Case Study
OCS Group – Video Conferencing
Video conferencing save OCS time and money
AN organisation with around 100 branches all over the country is doing its bit to cut down on carbon emissions – thanks to video conferencing.
And it is also saving time and money for the OCS Group UK Ltd.
With a turnover in excess of £600million, OCS is the biggest privately-owned company in the country. Based at Sanderstead in Surrey it provides security, catering, engineering, cleaning, hygiene, pest control, transport and integrated services to customers all over the globe.
Up to now, running such a diverse and widespread organisation and training the workforce has involved a huge amount of travelling by managers and trainers.
Anything that can reduce that will have a significant effect on efficiency and cost and video conferencing is the key. Although systems have been around for a number of years the issue of bandwidth has always been a limiting factor. With the arrival of high speed broadband the chains are off.
“We have supplied and maintain telephone systems for OCS nationwide and when they were considering a video conferencing solution they came to us,” said Ian Smith of Pennine Telecom..
OCS have a private wide area network for data and IT and Pennine Telecom provided a ReadiConvene 16 conference bridge, which allows cameras to link over their main system.
“As they are using their own WAN infrastructure the conference calls are effectively free,” said Ian.
The video system itself is a Polycom VSX 7400S, which, in addition to audio and video, also allows input from a PC so that documents, pdfs or graphics can be transmitted during a conference at a click of a mouse button.
“It is in its infancy with us but already we are feeling the benefits,” said Matthew Howell of OCS. “It is going to stop us driving up and down the motorway.”
At the moment the company has only got four units in their major centres but plans to add more to the network as the system is rolled out.
And when the potential savings are quantified it is obvious that it will not take too long to recoup the capital cost of the equipment.
Matthew gives the example of someone having to travel from their large branch in Morecambe to a meeting in head office. It's a round trip of 700 miles or three tanks of fuel. It will take two days of the person's time and will involve an overnight stay in a hotel. The overall cost could be anything up to £1,000.