Komatsu leverages telepresence to increase efficiencies

Komatsu Forklift Australia has chosen Polycom to deliver best-of-breed, high-definition telepresence solutions to reduce travel downtime and lower network bandwidth costs, accelerate decision-making and enhance workflow efficiencies.

Telepresence has also enhanced communication and collaboration across the organisation.

Komatsu recently installed Polycom HD room telepresence in four of its 11 offices across Australia, to enable its 240-strong workforce to conduct productive, face-to-face meetings without the high costs associated with travel and to promote closer communication and information sharing across dispersed teams.

Komatsu used Polycom’s partner ServicePoint Australia to deploy Polycom’s HDX 7000 room telepresence solution in its Sydney head office and Polycom’s HDX 6000 units across the local branch offices in Brisbane, Melbourne and Newcastle. The technology was implemented to enable staff to conduct interactive meetings over distance without the need to travel to a central location. By facilitating life-like communication over high-definition - providing greater clarity at up to half the bandwidth - Polycom’s telepresence solutions have helped to deliver the best user experience possible for Komatsu employees.

“At Komatsu we value communication highly. With 11 national branches, face-to-face meetings, while vital, are costly and time consuming. We see videoconferencing as a tool to increase our communication and enhance productivity, without the associated travel and staff downtime costs,” said Gary Hodge, Product Manager for Komatsu.

According to Hodge, among the key reasons Komatsu decided to partner with Polycom and ServicePoint to video-enable the organisation was Polycom’s support for H.264 High Profile - a powerful, standards-based video compression technology that reduces bandwidth requirements for high-definition telepresence and videoconferencing by up to 50%, enabling customers to extend the benefits of visual communications more cost effectively across their organisation for a faster return on investment.

“Polycom’s telepresence solutions are market leading, easy to use, reliable and effective. Already we are seeing significant cost savings through reduced travel, and a substantial increase in productivity,” said Hodge. “With high-definition, we can see and hear each other more clearly - which has helped to promote closer interaction between the teams - and with the lower bandwidth requirements, we can share content much more easily, which has helped to accelerate decision-making and enhance workflow efficiencies,” he added.

Almost all of Komatsu’s meetings and training sessions are now being delivered via HD video and telepresence.

“In the past we would have had to schedule meetings in advance to accommodate travel requirements. Now we have the freedom to schedule meetings whenever there is the need. We are seeing the technology being used at our weekly senior management meetings, technical training, finance meetings and sales team development sessions,” said Hodge.

To further enable video collaboration across the organisation, Komatsu is considering rolling out Polycom HD video and telepresence solutions across all of its 11 regional offices, in addition to leveraging the technology to enhance communication between the Australian offices and the company’s head office in Japan.