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How can video conferencing benefit your business?

There have been huge leaps and bounds in technology in recent years, much of it promising to be useful in the workplace. With email, instant messaging and social media, it can feel as if it’s creating yet more work for you, rather than helping to lighten the load.

One development that can help though, is video conferencing. It’s the technology that’s changing the face of meetings forever, and Blue Jeans UK are bringing their brand of easy to use, quality video conferencing software to the UK. Unsure as to whether it can help your business? Read on to find out more.

Meet up in seconds: Gone are the days of spending hours setting up and delivering meetings. With video conferencing, you can boot up your PC or smartphone, open up the software, and be calling somebody within minutes. This saves precious time and lets you get down to business with the minimum of fuss.

Save on travel costs: Attending meetings isn’t as easy as it looks. As Clear One point out, the costs of traveling to meet up with others is high. When you add up the costs of train and plane tickets, hotel stays, and meals into it, video conferencing is a very attractive alternative. Rather than spending all that cash, simply meet up online and save all the money and hassle.

Be more productive: Rather than scheduling ‘in person’ meetings, VSee recommend meeting up viavideo as often as is required. The immediate nature of video conferencing means that meetings aren’t drawn out, and are called only as and when they’re needed. When this happens, workers have much more time to work on their projects, rather than simply talking about them.

Communicate globally: Many businesses now operate over multiple sites, often on a global scale. Meeting up in person can often be impossible, and can lead to many problems between sites, such as the duplication of workloads. Video conferencing can bring these sites together quickly and efficiently, meaning that issues can be ironed out with ease and everybody can make sure they’re on the same page.

Improve relationships: LunarPages have noted that conference calls, emails and text messaging are great for getting short messages across, but can be rather impersonal. With video conferencing, you can see who you’re talking to, allowing you to form a more solid working relationship with them. This is because you can see facial expressions and nonverbal cues, which you only do otherwise in a face to face meeting.

Be more spontaneous: Scheduled meetings don’t allow for changes in plans, or the discussion of new ideas as they arise. Video conferencing means that if you want to discuss something quickly, you can meet up at the touch of a button, without the need to plan a whole meeting first.

Meet on the move: If you travel often, either for work or otherwise, it can feel like you have a lot of dead time on your hands as you’re on the road, unable to check in with the office. With video conferencing, you can now stay in touch as often as you need to. With better open Wi-Fi connections and portable devices such as laptops and smartphones, staying in touch is easier thanever.

Improve work life balance: It’s not uncommon for workers to experience burnout when they’re travelling everywhere in order to attend meetings. The time and effort involved simply isn’t sustainable for a long period of time. Using video conferencing instead of travelling to meetings means that workers can do everything they need to do while still being close to home. After all, a happy worker is an efficient worker.

Convenience: With all of the above points, it’s easy to see that video conferencing offers convenience to businesses that use it. It eliminates traveling, high monetary costs, and wasted hours in the work place. Attendees can meet up quickly, share ideas in an effective manner, and then break away with little fuss in order to continue with their work. When the person you need to speak to is at the push of a button on your laptop instead of a plane ride away, it makes the work day much easier all round.

To conclude: Video conferencing really is the future of inter office communications. Why travel for miles, or pull everybody away from the desks for a physical meeting, when you can video call them instantly and get results quicker than you ever could otherwise? With Blue Jeans UK on its way, now is the time to try the technology out for yourself. Who knows what it could do to benefit your own business?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jake Anderson .