From checking in for your flight at home to getting boarding passes on your BlackBerry, travelling has never been more high-tech.

Planes, trains and even buses are all speeding into the future to meet the needs of businesses travellers with personal TV monitors, computer hookups and wireless internet.

"The new technology certainly makes things easier," says business professor Rob Warren, director of the Asper Centre for Entrepreneurship in Winnipeg.

"I really like online check-in because I don't have to wait in line and it allows you to get seat selection, see the plane configuration, change your seat and even apply for upgrades in advance."

File photo by Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
CEO Nancy Knowlton of SMART Technologies is introducing a new product to simplify online meetings, including video-conferencing.

Travelling about 100 days a year for work and flying all over the world, Warren is taking advantage of the technological advances many carriers are starting to bring onboard.

"The laptop plug-in really helps and so do the personalized entertainment systems," the frequent flier says. "I had that on (Air Canada's) Embraer to Toronto and that certainly makes all the travel easier, especially when you're doing the long-haul stuff - on a 13- or 14-hour flight, you need to have those conveniences."

The new conveniences are coming at a cost, however, as rising fuel costs - and environmental concerns - have many businesses questioning whether travel is still the best way to get the job done.

High-tech alternatives, including video-conferencing, are an attractive option - and one that more and more organizations are using to help boost the bottom line.

"Technology can really be a big benefit once people get used to it and it's really portable, so it can be on a laptop and we can meet or get work done from anywhere," says Ken Sutcliffe, director of IT services for the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres (OACCAC).

Providing health-care services such as home care and nursing, OACCAC's 14 community care centres - and some 7,500 staff - are spread out all over Canada's largest province.

"Once you get outside of the urban centres, you have a large geography to cover, so you would call for face-to-face meetings as seldom as possible and when you would have them, you'd have people driving very large distances - hundreds of kilometres - to get to the meeting. Invariably, not everyone could come," says Sutcliffe.

OACCAC was an early adapter of Microsoft's meeting tools. While they didn't always work as planned in the beginning, Sutcliffe says advancements in the technology in the last couple of years have been significant.

"We're able to have really meaningful meetings using video conferencing or voice-sharing built into the technology. So what we're seeing are folks reducing how much they drive and still really interacting with each other."

While OACCAC hasn't finished analysing the cost savings, feedback from staff has been positive.

"This has been a way to solve business problems," says Sutcliffe. "In the past, where they'd try to avoid travel and use the lowest-tech mode like a phone, it wouldn't work out well. When you're just on the other end of the phone, you can't always tell who is talking and you tend to have one-way conversations without context, while the newest technology has really overcome those barriers."

The latest technology is also a lot easier to use - an advancement that's critical for large-scale adoption.

"Video conferencing is something that's been available for several years now - the problem is the usability of the technology," says Microsoft Canada product manager Brian Rusche.

"We have to consider the mental cost associated with trying to set up these sorts of things. To go secure a room, book the IT and if something goes wrong I have to troubleshoot - it's such a huge effort," he notes.

"People say, 'unless I really need to do it, let's just do a teleconference.' Now with Microsoft RoundTable, it's just like using a phone, so adoption is really taking off."

Recently introduced, RoundTable is a 'plug-and-play' conferencing device that provides a 360° view of the room and tracks the flow of conversation among multiple speakers.

"As a remote participant dialing into a room, if someone is having a conversation on the side of the room or writing on a white board you can't see, it's hard to follow what's going on," Rusche says.

"With RoundTable, you can see it all and as much as you can be, you're brought into the meeting despite participating remotely."

With some of the latest and greatest technologies, you may even forget you're not actually there.

Calgary-based SMART Technologies is introducing a new product line that lets meeting participants link up and write in digital ink over any application - including video - share laptop content and notes, and work off the same whiteboard.

"It enables distributed teams to be on the same page instantly, opening new possibilities to speed decisions, reduce costs, improve effectiveness and enhance creativity through collaboration," says SMART CEO Nancy Knowlton.

High-tech meeting alternatives also have the added benefit of being environmentally friendly, which is an increasingly important consideration for government and industry.

"Some of the provinces are very interested in looking at this technology because of that green angle and how they can reduce their carbon footprint by reducing travel," Rusche says.

"I think with the momentum and the focus on the environment now, that's only going to become a bigger and bigger consideration for business."

If you think all these benefits threaten to ground traditional business travel for good, think again.

"There's just some stuff you can't do electronically," says business expert Warren. "If you want to read someone's body movements and gauge their reaction to what you're saying or build a physical connection between you, you can't do that electronically."

Even Microsoft's Rusche admits technology can never make up for face-to-face meetings, which he agrees are fundamental to doing business.

"So much of communication is personal that any moment you introduce a technology, it depersonalizes it and that's OK in some instances, but in many instances it's not OK," he says.

"These products in no way mean business travel will ever be completely eliminated, but the question is, do we need that level of personal face time for every meeting?" The answer is no.

For highly technical problems, short meetings, in-house problem solving and quick followups, meeting remotely can work well.

But when it comes to building relationships - and dealing with different cultures - experts say trying to skip the travel can be a big mistake.

"If you're meeting someone for the first time, you need to get on the plane," says Warren. "If you're going to a culture in Europe or Asia where they value the personal connection and they're doing business with you as an individual, they really want to see you in front of them."

So, as much as he's tired of all the business travel he has to do, Warren knows he won't stop racking up all those frequent flier points any time soon.

"It's here for the long haul and I don't think we're ever going to replace it because humans are far too much of a social animal," he says.

"We're always going to need to meet face to face."

(Tess van Straaten can be reached at tess@businessedge.ca)