There are occasions when business travel is necessary for face-to-face meetings, but if much of your day is spent getting to appointments rather than attending them, perhaps it’s time you looked at virtual conferencing.
There’s nothing like meeting someone face to face, eyeball to eyeball. In fact, personal contact is vital in business for getting key points across and engendering trust. But at the same time you can’t meet everyone all of the time and that’s where virtual conferencing can help. It covers audio, web and video services – but its benefits extend far beyond time savings. The ability to see, speak and share documents with the person at the other end of the line or on the screen means you can slash travel expenditure by meeting with your suppliers and customers irrespective of location.
You can also reduce overheads as your employees can work from home, but still interact with the office. And if conferencing is run over an IP (internet protocol) network, the savings can be even greater because you can reduce or eliminate carrier fees. What’s more, virtual conferencing is environmentally friendly, so you can cut down carbon emissions by limiting your business travel.
Conferencing options open to businesses like yours have grown rapidly thanks to new technologies. Figures from business development company MBD, for example, suggest the UK video conferencing market grew by 39% between 2002 and 2005, with a further 7% projected for this year. Meanwhile, consultancy Frost & Sullivan forecasts the European market for audio conferencing services to grow to $1.3bn by 2012. Ease of use has improved too, so you no longer have to be a technical expert to benefit.
Audio, video and web conferencing can be used together or separately depending on your needs, but increasing convergence means all three are combining. If your business has staff out on the road or working from home, audio conferencing can facilitate meetings as if they were all in the office together.
If presentations are crucial to your service or product, a web cam or video conferencing system will be required. Web and audio conferencing often go hand in hand – most web cams now have built in microphones giving you sound and vision, and you’ll find many providers offer both services.
Costs vary depending on the type of service used and for how long, but according to Aaron McCormack, chief executive of BT Conferencing, a basic conference call organised to replace a meeting can cost as little as £25.
AUDIO CONFERENCING
As it’s simple, fast and reliable, audio conferencing has become common in businesses like yours. It’s moved on from simply dialling in to a number and inputting a PIN to join a conference call. Virtual technologies, such as
Bluetooth-enabled headsets, now mean you can walk around the office while taking a conference call.
You can also expect features such as digital recording, transcription (useful for minute taking), an after-call email summary and SMS notifications.
Other options include getting PowerPoint presentations delivered over the internet and ‘click to conference’ with calendar integration. This means you don’t have to remember a dial-in number or access code each time you join a call. Instead, you simply click on a link in the conference host’s invitation email or calendar invite and the system automatically dials, placing you in the call. Streaming is also being used for the widespread distribution of recorded calls.
Traditional audio conferencing tends to be ‘pay as you go’, where no infrastructure is supplied and you use a third party. Providers include MeetingZone, Powwownow and BT Conferencing (which also provides hardware and software options). With Powwownow’s basic offering, you pay the cost of the telephone call into the conference, which is 6.7p per minute from a landline. If you need more functionality, such as multiple user access, recording and reporting, expect to pay from £75 a month.
Swyx provides a software-based desktop conferencing system and charges according to the number of users. On top of the costs of the software, it’s around £2,300 for 100 users, £1,250 for 50 and £550 for 20. You could also opt for a hardware system – providers like AuDeo Systems and BT partner with vendors, such as Polycom.
WEB CONFERENCING
Sharing data is the key to web conferencing, you can exchange documents with others as if you were in the same room, and they can view them individually on their desktops. According to Rob Thursfield, sales director at technology consultant Fabric, web conferencing has overtaken video conferencing for those businesses that operate from a single site. Technology developments mean you can exchange ideas through shared applications, such as polling, surveys and interactive whiteboards, and integrate with instant messaging services.
Many web conferencing providers have services integrated with Microsoft applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel, so you can host meetings directly from these. Quality does vary from supplier to supplier, though, and can depend on how much IP technology is being used. Security is also an issue, but you can lock conferences to stop people from joining and information is encrypted.
Major players include WebEx (part of Cisco), Citrix and BT. WebEx offers hosted systems, so you don’t have to buy or manage the software. Its basic meeting centre service costs from £43 per month for a minimum of five licences, and up to 15 people can take part in a meeting at any one time. Avaya provides an in-house web conferencing system that is run on your network. Richard Jenner product marketing manager, EMEA, for Avaya’s unified communications portfolio, says that bringing a conferencing solution in-house can result in a return on investment in an average of six months, and up to 50 per cent reduction in spending compared with outsourced services.
