When SCOR wanted to cut costs and boost efficiency by
reducing business travel, it turned to Verizon and Polycom for an advanced,
immersive telepresence solution.
Verizon installed seven Polycom immersive
telepresence systems at SCOR’s offices in the financial hubs of Cologne,
London, New York, Paris, Singapore and Zurich.
The new units are enhancing collaboration and improving
productivity by enabling employees around the globe to meet in person” using
virtual, real-time, full-size meeting rooms without needing to leave the
office.Headquartered in Paris, SCOR Group, formed from the merger of SCOR,
Converium and Revios, employs more than 1,600 employees in 40 offices across
five continents.
The company’s insurance and investment businesses service
more than 4,000 clients around the world. One of SCOR’s key challenges was how
to improve communication and collaboration within its dispersed global leadership
team.
SCOR decided to use technology to create a working
environment that would encourage collaboration across time zones and
continents, while also helping to bring disparate corporate cultures together
under the SCOR brand.
Immersive telepresence was the obvious solution enabling
colleagues from around the world to meet on-demand, and without the need for
expensive and time-consuming business travel. Verizon was already providing
SCOR with video and audio-conferencing solutions, and quickly identified
Polycom’s Real Presence Experience (RPX)
telepresence rooms as a good fit for this next phase of SCOR’s plan to increase
the use of unified communications and collaboration solutions.
The new telepresence solution leverages the Polycom UC
Intelligent Core, including a dual Polycom RMX bridge configuration for
built-in systems redundancy, and has been quickly and easily integrated into
SCOR’s existing IT environment. Meeting reservations are made using an
intranet-based booking system, while a Glowpoint management system manages all
aspects of room bookings as well as the video network operations center.
User acceptance was probably the most important factor
for us. Telepresence is a major outlay for any company, but we knew we would
quickly see a return on that investment if our solution was able to enhance the
daily business lives of our employees,” said Laurent Chartier, network
architect, SCOR.
“The Verizon and Polycom solution ticked all the IT
boxes, thanks to its efficient meeting room design and interoperability with
other standards-based videoconferencing systems. But most importantly, it is an
obvious hit with our users so much so that we will be shortly be expanding our
facilities, installing a second system in London to help meet user demand,”
Chartier added.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com