If you're a regular reader, you know I love Virtual Meetings and started the PwC Virtual Meetings Department in 2002 – 11 years ago. Considering technology advancements and timelines, 11 years ago is like the era of using horse and buggy to travel. Now, we're combining Virtual Meetings, Travel, and Meetings with our Global Distribution System provider / Online Booking Tool … Sabre / GetThere. Amazing. What a GREAT time to be in this fascinating industry!
To build your business case for Virtual Meetings, please download my whitepaper here:
Download Creating a Virtual and Meeting Event Strategy by Debi Scholar
We know that virtual / hybrid meetings are here to stay, and my previous PwC Virtual Meetings team has increased the quantity in their department to focus on Virtual Meetings, delivering thousands every year. The integration of Travel and Video Conferencing helps manage Travel and Meeting expenses and increase ROI on technology investment. In fact, while consulting at PwC, I helped a major worldwide organization decrease their travel expenses and use the savings to update and increase their virtual meeting technologies. (Fun Project!)
Fast forward, GetThere, the world's leading travel and collaboration management solution, has signed an agreement with one of my clients, Harman International, to make Sabre Virtual meetings technology available to Harman employees worldwide.
Excerpts from the Press release follow:
“Virtual Meetings is a powerful new travel management mechanism,” said Sally Abella, director of Global Corporate Travel for Harman International. “Like most companies, we want to control our travel spend, yet we all know that travel is crucial to growing the business. By using video conferencing for more internal meetings, we can strategically redirect travel spend to trips that are customer-facing and sales focused.”
“Demand for video conferencing is increasing exponentially and more and more IT departments are called upon to support this demand,” said Thomas Blanchet, director of IT Infrastructure Architecture at Harman International. “Sabre Virtual Meetings gives our employees a way to easily reserve and connect video conferencing rooms in a secure and reliable enterprise-wide environment.”
“Sabre Virtual Meetings solves these challenges with an easy-to-use, global scheduling system. Room availability, compatibility, and connectivity are all seamlessly verified, so employees know where to book, what’s available and what to do when they show up to a meeting,” said Suzanne Neufang, president of GetThere and Sabre Virtual Meetings. “Our Virtual Meetings solution also enables public room and partner room access for those companies looking to maximize visual collaboration.”
Sabre Virtual Meetings is the only solution providing enterprise-wide, secure access to private and partner video conferencing rooms as well as a global network of over 4,000 public rooms. Similar to online travel reservations, all options for a given city pair search are provided in a single, secure booking path. Filtered by company policy and room availability that the corporation explicitly authorizes, employees can choose the room options that best meet their business needs.
Congratulations to Jeremy Stubbs, General Manager of Sabre Virtual Meetings, (and a colleague who participated on the GBTA Groups & Meetings Committee with me), all of the GetThere staff, and of course, Sally Abella at Harman International for continuing to be an industry leader and visionary.
Click here more information on Sabre GetThere Virtual Meetings.
Debi Scholar
Note: Day 390 and LinkedIn still has not solved my inability to edit my LinkedIn Summary on my profile page. Frustrating.
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