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BT Conferencing Highlights Desire for ROI Tools

Also, growing interest in quantifying green benefits

By Robin Gareiss on Thu, 01/07/10 - 2:48pm.

BT Conferencing recently unveiled an add-on module to its Engage Meeting Manager (BT’s online scheduling and call launch tool) that calculates employee travel costs avoided through the use of video conferencing, as well as carbon emission reductions resulting from reduced travel. This offering highlights growing interest in quantifying green benefits and the ability to calculate ROI for tactical UC initiatives, such as conferencing. Three-quarters of organizations that quantify a video conference benefit also have a sustainability policy, according to Nemertes. In comparison, 71% of organizations that do not quantify a benefit also do not have a sustainability policy. Additionally, 69% of IT decision-makers say that positive ROI is “important” or “vitally important in their UC decision-making.

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About Masters of Borderless Networks

Robin Gareiss is Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research projects and direction, conducts strategic seminars, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors, and carriers. She currently serves as chief financial officer, as well.

For the past 18 years, Robin Gareiss has worked closely with hundreds of senior IT executives, analyzing their use of technology and capturing best practices. Ms. Gareiss is a widely recognized expert in voice over IP, convergence, collaboration, carrier services, IP networking, and branch-office technologies. She is a sought-after speaker at conferences and trade shows, including Interop, where she serves as chairperson for the Branch Offices track, VoiceCon, Mobile Business Expo, Supercomm, Telecom, and CeBit America. She also writes the Branch Offices Best Practices column for Network World.

Ms. Gareiss also has personal experience managing operations and developing new product offerings. Her entrepreneurial experience includes co-founding and overseeing marketing and business development for American Eco-Systems, a water-purification business in Illinois. She also served as president of Living Hope Lutheran Church, and ran several successful fundraisers for children’s cancer and other charities.

Before joining Nemertes, Ms. Gareiss shaped technology and business coverage as Senior News Editor of InformationWeek, a leading business-technology publication with 440,000 readers owned by the $359 million organization CMP Media. Prior to joining InformationWeek, Ms. Gareiss served in a variety of capacities at Data Communications magazine, where helped set strategic direction, oversaw reader surveys, and provided quantitative and statistical analysis. At these organizations Ms. Gareiss also helped develop, organize, and operate Web sites, TV, and print coverage of major trade shows. She has won numerous, prestigous awards for her in-depth analyses of business-technology issues.

Ms. Gareiss also taught ethics at the Poynter Institute for Advanced Media Studies. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and American Medical News. Ms. Gareiss has a BS in journalism and a minor in education, with honors, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She lives in Illinois with her husband and four daughters.

About Robin Gareiss
 

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