Retravision has begun to trial web conferencing and collaboration services from WebEx to hold interactive online meetings across Australia and New Zealand. Retravision’s widely dispersed IT team of 50 people is the initial user of WebEx Meeting Center. The IT department aims to overcome the challenge of sharing knowledge and having regular meaningful communication between geographically dispersed offices.
Retravision has six people in each Australian state and territory, and two people in New Zealand looking after the IT needs of stores in their respective regions.
“It was difficult to function as a cohesive team when we’re so spread out. We used to hold regular teleconferences but they didn’t allow us to actually work or collaborate together. People would struggle to remain focused with just a boring telephone in the middle of the table,” says Angela Averte, national IT manager, Retravision.
“Now we meet monthly on WebEx. Our productivity has improved because we can work on documents in real time, share ideas and get things done in the sessions. It’s about collaborating with all of the team members to improve IT processes and ultimately increase Retravision’s efficiency as a business. As an on-demand web conferencing solution, WebEx doesn’t require us to invest in costly hardware set-ups, which is an added bonus,” she says.
Based on the success of the trials, Retravision can see WebEx becoming part of the company’s overall infrastructure and business processes in the future.
“Our longer term plans are to continue using Meeting Center to connect our corporate offices with store outlets. We also plan on introducing WebEx Training Center so that we can remotely train staff within our stores how to use point of sale systems. We have more than 450 stores across the ANZ region, many of them in regional areas. The staff at each store are not necessarily tech savvy, so we required a service that was intuitive and provides ease of use. There are potentially over 4000 people to provide online training and technical support for at our stores, but we’re confident WebEx can help us achieve our objectives.”
“Our goal is to train end users without having to send an IT person out to individual locations, or arrange a group training session. Ultimately, we’ll be able to reduce travel costs and free up resources to focus on maintaining and improving our IT systems,” says Averte.
“Retravision is a good example of how web conferencing can benefit retailers with staff located in dispersed shopfronts and offices. Retravision is defining itself as an innovative retail organisation, linking its store outlets and corporate offices in real time to make its business run more efficiently,” adds Kevin Mackin, regional director for WebEx Australia and Asia.