Video conferencing benefits extend far beyond the bottom line
With the exponential rate at which technology becomes adopted into the everyday life, nearly everyone has heard someone nostalgically lamenting about the good ol’ days. All joking aside, technology has dramatically transformed the way we work and conduct business over the past decade. Have a quick look around you: computers, mobile phones, the Internet, fax, printers, cloud computing among many other inventions have truly revolutionised businesses with faster and improved communication, increased efficiency, shorter response time on decision-making, increased flexibility and availability, lower costs and of course improved bottom line.
One of the disruptive technologies which brought countless advantages to businesses and became an integral part of their strategy and success is video conferencing. More, Faster, Better, Easier – Here are the top 4 benefits which video conferencing can bring to your business:
1) “More” – Reduce your expenses and increase your business opportunitiesThere are many ways in which video conferencing can reduce your company’s expenses. First of all, it saves travel money as you can now conduct the meetings (with colleagues, partners or clients) which are far away, and therefore very expensive, from the comfort of your own office. Keeping in mind that 73% of people in the workforce work on distributed teams, domestically or internationally, video conferencing is the most cost-efficient tool for better collaboration and effective communication in the team at is enables dispersed teams in different countries and time zones to virtually meet and discuss important matters and projects in a more time-efficient and collaborative manner; all of this without the costs of planes, taxis, cars, business lunches, hotels etc.With reduced travel and expenses and also greater efficiency, you have more time and money to focus on creating new or strengthening existing business relationships, or on investing this money back into the company.
2) “Faster” – Enhance team communication and increase the productivity of your teamAccording to Forbes, only 8% of message interpretation come from words that are actually said, whereas the remaining 92% are interpreted from facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. We can therefore say that effective communication relies less on verbal cues and mostly on non-verbal signs which can’t be conveyed over the phone or via email. Additionally, engagement is an important aspect of effective communication. Video conferencing can also improve engagement levels as it enables face-to-face communication together with other interactive tools such as screen, content and video sharing. Moreover, IDG reported that the average attention span of conference attendees is lengthened from 23 minutes on regular calls to 35 minutes on video conferences. Better communication is inextricably linked to increased overall performance including productivity, collaboration and efficiency. A survey by Lifesize, a leader in telecommunications and provider of video conferencing and collaboration platform, found that a whopping 75% of survey participants agreed that video conferencing improves productivity and enhances work-life balance.
3) “Better” – Improve the work-life balance of your employeesThe average commute in the UK is 54 minutes and the number of people spending more than 2 hours travelling to/from work daily has jumped by 72% in the past decade. To combat this issue, a new trend on the rise is homeworking, where employees can work either entirely or occasionally from home. Homeworking makes your employees happy: they agree that it provides them with a better work-life balance and 36% of them would even choose it over a payrise. Moreover, it greatly cuts costs as it saves office space, reduces rental costs and also energy consumption. As discussed above, video conferencing is an easy solution to the potential problems of effective communication between the homeworking and office-based employees.
4) “Easier” – Increase your business’s flexibilityThe increased flexibility that video conferencing provides to organisations includes connecting remote employees, less time constraints and easiness in terms of rescheduling meetings. No matter how well face-to-face meetings are planned, last minute issues which prevent certain parties to attend can always arise. Imagine the costs involved when rescheduling a meeting where some or all attendees have to physically travel to attend… With video conferencing it can be easily rescheduled and everyone can carry on with their work.
If this article has been of interest and you need expert advice and help on video conferencing, get in touch with us by email, phone or social media and we will be more than happy to help!
