These are the ways that video conferencing can save money for businesses:
- Cutting down on wasted time.
- Maximizing efficiency.
- Eliminating any potential travel costs.
Here, we’ll discuss why video conferencing is beneficial for many businesses, why video conferencing is a popular option, what types of video conferencing are available and the times when businesses should opt to use video conferencing.
How Can Video Conferencing Save Money for Businesses?
Let’s compare just how much money video conferencing can save versus the potential costs of attending or hosting a meeting where distributed employees are required to come together at one office:
| Face-to-face meeting | Video conferencing | |
|---|---|---|
| Airfare | ✓ | |
| Gas | ✓ | |
| Conference rental room | ✓ | |
| Accommodations | ✓ | |
| Meals | ✓ | |
| In-meeting snacks and beverages | ✓ | |
| Paid time spent traveling | ✓ |
And that doesn’t even touch on the cost of internal meetings. Even when travel costs aren’t involved, meetings can cost businesses a staggering amount of time and money. A whopping 15 percent of an organization’s time is spent in meetings, which results in $37 billion spent on meetings each year.
If you’re still not convinced that your meetings are costing you valuable resources, try using the Harvard Business Review’s meeting cost calculator.
After all, if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos won’t host meetings that require more than two pizzas, neither should you.
Utilizing video conference calls instead of internal, in-person meetings can significantly reduce costs by eliminating paid time spent setting up a meeting room, waiting for attendees to arrive and chatting before and after the main event.
Why Video Conferencing?
Besides its obvious cost-saving benefits, there are a multitude of reasons why more and more businesses are choosing video conferencing over traditional meetings:
- Efficiency: Whether you’re traveling to another location or simply corralling employees into a conference room, it can take a significant amount of time for attendees to even get to a meeting. That’s why video conferencing is such a great option; with just the click of a button, everyone can be instantly connected to a virtual meeting room.
- Engagement: While audio conferencing can be a great option in a variety of situations, video conferencing has the added advantage of naturally engaging more attendees for a longer period of time. Think of it this way: When you’re making eye contact with someone (especially a colleague), it’s much easier to resist the urge to start scrolling through social media.
- Communication: Video conferencing replicates the personal connection offered by in-person meetings. How? Because video conferencing allows attendees to see each other’s facial expressions and read subtle cues more easily. Plus, it eliminates the need to clarify who’s talking.
- Information sharing: This is an area where video conferencing blows in-person meetings out of the water. In a video conference, you can easily screen share, switch between whose screen is getting shared and change desktop control. In a face-to-face meeting, performing the same tasks would take a lot more time and generate much more confusion.
What Types of Video Conferencing Are Available?
When determining what type of video conferencing to use, you’ll want to consider the level of technology being employed by each service. Different technologies to look out for include:
- High-definition audio.
- International capability.
- Compatibility with multiple devices.
- Support for simultaneous video feeds.
- Integration with popular email and calendar services.
There are many different video conferencing software available, but only a few utilize top-of-the-line technology. Even fewer are truly free.
Here’s a comparison of some of the features and pricing of top video conferencing services:
| FreeConferenceCall.com | Join.me | GoToMeeting | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audio and video conferencing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Screen sharing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Moderated chat box | ✓ | ||
| Recording with playback | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom branding and URL | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| International dial-in numbers | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| In-country dial-in numbers | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Service to 64 countries | ✓ | ||
| Complete suite of free webinar services | ✓ |
As you can see, the top video conferencing services share many of the same features, but only FreeConferenceCall.com is truly free.
When Should Businesses Use Video Conferencing?
There are many times when video conferencing can be used in place of traditional, more expensive meeting styles:
- When meeting with attendees in a different town, state or country.
- When meeting with clients or investors who have limited time to spare.
- When meeting with employees who work remotely.
- When hosting meetings that would otherwise waste precious time and money.
When trying to determine whether you should use video conferencing rather than a face-to-face meeting, ask yourself the following questions:
- Should all attendees give the meeting their undivided attention?
- Do you want to reduce the time spent setting up and organizing the meeting?
- Is it important that attendees be able to communicate with gestures and facial expressions?
- Does the topic at hand require teamwork and collaboration?
- Do you want to get the most amount of work done in as little time as possible?
If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, it’s very possible that video conferencing can not only meet, but also exceed your needs.
Remember, modern video conferencing is not the hyper-formal affair that it used to be. Now that video conferencing technology is accessible for all, many different types of meetings can be hosted via video, even if participants are simply holding a casual brainstorming session.
From the nonchalant to the game-changing, video conferencing is a viable way to successfully host a variety of different meetings.
FreeConferenceCall.com makes it easy to save time and eliminate unnecessary costs when hosting meetings, without sacrificing communication, connection or teamwork. Learn more about our completely free, easy-to-use and high-quality video conferencing services.