Virtual Office

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What is Virtual Office?

A Virtual Office is a workplace that is not based in one physical location but consists of employees working remotely by using information and communications technologies. Such organizations are virtual not only in the sense that they exist largely in cyberspace, but also in that they are unconstrained by the traditional barriers of time and place. A virtual office is characterized by the use of teleworkers, telecenters, mobile workers, hot-desking, and hoteling, and promotes the use of virtual teams. A virtual office can increase an organization's flexibility, cost effectiveness, and efficiency.

Justification for a Virtual Office

An organization’s most important asset has always been and will always be its employees. For obvious reasons, however, organizations continue to expect more from their employees each year. Companies simply cannot afford to add new resources whenever the workload increases. The result is that the demands on the average professional employee continue to increase, and indications are that this will be the case for the foreseeable future. In other words, the pressure on an employee to perform - and even outperform - has never been greater.

To respond to these challenges, employees need access to business tools that allow them to do their jobs efficiently. Since much of their work depends on exchanging information with others, tools that enable and enhance collaboration and teamwork are absolutely vital.

The typical work day can be divided into two distinct parts: the time spent attending meetings, and the time spent completing work. In recent years, a wealth of “meeting enhancement” tools has flooded an efficiency-hungry marketplace. For the most part, these tools provide significant and material benefits (like increasing access to expertise or decreasing business travel). These tools, however, are designed to support the metaphor of a meeting, but not the remainder of the work day; in many respects they do not address the continued need for collaboration and teamwork.

Virtual office is more than just an enabler of virtual meetings, virtual office solutions bring geographically dispersed employees virtually together into the same workspace, thereby supercharging teamwork and cooperation between previously isolated resources.

People are an organization’s most important asset, and the success of any company depends upon the productivity of its people. People also are one of the most costly corporate expenses. Corporations spend roughly 36 percent of their yearly revenue on personnel expenses. The fact that organizations are willing to spend this much clearly highlights the importance – and value – of a company’s human capital.

Without a loyal, hard-working workforce, ideas are not generated, products not developed, and services not delivered. When customers experience problems, it is the employees who are mobilized to resolve matters. When markets change, the employees must react in order to ensure the success of the organization. In short, the workers represent a significant part of the inherent value of any organization.

While few organizations would debate the value of their resources, the fact is that the challenges, demands, and difficulties facing organizations and employees are greater than ever before and include:

• Pressure to increase sales and profits has forced organizations to do more with fewer resources

• Global competition has changed the competitive landscape for many firms, forcing price reductions and service enhancements

• Global deployment of resources has resulted in geographically dispersed work teams operating in different time zones

• Ever-increasing employee-benefit costs means workers must provide greater value to their organizations every year

• Fear of corporate downsizing, mass layoffs, or outsourcing of work to other countries or external resources has affected the tenor and spirit of the workplace

In short, the pressure on both employers and employees has never been greater and the result is that today’s business environment actually works against individual employees. They must work more hours, often handling jobs that two or three people fielded before. They must travel frequently to meet with colleagues, subordinates, and clients, and must deal with high levels of stress on a daily basis.

Perhaps the most significant issue is that employees are no longer entitled to “switch off” at any time during the day (or even at the end of the day). Business is always being conducted somewhere around the world, and key employees are expected to support that business at any time. When they’re not on the phone, they’re answering emails, returning phone calls, generating reports, creating presentations, or running to the next meeting. Many enterprises have been driving their people very hard for much too long, and eventually that engine is going to break down.

The irony here is that in order to compete, companies must drive their employees hard, which results in diminished job satisfaction, increased stress, and additional employee turnover; each of which generate additional costs for the organization. Work-related stress and employee turnover increase the burden and stress on the rest of an organization. In order to break this cycle, organizations must provide employees with tools that enhance productivity and decrease frustration. Virtual office tools is an excellent way of how an organization can empower its employees and alleviate some of this work-related burden by allowing them to conveniently and effectively collaborate with colleagues and clients from home, the office, or on the road.

How Does Virtual Office Work

In-person communication includes scheduled and ad hoc meetings, short casual conversations, and even the occasional impromptu knock on your boss’ door for a brief “stand-up” session. A significant amount of collaboration involves these types of informal discussions, standing in front of a person’s white board, and brainstorming with the team. Even yelling down the hall to ask a quick question is a valuable form of teamwork. In fast-moving environments, when a team needs to collaborate, it does.

Virtual office solutions typically include many of the same features as traditional virtual meeting applications, including:

• Virtual whiteboard

• Chat capabilities

• Screen, application, and/or presentation sharing

• Audio and/or videoconferencing

The difference is that virtual office solutions embed these capabilities (and more) into an “always-on” virtual workspace. Note that this is not a virtual meeting space; it is a virtual work environment, much like a floor in a building. Once a person runs the virtual office application, he gains immediate, ad hoc access to all others currently working in the virtual office.

In some cases, the rich media collaboration and interactivity capabilities within the virtual office can actually provide a “better than actually being there” experience. For example, colleagues meeting in the hallway do not have access to a whiteboard, the public Internet, or documents on their computers. In addition, in-person meetings don’t usually allow participants to talk privately (i.e. hold a private chat) without disrupting the flow of the meeting or leaving the meeting room. When productivity is the priority, sometimes it’s better to participate virtually than in person.

The virtual office is a fully interactive, always-on, virtual simulation of a physical shared workspace. Those working in the virtual office spend most (if not all) of their day in the virtual office. When someone in the virtual office speaks, all people in the virtual office (who have turned on their speakers) can hear that person’s voice as if they were all sitting side by side in the same work area.

A basic virtual office application, called the “Hoot ‘n’ Holler,” has been used by financial institutions and investment banks for many years. The Hoot ‘n’ Holler is effectively a series of massive, shared phone calls or conferences that virtually all investment bankers and traders in a company are connected to at all times. For example, when a person in the equities department wants to communicate with the other equity traders, he simply talks into the phone and everyone connected to the equity hoot hears his voice.

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On the other hand, the virtual meeting or conference room is designed to allow people to enter the meeting, conduct their business, and then leave. To participate in the discussions and collaboration, participants must know that the meeting is happening and how to attend that meeting. Therefore, virtual meetings must either be scheduled or “launched,” and people must be invited or informed via email, phone call, instant message, or some other means.

In reality, the distinction between the virtual office environment and the virtual meeting space revolves around accessibility. As shown below, in a virtual office environment, if you need to talk to someone, you just start communicating. In a virtual meeting environment, you have to pull the person (or people) into a virtual meeting room first.

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Benefits of a Virtual Office

To illustrate the power of the virtual office, suppose a department head (Jane) preparing a presentation for an important executive meeting has a few questions for her department’s finance manager (Steve). Without this information, Jane cannot continue her work. Instead of worrying about how to find Steve (is he traveling, working from home today, or in a meeting?), Jane immediately sees that Steve is logged into the virtual office. To gain Steve’s attention, Jane un-mutes her microphone and asks if Steve has a minute to answer a few questions. Steve then un-mutes his microphone and the two are immediately in a two-way, face-to-face discussion about the project. Considering the confidential nature of the discussion, the two decided to move to a private virtual office to conduct their discussion.

Once in the new room (reached via a few mouse clicks), Jane shows Steve the presentation she is working on (using the embedded screen sharing capability), and he quickly understands her question. Two minutes later, and without the need for either party to leave their physical workspaces, the questions have been answered and both parties can continue their work.

Aside from the obvious, there are some aspects of the above scenario worth highlighting:

• Immediacy – The manager above did not have to type out her questions in a series of instant messages or an email, or try to schedule a meeting to get the answers she needed. Instead, she received the answers she needed immediately, without stopping her work in progress.

• Location ubiquity - Since both employees were logged into the virtual office, their respective locations was unimportant. For employees who spend time on the road or work out of several different offices, this provides a never-before-possible level of connectivity.

• Efficiency – The entire session above, including the sharing of the presentation, took less than two minutes from start to finish. In a traditional environment, it often takes longer than that just to find the other person’s phone number or invite them to attend a virtual meeting.

• Effectiveness – The power and simplicity of the virtual office enabled the ad hoc use of rich-media collaboration tools (audio and videoconferencing, screen sharing, etc.) to enhance the discussion and help the department head get the answers she needed quickly.

• Simplicity – The entire discussion was conducted through the virtual office. The participants did not have to place any phone calls manually, did not need to run a web conferencing or videoconferencing client, or even look up each other’s phone numbers (or IP addresses).

• Convenience – Neither participant had to leave their current workspace (office, hotel, airport lounge, home office, lounge chair by the pool, etc.) to collaborate. It was as if these two colleagues (and all others working in the virtual office) were in the same office at the same time.

• Confidentiality – To maintain the confidentiality of their discussion, these colleagues used a private virtual office to conduct their business. The typical virtual office solution allows private virtual offices to be password-protected and locked to disallow additional participants.

• Security – Most virtual office solutions automatically encrypt all data within the virtual office solution. When communicating outside the virtual office, files are often transferred “in the open” and without any form of data protection. Using a virtual office therefore adds an additional layer of protection on sensitive information.

The most important benefit of the virtual office is the productivity enhancement resulting from having immediate access to colleagues, the ability to bond and work more effectively with colleagues, and being able to avoid workflow interruptions. In addition, virtual office solutions allow employees to work at their convenience and from almost any location (home, office, on the road, in the airport lounge, etc.). While admittedly difficult to quantify, these benefits are very important – especially to those who work together closely but are located in different offices.

Virtual Office Capabilities

Virtual office solutions are intended to make rich media collaboration available on an ad hoc basis to users throughout an enterprise. Although specific features may vary by product, there are certain basic requirements that should be met, including:

Single Client / User Interface

The virtual office solution should provide all collaboration tools under a single user interface. This level of integration is an important part of helping users easily access the conferencing capabilities without the need to schedule the meeting in advance or rely upon technical support.

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The screenshot above illustrates the user interface of one virtual office solution. As shown, users can access a variety of conferencing and collaboration tools, including voice over IP, videoconferencing, instant messaging, a virtual whiteboard, and screen sharing, from within a single client application.

“Intelligent” Presence

In order to enable ad hoc communications, collaboration applications must provide some form of presence. While presence itself is not a new concept, intelligent presence takes things one step further by providing additional real-time information about teammates, including:

• Availability (are they available or busy in a private discussion?)

• Capability (what collaboration capabilities do they currently have?)

Availability and capability information allow those working in the virtual office to see immediately who is available and ready to communicate. Equating this to the real, “physical” world, this is like being able to hear whether someone in the next cubicle or office is on the phone or not.

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In the screen image above, each person working in the virtual office is represented in the participant’s window. Note that participants with video capabilities send video at all times, while those with audio-only capabilities are represented by name only. Furthermore, the names of the participants change colour when they are speaking (red for general conversation and blue for a private discussion).

It is also important to recognize that intelligent presence engines, such as those in most virtual office applications, typically update the user’s availability status automatically. Thus, when people are talking or in a private discussion, the status indicator shows that they are unavailable. In standard presence environments, users often forget to manually change their availability status during meetings or discussions. This means that they show an “available” status even though they already are engaged.

Additional Features and Functions

The true value of a virtual office solution lies in its ability to enable effective collaboration. In order to do so, it must provide certain essential applications, and it must support a complete set of usage scenarios. The following are the applications and capabilities provided by the typical virtual office package:

• Text Chat / Instant Messaging – Allows for immediate text transmission to any co-worker. Can be used to pass private messages to a single individual or to broadcast a message to all working in the virtual office.

• Whiteboard – Allows for the display and mark-up of any visual information.

• Application Sharing – Allows for the presentation and shared control of any desktop application for all members of the collaborative session. Superior solutions also allow users to control applications running on other users’ computers, empowering a true document / data sharing experience.

• Audio Conferencing – Allows for real time voice communication among the people working in the virtual office. Can be used for private conversations or multi-way discussions. Ideally, this should include VoIP (voice over IP) and standard telephone connection capabilities.

• Videoconferencing – Allows for unidirectional, bi-directional and multi-way video connections among participants. Should also allow external video systems to participate. Superior systems allow users to individually control their local view of the meeting and select which video participants they see on the screen at one time.

• Participant List – Provides a listing and photo of each participant involved in a collaborative exchange.

• Recording – Allows recording and archival of the collaborative session for offline playback at a later time.

Deployment Considerations

Because of the wide variation of technology deployments found in different enterprises, a virtual office package should support a variety of implementation options including:

• Multi-platform Support – Server and client should operate across all major platforms (Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Macintosh) and should be LDAP-compatible for simple log-in and access management.

• Product / Service Deployment – The virtual office applications should be available for purchase as a vendor-hosted service or as a product managed by in-house personnel. In either case, the client applications should be easy to deploy through an automated process that makes access to the collaborative tools simple for end users.

• Centralized / Distributed Configurations – It should be possible to deploy the virtual office package as a single server in a centralized location (with a minimum of hardware and support resources) or as multiple servers distributed throughout the enterprise (for redundancy, load balancing, and bandwidth usage optimization).

• Network Optimization Support – The solution should leverage available network optimization techniques, such as multi-cast distribution, but also function in uni-cast distribution environments as shown below.

• Security / Firewall Traversal – The virtual office solution should be NAT compatible, firewall friendly, and support VPN connections between offices and even to home offices. Ideally, all information that is hosted by or that somehow traverses the virtual office environment would be encrypted to maintain the highest level of data security.

Return on Investment

As with all other conferencing and collaboration tools, the return on investment includes both hard and soft benefits / cost savings. For the virtual office solution, there are several sources of payback worthy of consideration and discussion.

Travel Avoidance (Hard and Soft Cost Savings)

Managers seeking a means to calculate and quantify the potential ROI of conferencing and collaboration technologies, including virtual office solutions, have traditionally focused on potential travel cost savings. The argument is that if a portion of business travel meetings could be avoided and instead conducted using conferencing (audio, video, web, etc.); the firm will avoid flight, hotel, car service, parking, and meal expenses. In addition, the meeting participants can avoid wasting time travelling to / from the airport, waiting in airport lines and in the terminal, and flying to the meeting location.

General Time Savings

One key benefit of the virtual office solution is that it allows employees to communicate without having to conduct a scheduled meeting in a conference room. This eliminates the need for several time-wasting activities including:

• Meeting scheduling

• Reporting to / from the conference room

• Gathering materials (papers, files, etc.) for the meeting

While seemingly insignificant, the time wasted on these tasks quickly adds up.
Conclusion

Today’s competitive landscape demands that organizations constantly strive for greater productivity and increased efficiency. Since these organizations are, essentially, large groups of people working together to achieve a common set of goals, it behooves each organization to provide its people with the best collaboration tools available.

The virtual office environment provides the basis for effective, widespread collaboration throughout an enterprise. Different from a virtual meeting environment which requires that attendees be invited into a collaboration session, the virtual office is an always-on, always-available common workplace that allows for ad hoc, unscheduled communication between resources.

Although we’ve shown that it is possible to calculate the hard savings and ROI on a virtual office investment, the soft benefits are much more valuable than the direct financial payback. Virtual office solutions bring remotely-deployed resources together in an easy-to-use, collaboration-friendly environment. More than just a meeting support tool, these offerings help people effectively balance the demands of work and home, and allow organizations to more effectively leverage their most important investment; their employees.

Organizations seeking to empower their workers, energize global work teams, and provide an extra level of support for their employees should consider the use of virtual office solutions.