Photo from left:
Mick Kinsella – eircom;
Jim Murphy – ESB ICT Group;
Tommy Hopper – ESB ICT group;
John Campion - Executive Director Sustainability: ESB;
Jim Moore – Strategic Account Manager eircom;
Maurice O’Connor – Manager Sustainability & Sourcing, ESB ICT Group
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| eircom helps ESB rise to the sustainability challenge |
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As part of its Sustainability Agenda, ESB set immediate, ambitious targets for reducing its carbon footprint. eircom's conferencing and collaboration service not only helped ESB meet its green targets, but demonstrated that sustainable work methods also improve productivity and cost control.
The cost and environmental implications of corporate travel have left most organisations in no doubt that reducing business trips must be a high priority. For organisations like ESB, internal goals to improve sustainability are also strengthened by societal expectation that energy sector companies should be as clean and green in their operations as possible.
ESB has embraced sustainability objectives enthusiastically. In 2008 it created a dedicated Sustainability division and set one of the most ambitious green targets in the energy business: to achieve a 30% reduction in its carbon footprint by 2012, and to become a net carbon-neutral company by 2035. |
As business priorities change, collaboration stays in focus
The onset of challenging economic conditions gave renewed impetus to ESB's goals: introducing sustainable work methods also offered real potential for the organisation to enhance productivity and deliver significant cost savings.
Solution at a glance
- eircom designed and deployed MyMeeting@ESB, a web conferencing solution based on Cisco WebEx, including Citrix integration and management of third parties
- Includes audio conferencing, desktop and document sharing, call recording and playback, attendance management, desktop video conferencing
- Browser-based, no extra hardware needed
- Online meetings can be attended by external participants
- Easy usability, management involvement and clear branding help generate strong awareness and staff acceptance
- The service removes 90% of the cost of a typical 10-person meeting of ESB regional staff, which now costs around €150, compared to €2,400
- MyMeeting@ESB can also deliver CO2 savings of up to 23kg per 100km of road driving; this will help ESB reach its goal of a 30% reduction in carbon footprint by 2012
- The "dead time" of unnecessary business travel has been recovered, improving ESB's productivity and its ability to do more with less as resources reduce.
Rich unified communications and collaboration service also saves significant time and money
Working closely with ESB's ICT division, eircom designed and deployed a complete web conferencing solution based on Cisco WebEx, including Citrix integration. Collaboration features include:
- full audio conferencing
- desktop and document sharing
- call recording and playback
- attendance management
- integrated desktop video conferencing
Pilot wins widespread staff approval: ESB targeted potential champions of the service for its five-month pilot in 2009, which was ESB's first foray into unified communications and collaboration. The highly usable service generated universally positive feedback due to ease of use and the ability to save time on travel to meetings.
Management involvement delivers a company-wide endorsement: For the full rollout to ESB staff during Sustainability Week in March 2010, eircom customised the service with "MyMeeting@ESB" branding, which was consistently promoted to staff. ESB paired a sustainability champion with a line manager as co-sponsors in 50 separate launch events. Top-level branding, management buy-in, and visible use of the system by top executives have helped generate strong awareness and staff acceptance.
"The business conditions were different when we initially set out our Sustainability Agenda," says Maurice O'Connor, Manager of Sustainability and Sourcing at ESB ICT. "Carbon footprint reduction was the prime driver. Now cost control has become a major part of how we do business and web conferencing is seen as contributing significantly to that. We went to market to look for a solution to both challenges, and functionally and commercially, eircom's was the most advantageous service for us."
eircom service exceeds expectations: "The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive," Maurice O'Connor, Manager of Sustainability and Sourcing at ESB ICT notes, adding that the full year's usage target is set to be met by June this year. Staff use features of the service to support a vast range of tasks, including SAP training sessions (using desktop sharing, call recording and playback), budget preparation (using document collaboration) and meeting job applicants (using desktop videoconferencing for virtual face-to-face interviews).
Major cost savings quickly realised: Significant cost savings have been achieved by using the service to eliminate some in-person meetings. The service removes 90% of the cost of a typical 10-person meeting of ESB regional staff, which now costs around €150, compared to €2,400.
Real progress towards cost reduction: According to the company's estimates, MyMeeting@ESB can also deliver CO2 savings of up to 23kg per 100km of road driving. With some 24 million km of business travel tallied by ESB in 2008, the Web conferencing service will make a major contribution towards the goal of a 30% reduction in carbon footprint by 2012.
Recovering “dead time” of business travel: In addition to these direct cost savings, Maurice says the service has enabled a great deal of "dead time" to be recovered by the organisation.
"By collaborating and doing business virtually using the eircom WebEx service, rather than having people travelling, so much time can be recovered, and this eases the pressure as our resources are reduced," he says. "We face the same reality as any business: resources are shrinking, and we all need to do more with less."
A partnership for future improvements to business practice
All the indications are that the WebEx service from eircom will allow ESB to stay on target with its ambitious sustainability programme, which remains on target even in a challenging economy.
"The MyMeeting@ESB service has demonstrated how sustainable working is also the most efficient way to work," says Tommy Hopper, an ESB sustainability champion who worked closely with eircom to direct the rollout of WebEx. "As an organisation we're still at the early stage of adopting web conferencing as a day-to-day business tool. We expect as time goes on that we will be able to push out the envelope, and leverage the service to make more fundamental improvements to our business processes."
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