How To Create A More Efficient Business With Video Conferencing

Video conferencing isn’t just an effective tool for presentations and staying in contact with remote workers and clients. When utilized correctly, video conferences can increase the efficiency (and therefore the profits) of your business. Here’s how.

How Does Video Conferencing Work?

Video conferencing is simple in practice. You simply choose a conference platform and connect via the web to the other users scheduled for the conference. The conference is presented in high definition video and audio, and often the interface includes extra tools like screen sharing software and document sharing.

1. Reducing Travel Costs and Time

The travel industry brings in billions of dollars annually, a large percentage of that number being from business travel. Costly flights, taxi rides, car maintenance, and gasoline; all of these are costs associated with business travel for meetings, seminars, and training events.

With video conferencing, you can eliminate the need for travel. Not only does this eliminate travel costs, but the employees will be appreciative that they don’t have to leave their families. It’s important to remember that employees are people with families and lives of their own.

Video conferencing can be just as or even more effective than an in-person conference. You’ll be able to see the attendees in high definition, so it’s very similar to having them there. You can utilize screen sharing software in the conference to improve the message and increase retention.

2. Host Training Via Conference Calls

If you’ve got a new product, procedure, or some other addition that you need to provide training for, try using a video conference to present the training materials. Video training is actually quite effective and improves the efficiency of the training process.

You can even record the video presentation with certain video conference services to store for later use, so you don’t have to take the time to present the material every time you hire someone new.

3. Online Seminars

Hosting an online seminar is a simple way to gather dozens of employees and partners together without actually requiring the long trips and hotel costs of a traditional seminar. Using a video conference service to host a seminar also eliminates the cost of renting out a venue.

Essentially, a video seminar is the most cost-effective way to host an event. You can create the content from the comfort of your desk or even at home, and the seminar participants can attend from the same comfort. More comfort means more retention, so you’re likely to have more effective seminars as well.

4. Video Interviews

When you’re hiring new employees or working with new clients, you can utilize video conferencing to complete interviews, sales calls, and more. Video conferencing is the next best thing to actually meeting in person and subtracts the travel time and cost from the equation.

Video interviews allow you to watch the applicant’s body language and match a face to the name, which is something you simply can’t do over the phone. While a phone call can provide a lot of valuable information on a new hire, a video conference will let you see the whole person, rather than just hearing their voice.

This also applies to new clients, especially long distance clients that you can’t actually meet in person. You can augment your conference call with screen sharing and document sharing, so any information that you need to give to the client can be shared right in the interface.

5. Better Meetings

Does anyone really want to sit in a stuffy conference room with a dozen other people and listen to a presentation on sales numbers? There’s usually at least one person dozing in the corner, another on their phone, and more than a few that simply don’t show up.

Even those that do show up are usually bored to the point of disengagement after the first hour of the meeting. That’s where video conferencing comes into play. Instead of sitting in a room with other people, meetings can be hosted and joined from anywhere in the world.

This flexibility will allow your employees to participate in a meeting from a place of comfort, which will improve their engagement in the material and their retention of the information you’re presenting.

It goes without saying that improving the effectiveness of your meetings can greatly improve your business’ efficiency. Participants will feel confident about the important information you’ve presented, and there will be no need to revisit the material because no one was able to retain it.

Improve your business meetings by making the change to video conferences. Include screen sharing for visual materials to augment the effectiveness of the video conference.

6. Save Time, Save Money

When you save time, you’re automatically saving money. The old saying time is money is absolutely true in business. When you’re spending endless hours participating in inefficient meetings, you’re basically throwing money down the drain.

Save time by incorporating video conferencing into your meetings. Once you see just how efficient this tool is, you might just make the change to permanently use video conferencing for all of your future meetings.

Conclusion

Increasing efficiency is the number way to increase the profitability of your business. Expenses add up quickly, and by using a simple tool like video conferencing, you can eliminate some simple yet costly practices. Have better meetings and presentations, eliminate travel time and cost, and improve employee retention with video conferencing.