Attie Retief

Can we do away with business travel altogether?

Richard Leyland from WorkSnug posted this a while back and it got me thinking: is it possible to extend the idea of no business travel by plane, to no business travel at all? If they have managed to cut down flying by using social networking and video calling technologies, why not use it to even avoid train, road and other modes of transport to travel even locally for meetings.

And that is what this is all about isn’t it: meetings. Let’s face it, internal meetings are a time sucking evil as it is, but meetings you have to travel to, even if by car just a short distance across town waste so much more collateral time. Isn’t the use of today’s fairly ubiquitous video or voip technologies an obvious time saver? Imagine the efficiency and productivity gains? The environmental benefits are obvious.

The thing I still struggle with, though, is to what extent this translates to other industries or job types. Sure, for a tech startup it makes sense, it’s even natural. But what about my game: consulting. Yes, I’ve employed these technologies occasionally to help customers in far off places, but find myself still flying or driving long distances for what can be best described as quality time with my customers.

I get the sense that customers still prefer face time (or is that body time) to get the value they pay for in consulting, and to be honest, I believe it to be invaluable in relationship building and management, and the only sure way to secure future work.

But make no mistake, if the customer can shift mindset and value the remote interaction as much as the in person experience, I’ll be enthusiastically using technology to spend even more time just sitting on my arse.