Elisa Videra’s sustainability strategy is based on four cornerstones: economic, social, environmental and digital sustainability

Video collaboration and digital communication driving sustainability

Article 1/2023, 5 min read

The concept of modern virtual collaboration goes hand in hand with increasing sustainability requirements. When the idea of sustainability is taken further to cover all links of the value chain, it can become a game-changing business accelerator.

Opening up the big picture

While corporate sustainability typically consists of three different, yet aligned cornerstones – economic, social, and environmental sustainability – Elisa has added digital sustainability to the mix. This fourth element puts a special emphasis on Elisa's specific area of expertise, also highlighting the importance of issues such as safety and privacy in the world that is becoming more digital at an explosive speed.

As a subsidiary of Elisa, Elisa Videra's sustainability strategy and respective actions follow closely those of the parent company. Even though there are various other sustainability-related trends and themes that are regularly considered, Elisa Videra's argumentation and processes are quite heavily based on these four focus areas.

"Four pillars help us outline the concept of sustainability in the right way, and that makes it easier to mirror our own behaviour against those guiding principles," Elisa Videra's Strategy and Operations Manager Eeva Nyberg explains.

"With our video collaboration and digital communications solutions, customers will gain new means to contribute themselves to a more sustainable business and world. However, all businesses, including ourselves, must understand their complete value chain in order to truly drive sustainability."


Ensuring sustainability and creating positive impact – digitalisation is the main driver for Elisa Videra

The big picture of sustainability should be approached from several angles, and with patience to wait for the investment to provide sufficient return with interest. The thinking must be taken through the entire ecosystem and even beyond. This makes it essential to understand the entire concept of sustainability and the roles of the four cornerstones. 

Digitalisation is the main driver for Elisa Videra. As the whole of Elisa's business is focused on digital services, it is essential to align the sustainability strategy to it. The business itself must have the right tools to thrive in the long run, but it must be able to fulfil its duties in every area of sustainability as well.

Nyberg points out that in this sense, Elisa Videra needs to transfer its comprehensive understanding and expertise to the customers, who often operate on a much more limited view.

"When the customers are weighing various alternatives, we must make our expertise available to them and explain what kind of effects different decisions have, also when it comes to sustainability. We must explain the big picture, clarify what our suppliers are, and what that means in terms of quality, availability, lifetime, energy consumption and such. By opening the entire supply chain to our customers, we have better opportunities to make their businesses both more profitable and more sustainable."

There are various examples in Elisa Videra's service portfolio that can create positive environmental impact by reducing the need to travel with video meetings, enabling flexible growth by scalable technologies, and extending the life cycle of collaboration devices by opting for high-quality products, and so on. 

"Our solutions include physical products and from the viewpoint of environmental sustainability, the manufacturing process obviously creates a negative impact," Nyberg explains. "Then again, those products enable things like more efficient remote collaboration, which significantly reduces the need to travel, while monitoring makes the devices more efficient and prolongs their life. This more than offsets the harmful effects of manufacturing and makes the overall impact clearly positive."


Accelerating business with digital communication tools while ensuring the most sustainable decisions

Bringing up both the overall quality and scalability of various alternatives helps reach the ideal solution in the long run. As the customer's business evolves, it does not necessarily lead to the need to completely renew all video collaboration and digital communication tools. The customers often consider the situation only from their own business angle – how to fulfil a specific need most conveniently – but they often lack the kind of perspective that is required to thoroughly evaluate all options for the best overall benefit for the company.

One of the most efficient tools for achieving this is Elisa Hummingbird – a data system that provides immediate insight into the network and indicates where things go right or wrong. As Elisa Hummingbird evolves it will offer improved insights, automations and performance improvements. In the future the system will be able to fix more and more problems automatically or identify faults for notifying the service teams without compromising the service to the end user.

"Hummingbird is an excellent example of how thorough awareness of one's own operating environment helps optimise resources and solve challenges faster and remotely," Nyberg says. "These kinds of innovations help understand the big picture of sustainability: how actions affect each other, and how smart business decisions can support the quest of reaching sustainability targets as well."


Digital communications support inclusion – collaborating through video creates equal opportunities to contribute

One of the fundamental ideas of video collaboration is the inclusion of the workforce, when an environment can be created where every participant, whether attending remotely or in person, has an equal opportunity to contribute. 

Digital communications can support inclusion in many ways. For example, providing information in a more convenient, comprehensive, and targeted way to everyone's disposal ensures that business encounters can take place in an efficient, sustainable manner. 

“When you need to communicate information repeatedly to a broad audience or specific target groups, digital signage solutions enable this in an efficient and more sustainable manner. You can reach your audience anywhere by a click of a button and keep your information up to date more sustainably without having to physically go or do anything.”

Nyberg emphasises that as a truly global company, Elisa Videra also pays special attention to meeting sustainability demands on both a local and global scale. 

"To be able to make the most of the opportunities of both digitalisation and globalisation, we must know how to use the solutions that modern technology enables in the most efficient way. Understanding local regulations and practices – and aligning our own behaviour accordingly – helps us serve our customers in the most purposeful and sustainable way, in every corner of the world.”

Make the most of your virtual communications solutions.

  • Customer engagement solutions

    Provide an engaging and more personal digital customer experience for your customers, clients and patients. Elisa Videra Customer Engagement Solutions create trust and comfort for decision-making with face-to-face service and improved service reachability.

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    Ensure video conference solutions availability and call quality and get peace of mind with our Managed Services; management of your hybrid work environments, emerging issues automatically fixed before they become problems and effortless monitoring.

  • Interoperability & Gateway Solutions

    Enable your video meeting solutions to work seamlessly with one-click. Elisa Videra provides video interoperability solutions connecting modern meeting devices and traditional video conferencing devices to one workflow.

  • Enhanced professional services


    Get the resources to design and implement your communication solutions smoothly and efficiently. Our experts are at your service from solution planning and design to security assessment & optimization and architecture design.

Any cloud, any device – we make it work

Provide your people with freedom of choice wherever they meet and work. Elisa Videra designs, integrates, delivers and manages interoperable technology solutions for large international enterprises, with a can-do attitude. We understand the complexities of moving towards Hybrid Work and we build a credible roadmap to hybrid work based on your business needs.

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