mvision Extends 'Homeworker' Video Conferencing Offer to Snow-Bound Businesses
Managed video conferencing service provider helps UK navigate adverse weather and transport strikes.
Managed video conferencing service provider, mvision today announced a Video Homeworker Package to help UK businesses stay in face-to-face contact with colleagues, suppliers, partners or clients when disasters such as adverse weather conditions or transport strikes hinder business travel. Disruption caused by the heavy snowfall at the beginning of 2009 cost UK businesses about £1bn, business groups estimated.
The Homeworker package is easy to set up and requires very little training. With no up-front investment required in hardware or infrastructure, it is designed for organisations that want to tightly control capital expenditure and operational costs. mvision provides three videophones, TANDBERG Movi licenses for high-definition desktop calls, full installation and support along with its fully managed service; this includes unlimited video calls and usage reporting.
Terry Dwyer, Managing Director at mvision added, "Successfully navigating the recession has already proven a significant challenge for British businesses, but the situation could be further exacerbated by disasters such as snow, airline strike action and health threats this winter. Whether it's flooding, pandemic outbreak panic or other business continuity issues; the frequency of these threats to productivity and profitability is giving many organisation cause to reassess their disaster planning."
According to the Company, flexible and remote working practices play a pivotal role during 'disasters' such as extreme weather conditions, transport strikes or health pandemics. Yet, mvision claims that still too many businesses are exposing themselves to yet more financial risks by failing to modernise and become professionally equipped with the infrastructures, technologies and processes to facilitate it.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) estimated 20% of the UK's working population, or 6.4 million people, did not make it to work. It snows in the UK most years, so organisations should prepare for extreme weather.
Professor David Begg, a former government transport adviser was reported earlier in the year as saying that companies should make it easier for staff to work from home, "Britain's relatively mild climate means we don't have enough incidents like this snow to justify the kind of investment that Scandinavian and Eastern European countries have made," he said.
The Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) said that UK economic output or gross domestic product per day was about £4.5bn. So if 20% of the population has zero productivity for the day, there is arguably a loss of £900m. Companies' cash flow could be hit by delayed payments as a result of the disruption and this could mean that an additional 2,000 to 3,000 businesses may fail as a result of the bad weather.
According to CEBR comment, many of the businesses that are close to failing are in the retail and construction sectors that are likely to be most affect by snow and transport disruption. Businesses need to do all they can to maintain normal service levels and ultimately avoid losing customers and revenue.
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