In order to successfully reduce business travel within your organisation,  you need to create a culture where all levels of the organisation ask the key question:

“ Do I need to travel at all?”

There can often be good reasons for business travel, particularly at the early stages of a customer/supplier relationship. It is not about saying that you must not travel for business, but it is about helping you and your employees to make an informed choice about when business travel is necessary. By asking this question you can save your organisation money, time and disruption.

Discourage unnecessary business travel for internal purposes instead encouraging the use of technological alternatives such as audio or video-conferencing. 

Audio Conferencing 

An audio conference is a telephone call in which more than two people participate. (Also known as tele conference or conference call). Audio conferencing is convenient as you can participate without leaving your desk. It can work well for regular progress meetings or team meetings especially where the agenda and attendees are fairly stable.
 

Web Conferencing

Web conferencing is a tool that allows people to view on their computer material from a remote source. This can be presentation slides, a video stream or an application running on someone else's computer. Audio is provided by a parallel telephone call or audio conference or via the internet connection. There is usually a facility for instant messaging between participants or participants and the organiser.
Web conferencing builds on audio conferencing to extend the types of face to face meeting that can be replaced. Its shared applications function facilitates collaborative working as well as being a great tool for training and briefings.

Video Conferencing

There are various types of video –based communication tools that organisations can use:

1. Most widely-used is the desktop web camera which supports a variety of person-to-person visual communication services. Such as Skype.

2. More costly and complex are the video conferencing systems involving a camera and screen typically located in a meeting room. This allows two or more rooms of people to see and hear each other.

3. At the top end are telepresence systems which involve multiple cameras, multiple screens and high-bandwidth connections. These typically work between two rooms at a time.

Video conferencing can replace face to face meetings in many cases, particularly for internal meetings or where the topic being discussed is uncontentious. It will also depend on your customer/ suppliers as to whether you are able to use video conferencing for external meetings. Video conferencing can also be used effectively to replace regular progress meetings or team meetings within or between organisations saving on business flights and other modes of business travel.

There are doubts as to the effectiveness of video conferencing for building relationships with new customers/suppliers but video conferencing can be used once relationships are established to maintain contact.

Video conferencing can also be used for important organisation-wide events to broadcast significant messages to the entire organisation across multiple sites. Video conferencing is often used for recruitment interviews.

Skype is a cost effective video conferencing based communication tool which saves organisations time, money and reduces the need for travel.

Skype can provide organisations with video calling as well as savings on voice calls with cheap local and international call rates. Skype also offers instant messaging, file and screen sharing and conference call facilities. 

Tied in with these technological alternatives is the issue of Alternative Working Patterns. Do all employees need to be in their workplace during traditional office hours? With the exception of jobs where people need to be at their place of work at a certain time, many individuals and businesses could consider flexible working hours.