Virtual collaboration will become essential to operating a successful business in the near future, Advito’s Jeroen Hurkmans recently explained in an article in Business Travel iQ. Hurkmans, vice president of the business travel consultancy, cited a study by the Institute for the Future—Future Skills 2020—which lists virtual collaboration as one of the key work skills needed to promote productivity and enable value creation in the workplace of the future.
A total collaboration management strategy that includes virtual collaboration lets companies guide employees toward smart stay-or-go strategies. Those strategies lead to actions that generate savings, enhance employee work-life balance and improve duty of care, Hurkmans said.
As more employees are untethered from offices, face-to-face time will become even more important and valuable. Total collaboration management helps companies decide “which trips drive business value and which meetings are best handled by virtual collaboration,” he said. “It offers the right mix of options to support business goals.”
The article describes pain points for travel program and procurement leaders and how virtual collaboration can help alleviate them. “When you view TCM not as a standalone travel initiative, but as an integrated effort across business functions, it ushers in fundamentally different ways of thinking, interacting and defining value,” Hurkmans said.
Read a case study of how a global agricultural firm cut travel costs by US$5.5 million, improved employee satisfaction and boosted CSR goals with a virtual collaboration strategy for internal meetings.
