Introduction to 360° Meetings

Thanks to the necessity of the pandemic and a rise in collaboration technology, companies across various industries are leveraging 360° meetings to change and improve the way they do business.

From pharmaceutical manufacturing to logistics and supply chain, leaders such as DB Schenker, Thermo Fisher, and Black & Veatch have turned to 360° remote collaboration to limit travel expenses, boost productivity, and drive sustainability. 

Unlike standard videoconferencing, 360° meeting technology was purpose-built to show the full context of a given location (such as a factory/facility, audit site, or construction project). This means that visitors who join remotely experience the power of the full picture, with the ability to explore the place as if physically present. They can look in every direction, zoom in on the fine details, and collaborate with coworkers while simultaneously staying in charge of their own POV.

Benefits of 360° Meetings

Industries that rely on site-specific meetings (such as site inspections, site training, and site tours) adopted 360° remote collaboration as a way of minimizing COVID distance and travel challenges. 

Now, however, leaders are finding that they can drastically reduce traveling for site meetings without sacrificing quality and transparency, customer relationships, or even opportunities to close deals. 

Using 360° degree meetings to augment an existing collaboration strategy includes many benefits such as:

• Significant Cost-Saving: the average three day business trip can cost between $1,700 – $2,500 per person. For medium and large companies who must send teams to site on a regular basis, their annual travel expenditures can easily be in the hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of dollars. By reducing travel as a barrier to site meetings, companies can save up to 80% on travel costs, thereby reallocating funds to other areas of innovation. 
• Increased Productivity and Efficiency: routine travel and site meetings can be a drain on productivity, employee morale, and even workplace disruption (with the need to bring teams onto sites or factory floors). With the ability to feel present and on site without the need to travel, leaders are able to increase productivity and efficiency across the organization.
• Reduce Carbon Initiatives: it’s no secret that travel is a serious culprit in annual carbon emissions. Business travel is no exception. With an increasing number of companies implementing carbon reduction initiatives, 360° meetings are a convenient and non-disruptive way of reducing a company’s annual carbon footprint.

Who Can Benefit from 360° Meetings?

Site meetings are critical to key use cases across many industries. Therefore, there are a variety of stakeholders who can really benefit from this technology. Some of these roles include:

• Quality Assurance Specialists/Engineers: leaders in the quality assurance space understand the importance of quality throughout a product’s lifecycle. Their job is to ensure a consistent culture centered around quality through regular audits and inspections. 360° meetings with Avatour provide the viewer autonomy and collaboration features needed to prefer routine QA visits remotely. 
• Consultants: consultants are crucial to the success of many companies. Whether a company is preparing for an FDA inspection or auditing their current processes, consultants often come on site to run mock inspections or thorough visits to make the right recommendations. By leveraging 360° meetings, consultants can visits more sites more often without the need to travel. 
• Suppliers/CDMOs: for CDMOs, establishing a transparent relationship with their buyers is paramount to a productive working arrangement. Many CDMOs serve a global customer base, which makes traveling and coordination a persistent difficulty. That’s why innovative CDMOs are using 360° meetings to both conduct regular visits with their customers as well as host remote selling tours to close the deal faster. 
• Supply Chain Leaders: in the supply chain, time is money. Supply chain leaders are on an ever-present journey to create efficiency and promote quality throughout the supply chain. Especially when it comes to the pharmaceutical and food manufacturing supply chains, small mistakes can mean devastating consequences as far as safety and product delays are concerned. 360° meetings offer the ability for supply chain leaders to visit their sites more often, which minimizes safety risk and improves transparency.
• Sourcing Managers: sourcing managers, such as those in the manufacturing space, are responsible for managing often a vast network of suppliers. This involves routine visits to ensure production processes and other critical procedures are running smoothly. With 360° meetings, sourcing managers can easily oversee their suppliers without costly and time consuming travel. 
• Innovation Teams: there’s no doubt that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote collaboration technologies. Many organizations employ innovation teams to source strategic platforms that can help the company surpass competition and adapt to an increasingly digital future. Implementing 360° meetings within an organization are, in a way, a low-hanging fruit to put companies in a strategic position to drive future innovation. 

Conclusion: Remote Collaboration is Changing the Way We Work

While the pandemic presented numerous challenges around distance, many industry leaders ultimately jumped on the opportunity to adopt remote collaboration tools. Now, however, leaders are in a strategic position to drive innovation in their organization. They no longer must play catch up to an uncertain future. Instead, leaders can truly redefine work with a future beyond distance.

About Avatour

Avatour is the remote collaboration platform for site meetings. We’re committed to creating a future beyond distance. To learn more about what our platform can offer your business, click here to book a demo.