cost-effective way to avoid business travel – with no lines, no delays, and no surcharges.
“While rising ticket prices and new surcharges are driving up the cost of air travel, most companies can make perfect high definition video calls on their existing broadband network with zero incremental cost,” said Colin Buechler, Lifesize Senior Vice President of Marketing. “High definition video delivers cost savings immediately and boosts productivity quickly. It is the best investment you can make with your IT dollar – or your travel budget.”
Today’s video communications solutions address the most pressing issue in business communication: the need to be present. This need to connect is so powerful, that people continue to travel despite the delays and cost, because the phone and email aren’t enough to stay in sync with customers, partners and colleagues around the world. But with solutions from Lifesize Communications, the global leader in high definition video communications, you can be there while still being here.
“Business travelers are targeted with the highest-priced tickets because, until now, there was no good alternative to a face-to-face meeting. Now, high definition makes video communication a pleasant business experience,” said Buechler. “The image is clear. The motion is fluid. It feels natural, like being in the same room with someone. You have eye contact, you connect, and the ideas flow. Personally, I’d rather be on my broadband line than standing in a security line.”
Once viewed as an expensive, complex technology only found in large global enterprises, Lifesize HD video systems let businesses of any size turn any room into a telepresence room. Starting at less than $5000, Lifesize’s all-HD video product portfolio ranges from simple point-to-point video conferencing systems to highly-customized, multi-display, multi-HD camera systems.
All Lifesize products provide stunning quality that delivers an immersive, high definition telepresence experience over existing broadband networks. Lifesize systems deliver high definition video at only 1 Mbps of bandwidth and DVD quality video at 512 kbps, allowing companies to deploy video to many locations without altering their current network or provisioning additional bandwidth.
Air Travel Facts
Increasingly, business travel is an unpleasant, expensive and inefficient experience. In 2007, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that 27 percent of U.S. airline flights were cancelled or delayed, marking the airline industry’s worst year ever for on-time performance. In 2008, unusually cold weather and heavy snow caused many airports to shut down and cancel flights, and hundreds of thousands of travelers were stranded or delayed due to emergency safety inspections.
In May, the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index found that customer satisfaction with U.S. airlines dropped to its lowest level since 2001. Today, planes are flying at full capacity, flying slower to conserve fuel, and airlines are applying surcharges to everything from baggage to beverages. Targeting business travelers for additional revenue, airlines have also recently brought back “Saturday night stay” ticket price rules that can make weekday fares cost up to four times as much as the same trip targeted at vacation travelers.
