Proper communication between your office cubicles can often seem like a struggle, so how on earth do businesses manage to communicate between buildings, cities, or even countries? The traditional methods, such as phone calls, faxes, and labor-intensive face-to-face meetings, left the market yearning for a more viable option. So when video conferencing hit the business world and enabled instantaneous, personal connection from one chairman to the next, or a U.S. employee to a Canadian, the implications were huge. In today’s world, the emphasis is on practicality, speed, and results, all of which was delivered effectively by video conferencing. Here are some of the ways you can implement top-of-the-line video conferencing in your business or enterprise, save some zeroes in your account, and see immediate benefits.
Find a Host that Fits Your Numbers
Let’s say you’re looking to buy a cable package for your home. You’ve selected the channels you want – maybe six or seven – and plan on watching television for a maximum of three hours per day. When you call the cable company to authorize the plan, you’re offered an extra three hundred channels for only forty dollars more. Do you do it? Hopefully not. The same principle should apply to you in your business, where saving money and avoiding the hassle of superfluous features is the name of the game.
When purchasing video conferencing, you should seek out a host that will allow you to form virtual meetings and support the amount of expected guests in each call. You may even wish to purchase software that can support a handful more than you expect, just in case you need an occasional boost to a board meeting. Anything more than that, however, will have diminishing returns. There’s no sense in buying expensive software that can support your entire company unless you truly require it. According to SoftPedia, many companies are already trying to allow you the benefit of numerous members in a call or on a server, turning to open-source coding to manually enable the process, or simply boosting the capabilities of your proprietary server. When making your selection, just be sure that you don’t buy something radically outside your business needs. You may even choose to go with a platform other that adds more personal touches, as more and more companies have enabled multiple devices for video conferencing use as stated by Entrepreneur.
The Human Element
Being able to see your colleagues and get a feel for their body language is one of the greatest benefits of virtual meetings. The inherent connection that video conferencing provides will give a more personal touch to your business, and will help in things such as negotiations and strategizing for upcoming projects. If your business is operating out of multiple offices, then your colleagues may not have the opportunity to regularly – or perhaps ever – meet with their fellow employees in a different city or country. The need for personal communication and better connections, then, falls to the technology that you have in your business. For many companies, such as Blue Jeans, virtual meetings are a snap to set up and host on your company’s servers. This can also save your employees the trouble of having to make costly trips on the company payroll, and keep them situated in their nearby office.
Show Your Ideas
Of course, one of the hallmarks of business is showing your concepts to a room of potential backers or board members. To do this, the ability to engage your audience must be present. You should be able to make eye contact with them, speak clearly, and deliver a performance worthy of your ideas. Because of this, the need to invest in quality software for your performances is paramount. In a virtual meeting, a tremendous part of interaction is being able to display your concepts, and allow the participants to interact with them. While you may already have a suitable video conferencing platform, you should consider enabling remote-access or screen-sharing features on your system, either through the manipulation of open-source projects or by seeking out a third party to handle the process. Several companies, like LogMeIn, have pioneered the technology, enabling you to show off charts and graphics that will boost your presentation, but a handful of open-source video conferencing companies have paved the way for personal modification and enhancement of the current model.
Having offices that are physically separated doesn’t have to impact business as usual. The power of modern technology and some nifty connective methods have created long-distance business relationships that are more personalized, interwoven, and convenient than ever before. Video conferencing can be a true investment, particularly to a smaller business, but the proper base software and knowledge of how to use your system to its fullest extent can provide you with unlimited potential for connectivity. Done correctly, video conferencing will make multiple offices feel like one supersized facility.
