Pharmaceutical Company Scenario A major pharmaceutical company in Canada found that its hospital and educational clients were increasingly using videoconferencing. New telemedicine initiatives were changing the face of the health care industry and their staff was continually being drawn into videoconferencing situations. Doing their homework, they talked to a number of bank, brokerage and manufacturing companies about their experience with bringing video conferencing in house. Reviews ranged from the high cost of using ISDN and outside bridging services to the extra load on staff and network resources. Many companies, when they calculated in the extra cost of staff to install and manage the bridges and gateways, and the capital cost of the technology coupled with the ever increased amount of change due to technological advancement, formed the general consensus that it took several full time staff just to manage the system and the users. Further investigation revealed that the tremendous bandwidth required for high quality videoconferencing slowed the internal corporate network and at times effected critical systems. With video traffic being erratic, IT and network managers were forced to add tremendous amounts of bandwidth to their networks just to meet the user demand and users believed that now that it was on their network it was free. Careful analysis determined that the cost of installing the service for the initial 3 locations and for subsequently rolling it out to 25 locations would cost more than $100,000 per year for extra staff, $75,000 per year for additional bandwidth, plus the capital cost of the bridges, servers and gateways, that could cost over $75,000. When all tolled, although they did not like the idea of using outside bridging services, they liked the idea of taking on the responsibility even less. Management decided that in the short term, they would hold off on purchasing video cameras and use outside public conference rooms for any conferences that staff needed to be involved in. Arrangements were established with a number of public conference rooms and staff was instructed to call them. Generally the rooms could seat up to 20 people, but in many cases management saw that only one or 2 key people were going to a video meeting. With the meetings now off site, further productivity was lost due to travel and setup waiting for the connection to take place. During the first month, in the 3 major centers alone, staff were involved in 25 conferences linking other locations and clients. It was very hard to police usage, but management believed they were getting value from the service. The first monthâs bill from the public room providers changed all of that. The 25 hours cost $23,572. If this trend continued, management could expect a bill of $282,870 for the year. Not wanting to take on management of the video network and unhappy with paying the high public room rates, management started looking for a better way. Answering an ad in the Globe & Mail for unlimited flat rate videoconferencing and bridging changed all of that. A BCS professional explained the company could realize the initial benefits they desired for a small flat monthly rate and then purchase state of the art systems for their initial 3 offices. Access to the video network cost the pharmaceutical company $1785 per month for unlimited access and bridging. This coupled with the purchase of 3 state of the art small conference room systems costing $27,000 in total, showed a breakeven point of less than 2 months, with no additional staff or other capital expenditures. With a flat rate cost of $595 per month to add new locations, the pharmaceutical company is now adding the service to any office that requires it, plus they are installing the service free of charge at many of their customer locations.