Video conferencing systems are the cutting edge of virtual meeting technology. Companies such as Blue Jeans Virtual Meetings make the development and scheduling of virtual meetings for corporate entities a simple matter of selecting dates and sending out reminders. But exactly what ways can video conferencing benefit a company in the long run? There are a number of different, distinct benefits that switching to a virtual meeting setting can create for a company. They each impact the company in different ways and each have their own individual addition to the company’s overall performance. A few of these include:
Employee Benefits
Employees are the backbone of a company. The managers might make the decisions to see profit rise, but the employees carry out the groundwork and take care of all the details. It is obvious that without employees a company is simply a name with nothing attached and no capabilities on its own. By introducing video conferencing, you deal with the human resource factor of your employees in a new and novel way. Employees that need to go to meetings overseas usually have to give up their family time or personal time in order to travel. Although they are usually compensated for it, we all know that monetary compensation can’t compare to actually having the time available to do something. Using virtual meetings enables an employee to have the time they want to do the things they want and not waste it in an airport terminal or in transit on a flight. Many employees will see this as a benefit, especially those that have families of their own. This benefits the employee far more than simply paying them compensation for travelling. It is far more emotionally satisfying for someone to be able to spend time with their loved ones than to buy them expensive things to replace their time. Employees who realize this usually allow themselves to get things done in a more efficient manner to show their gratitude.
Recordings of Meetings for Future Decisions
One of the things that a lot of corporate enterprise companies have is trying to follow why they made a decision many years aback. Sometimes it can lead to serious fallout if something that was decided years ago needed to be changed. Meeting recordings have the benefit of saving for posterity all the information of what went on in a meeting. This is very handy in figuring out the reasoning behind certain decisions and allows a company to build on the past rather than pretending it didn’t happen. It is also a lot less time consuming to watch a video of a recorded meeting than to read the compiled minutes of the meeting. Many times, because of the concise method of taking minutes, the details of a meeting are left out and it requires those present to piece together those details. In case of a company that survives for more than seventy five years, it can be difficult to find someone alive from the time when such a decision was made. Saving video recordings of meetings for posterity ensures that nothing is lost through the mists of time.
Lowering Operating Costs
For a corporate entity, travelling for meetings can cost quite a lot to the company’s budget. In many large companies, travelling budgets get into the seven figures per quarter regularly. Video conferencing is a cost effective method for reducing operating costs from meetings and the associated expenses that are attached to those meetings. Expenses such as room and board for employees that are sent on those missions as well as the cost of flights to get them to the meeting on time and back from the meeting in a timely manner all count towards the operating costs of running the business. Comparatively, video conferencing allows for the employee to conduct meetings such as these from the relative comfort of one of your own conference rooms and still feel as though he or she was present at the meeting physically. The cost of installing high quality video conferencing software to deliver a level of performance and stability that is necessary for high quality video conference calls is a pittance in comparison to the amount spent to make meetings happen.
Video conferencing has become a new means of making face-to-face connections across a wide geographic area. It has a number of significant advantages to grant to businesses that decide it is worth investing in. Employees of such businesses can look forward to spending more time with their families and less time on the road. Similarly, they can also look forward to less time spent suffering the after effects of jetlag and early-morning flights. Recorded meetings can be used to analyze previous decisions and to figure out the rationale behind them. This allows for a great appreciation for certain decisions and the extraneous information that was used in coming to the earlier conclusions. The bottom line of a company is also of great concern, and installing a video conferencing system makes for higher profit ratings at the end of the year. This means that profits increase and that can only be good for a business. Overall, the companies that invest in emerging video conferencing technologies will find themselves in a very good position as time goes by and their profits rise because of their insight.