The July/August 2016 issue of Buying Business Travel featured BCD Travel’s Chris Crowley as a guest columnist in an article about the new face of virtual collaboration technologies. Crowley, BCD’s senior vice president for global client management EMEA, wrote about a new role for travel managers: convincing business travelers to stay home.
Conference calls and other virtual meeting technologies long held a bad reputation. Users routinely complained about complicated dial-in codes, background noise and frozen screens. Then, collaborative technologies evolved. Now, people who regularly use Facetime, Google Hangouts and Skype in their personal lives expect to do the same at work, Crowley said. Vast improvements to tools like Skype for Business, WebEx and telepresence offer business travelers the chance to turn day trips into video calls, saving travelers and companies time and expense.
That represents a massive opportunity to shift—or increase—spend on higher value trips, Crowley said. That shift is why tomorrow’s travel programs are certain to include total collaboration management.
Travelers’ attraction to virtual collaboration is easy to understand, but companies are starting to realize the benefits, too, including:
- Reduced travel spend
- Increased productivity
- Increased employee retention
The future potential of total collaboration management prompted BCD and travel consultancy Advito to team up with Cisco to increase their clients’ use of technology. Crowley said the companies are working together to help clients and travelers identify the collaboration options that best fit their purpose and to create travel-avoidance strategies that make it easier to stay home.
