Delivered a new virtual meeting room technology which grew video conferencing by over 500% and helped to save $130million in travel and expenses for AstraZeneca in 2016

Read the CEO’s interview where he discusses the impact of VC on AstraZeneca

CF: How do you run the company?

PS: Well, actually we run the company by, you know, we have basically concentrated the global teams in Sweden and in Cambridge for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. And so we are running Cambridge and Gothenburg as if they were integrated. We have an Astra Zeneca flight that goes back and forth every day between Gothenburg and Cambridge airport. And for oncology they are concentrated in the US and in Cambridge. And for the leadership team we use technology. We use tele-presence, We have a tremendous network of video conferences and tele-presences.

CF: How often do you meet as you did yesterday?

PS: I meet, well we meet in the team every month, once. And we meet physically three, four times a year. The rest of the time we meet by tele-presence, by video conference. And we have a great network, in fact this year, the whole company has reduced its travel budget by 25 percent. Because we told people, you know, we have a tremendous network of tele-presence and we want to use that. So now people are able to use their laptop, If you’re familiar with tele-presence, it’s better than video conference. In every meeting I’m in myself, we have three, or four, or five sets of people connected from everywhere. We have to operate like this, we have no choice. We are truly global.

 

Read how AstraZeneca transformed their company with the aid of Collaboration technology

Our collaboration strategy has revolutionised the way AZ employees work, with an explosion of use of our new VC capability. Virtual meeting use has increased by 500% since 2014, and with more than 270 virtual meetings held globally this year, connecting senior leaders with global teams, it has directly contributed to an overall $130m T&E cost saving. Last year saw our first-ever senior leaders meeting held virtually, which allowed 1,700 senior colleagues to connect from over 60 sites, saving not only dollars but over 2,700 tonnes of CO2 in the process!

Won the 2016 Real IT Awards Collaborative Enterprise Award

http://www.real-it-awards.co.uk/

Delivered a Lync 2013 to Skype for Business on premise global upgrade

Replace traditional telephony with Skype for Business in multiple locations

Replaced legacy audio and web conferencing with Skype for Business saving £1million

Benchmark government telecom contracts worth over £500million

Ran Unified Communication pilots between Cisco and Microsoft starting from 5 users which eventually grew into 65,000 active users

Technical WAN network design authority for global organisation migrating to a new MPLS network

Technical WAN network deisng authority for multiple UK government agencies – National Crime Squad, Home Office