Wachovia Benefits from Improved Inter-Office Collaboration with Cisco TelePresence

June 04, 2007

Wachovia is America's fourth largest bank, with sizeable retail, commercial and corporate investment banking operations as well as the third largest investment brokerage in the United States. The bank is currently rolling out a pilot program of Cisco TelePresence, connecting Wachovia's Charlotte, N.C., headquarters with the company's Richmond, Va., location, which also serves as headquarters for Wachovia Securities.

Cisco TelePresence uses advanced visual, audio and collaboration technologies over the converged network to deliver real-time, face-to-face interactions among people and places.

Jim Ditmore, Wachovia's chief technology officer, recently spoke with News@Cisco about his bank's experience with Cisco TelePresence and how it helps Wachovia collaborate better among offices and continue to meet its mission of providing excellent customer service. (The following is a modified excerpt from a News@Cisco podcast interview with Ditmore.)

News@Cisco: What led Wachovia to investigate Cisco TelePresence?

Jim Ditmore: We have made a tremendous leap in a relatively short period of time. In essence, Wachovia has become a national bank - reaching from the East Coast to California - over the past five years. That expansion has driven an urgent need for increased collaboration across distance.

So reducing travel was a prime objective?

Jim Ditmore: You wouldn't think getting from Charlotte to Richmond would be a big deal; they're not that far apart. But because Richmond is not a hub airport, there are relatively few flights. We also have a major site in San Antonio, Texas, and we would like to be able to collaborate with the folks in that office without having to be there in person.

Further, now that we have facilities out in California, it can take a whole day to execute a meeting for a group of our key executives and other senior managers. So we have been looking for an alternative to help drive our productivity yet maintain the same level of collaboration that you get in a face-to-face meeting.

There are other technologies available for meetings. What has your experience been with those options?

Jim Ditmore: We have other alternatives, but they haven't been highly effective. For example, the video conference network we have in place continues to show very low usage - because the systems are cumbersome, they're difficult to use and even when they are up and running, they don't provide great images. Because video conferences under those circumstances don't offer any major gain, our people simply don't use them.

What are some key goals you hope to achieve with TelePresence?

Jim Ditmore: It comes down to effective collaboration. If people can get together without having to get on a plane, that drives up their productivity and the quality of their collaboration dramatically.

With the Cisco TelePresence experience, you really do feel like you're in the room with everyone. To me, that means you can have those difficult discussions, those highly productive discussions that you just can't have over the phone or with a typical video or audio conference.

The spontaneity and nonverbal communication that occur are valuable for any conversation - and that's really where TelePresence comes in. It gives us all the advantages of face-to-face collaboration without many of the costs. So that's the driver.

Our line of business leaders have all seen it and are really enthusiastic. And they're all signing up for time - which, to me, is really where the rubber meets the road.

How will you measure its effectiveness?

Jim Ditmore: We're going to use a number of metrics. The first is probably the occupancy rate of the TelePresence conference room, because we know that will then drive how many folks didn't have to travel to be present at a meeting. We will also survey those individuals to determine how many trips they avoided as a result of using the conference room and what productivity they feel they gained. We'll use that to calculate the hard benefits in terms of saved time and cost from the travel avoidance.

In addition, we'll look at what we get out of improved collaboration - because in some cases, people would not have bothered to travel; they might have just dialed in to a conference call. Then it would have been a less effective meeting.

Do you look at this pilot program as something that may become a regular part of Wachovia's infrastructure?

Jim Ditmore: If the pilot is as successful as we think it's going to be, then I would say yes. Wherever we have a significant corporate site, we'll probably put a TelePresence conference room in because that would help us handle things across distance.

But I tell you, we do not invest lightly in new technology. The reason we've chosen to work with Cisco on this is that we've closely reviewed and evaluated all of the collaboration applications like this on the market, and we really feel this one is head and shoulders above what else is out there. It is a fully packaged capability that really delivers on that promise of collaboration.

What do you think are the future key trends we'll see in this space?

Jim Ditmore: I believe that TelePresence is going to be very similar to traditional networking in its evolution. We're going to move toward really meshing all of our corporate sites together, and I really think the next piece will be very similar to what the Internet did for data. In other words, I will be able to connect to someone else's TelePresence network, and we'll be able to have a discussion. We'll have a conference, and all of us can participate relatively easily.

I hope that eventually this will expand to small corporations and members of the public, also. So, even if you don't have any business with them, you can still just go ahead and dial them up and have a really productive discussion about providing them services.

It sounds as if Wachovia's interest in technology is really all about customer satisfaction.

Jim Ditmore: Yes, Wachovia's mission is to be the best in customer service. We have been the number 1 provider of customer service in the industry, and we plan to continue that. Technology helps enable us to be productive.