These technologies could slow down business travel indefinitely

Only I’m not in Oregon. I’m still stuck at home, on the opposite shore, relying, like many of us, on a growing range of tools that allow me to do my job remotely. In this case, I’m touring Arcimoto‘s

FUV 2.88%

factory via FaceTime. Mr. Frohnmayer takes me “me” through an iPhone, points things out, brings me closer to the half-finished machinery, parts, and vehicles, and brings me my questions. To me, it turns out to be a reasonable facsimile of actually being there. Less the eight-hour flight and accommodation in a discount hotel approved by Dow Jones with continental breakfast, ie.

This is how Mr. Frohnmayer and his team have been giving factory visits to investors, customers and suppliers since the pandemic began. It works well enough for Mr. Frohnmayer to want to continue doing so after the pandemic ends, because it does not lead to any loss of productivity due to travel days.

Thanks to the cloud-based collaboration tools of all descriptions (not just Zoom), the pandemic has led to a re-establishment of office culture, from face-to-face to remote or hybrid. Surprisingly, there has also been a resurgence for workers that almost no one thought could do their job remotely, including field service engineers and emergency medical staff.

While these changes explain trends in the post-pandemic workplace, they also demonstrate a new path to follow for business relationships. Many examples come from the most practical industry of all: manufacturing. Workers still have to show up at a factory and assemble products, and quality control may require occasional trips abroad, but many other activities, including due diligence on investment, building relationships with suppliers and customers, and even research and development, have unexpectedly and perhaps permanently moved away.

Delta CEO has projected that business travel will return to 70% of its pre-pandemic level in 2023. But that other 30% may take much longer to recover, now that the definition of “necessary travel” has changed. .

Using FaceTime as a form of telepresence to take factory tours — without the need for fancy robots or thick headphones — is just one of the ways Mr. Frohnmayer has moved most of his work from Arcimoto to a remote model. For meetings, trust what he calls his FutureCube, an isolated and soundproofed shed in the back garden. He has power from home, broadband via Starlink satellite internet and, most importantly, none of the barking dogs that used to interrupt his calls.

Use this garden patio office for meetings, even with investors, which are especially important, as Arcimoto, despite being listed on the stock exchange, is still growing.

“The idea used to be that I only have to fly around the country for half an hour to get a trade deal. And then the financial industry discovered that you can have a face to face , and it can be a very personal debate, remotely, ”he says.

Arcimoto, which earned more than $ 50 million through stock sales last year and another $ 14 million in 2021, is now designing its next factory, which will have more than 200,000 square feet, compared with its current 34,000 square feet.

Clearpath Robotics, headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, is the parent company of Otto Motors, which builds autonomous mobile robots to help manufacturers and logistics companies. Just before the pandemic, Matt Rendall, its CEO, was raising an initial capital round. “My life was on a plane, jumping from city to city, investor to investor. But now I haven’t been on the plane in 14 months. The pandemic has changed the bar that will require me to board a plane. “

Clearpath has many clients in Japan, where face-to-face meetings with clients were an absolute must, Rendall says. But given that Japan suffered pandemic shutdowns even before most of Europe and the Americas, the culture there has shifted rapidly and dramatically to remote gatherings. Not having to plan frequent two-week trips around the world has allowed Mr. Rendall think about business strategy. It’s time to say he resists giving up even after the pandemic is over.

For companies that actually make things, there is a limit to the amount of work that can be done remotely. Both Arcimoto and Clearpath have continued to operate manufacturing facilities throughout the pandemic, as long as local regulations allow, while maintaining social distancing among workers. And some of its employees are eager to travel again for business.

Terry Becker is Archimoto’s head of operations, responsible for its supply chain, manufacturing, engineering and R&D. Prior to the pandemic, Mr. Becker and his deputies made frequent trips to China to visit suppliers that they manufacture most of the mechanical and electrical parts of Arcimoto’s vehicles. These trips were critical to maintaining the quality of the pieces flowing at Archimoto’s factory in Eugene, he says. I would inspect the machines that make the parts and see how the processes and quality control measures worked in a given factory. The lack of such trips, he said, has caused problems over the past year: parts that were not in condition and not in use.

Despite these setbacks, Mr Becker believes many meetings inside and outside his company will remain remote even after the pandemic. He also believes the old-fashioned phone call has changed forever.

“People will gravitate towards Zoom meetings even in the future, rather than conference calls or emails,” he says. “It has its merits, because you can share images, spreadsheets and Gantt charts much better.”

At Clearpath, engineers previously had to come to the company’s test facility, in a Kitchener department store, to test changes to the software used by the company’s Otto robots, which can weigh up to 3,000 pounds. . They can now try software updates on naked versions of these robots. These “wallbots,” as the company calls them, only include sensors, actuators, and computers built into robots. Because they don’t have the body and half-ton suspension system, they’re small enough to fit in a home garage.

Although wallbots were originally a pandemic contingency, they have the potential to become a permanent form for the company to recruit remote talent. Now engineers can work from almost anywhere and not have to be within walking distance of the company’s facilities, says Rendall, who has expanded the geographic scope of his talent search.

Some analysts and executives have argued that in addition to the inevitable needs for hands-on work, the fear of getting lost will cause workers to return to the office and vendors to customers ’conference rooms as soon as they are allowed to.

A December 2020 Wall Street Journal analysis predicted a lasting drop of between 19% and 36% in the number of business trips made.

An October 2020 analysis by management consultant Oliver Wyman projected that business travel would recede more slowly than leisure travel. A year of blockchain has shown that technologies like video conferencing can replace meetings that take place in companies and work well when people already have an existing relationship, says Khalid Usman, a partner at Oliver Wyman. But not all business trips will be affected in the same way, according to the firm, sales trips and customer meetings will recover first.

However, it is the opposite for Mr. Rendall. He hasn’t seen his head of income in a year. He says he can’t wait to fly to Texas, where the other executive lives, to reconnect. But he says he will continue to hold initial meetings with investors and potential clients above Zoom.

“We have shown over the last twelve months that you can establish a new relationship with investors or customers remotely and I believe that over time they will be the most important relationships where you invest the time needed to travel,” he adds.

—For more analysis, reviews, tips, and WSJ technology headlines, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Write to Christopher Mims to [email protected]