HEINEKEN reduces travel costs thanks to Polycom

Telecom Lead Europe: Polycom announced that HEINEKEN has
used Polycom RealPresence video collaboration solutions and reduced travel
costs by over 250,000 pounds.


HEINEKEN reduced travel of its field sales people across
the UK. The beer company increased communication between the London office and
the head office in Edinburgh, increased communication between manufacturing
sites.


The UC major assisted HEINEKEN to save 160 tons of CO2 in
12 months the equivalent of 1,270 car journeys between Edinburgh and London
or 752 return flights between Edinburgh and London.


HEINEKEN wanted to increase communication between the UK
head office in Edinburgh and its offices and manufacturing sites situated
throughout the UK, while reducing the amount of travel its field sales force of
over 500 people undertake.


HEINEKEN has over 11 video-enabled rooms in the UK to
complement the existing 160 units installed in over 50 countries across the
world including the Netherlands, Mexico, Romania, Poland, and the U.S.


The new UK solutions include Polycom RealPresence
Immersive video suites and Polycom RealPresence Room video solutions.


Polycom CMA Desktop enables HEINEKEN’S workforce to use
the concierge service from Talk and Vision to participate in any of over 8,000
video conferences held across HEINEKEN globally every year.


The Polycom OTX Room video solutions are being utilized
for a wide variety of meetings – from board meetings to interdepartmental
meetings and HR interviews. Additionally, people in Edinburgh can easily assess
individuals in London without the need for travelling.


The high-definition quality, ease-of-use, and the almost
life-like realism of people at the other end of the Polycom video conferencing
system has led to larger usage demand for video conferences, with people booking
repeat meetings much more frequently,” said Brendan Rafferty, IT Architect for
HEINEKEN.


Through the use of the Polycom RealPresence Platform,
HEINEKEN has a unified video conferencing collaboration solution that combines
multi-party voice, video, and content collaboration sessions together. And they
are looking to continue to promote video conferencing through virtual meeting
rooms, whether voice or video.


As usage continues to grow, HEINEKEN is investigating
Polycom RealPresence Mobile software running on iPad’s to enable staff to make
video calls and conduct face-to-face meetings into the video collaboration
suites easily in the future.


We have a distributed workforce across a number of
different types of sites, head offices, call centers, and manufacturing
facilities. I think it will be powerful when all employees can from their PC
simply look to see who’s available, invite them into a voice call, or even
bring them straight into a video call or room system all at the click of a
button,” said Jem Anderton, IT Innovation and Solution Development Manager for
HEINEKEN.


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