Exploit the bandwidth at your fingertips

Smart companies are discovering the potential for communications techniques offered by broadband.

Companies do not know how flexible their communications networks are. After all the concern that UK plc was not getting online, companies installed broadband and forgot about it.

People now take instantaneous email and web access for granted, but communications are under-used and companies are missing out. Today's networks open up new features from corporate broadcasting to e-learning, all with existing, proven, cheap bandwidth.

Take corporate communications. The number of emails flying from desktop to desktop has exploded, largely to excellent effect, spamming aside.

But email can be a blunt tool, and can distance people, too. The stories of staff emailing colleagues on the other side of the room are commonplace.

Some companies have even introduced 'no email' days. But what about messages from managers or the chief executive? Email has become too easy for them too, increasing the gap between employees and bosses, potentially making companies faceless and damaging their social fabric.

Of course, senior managers usually do not have the time to make face-to-face announcements, even on important matters. But are they considering the online alternative: an audiovisual presentation? A video clip with a human face could inform employees of company acquisitions, for example.

Sending this kind of content over corporate networks is easy and inexpensive, and such information is much more readily assimilated, with better effects on job satisfaction and employee loyalty. Broadband has been called a 'snacking technology', allowing people to look at content when they can.

Smart companies are discovering these and other communications techniques.

Take web conferencing, a tool that a firm of any size can exploit. It uses the internet to hold virtual meetings where participants can hear each other as well as share documents. There is usually no exchange of video, so it is less demanding on technology and offers better quality at very affordable prices.

With imagination, all kinds of possibilities for businesses open up.

Online communication is already within reach of the desktop: bandwidth is in place, the technology is affordable, the benefits are there. Do not just ask what you can do with a communications network, ask what you should be doing now.

Mike Weston is vice chairman at ITM Group.