Benefits of Video Conferencing

It’s no surprise that the demand today for video conferencing equipment and services is exploding.

Tremendous travel cost savings are among the obvious reasons. Other significant drivers are:

• Improved quality of life
• Enhanced productivity
  • Time savings
  • Stronger relationships
  • Increased collaboration
  • Access to dispersed resources
• Reduced environmental impact

Let's take a closer look at the benefits of video conferencing...

Cost Savings

Although business travel is unavoidable in some cases (you can’t shake a hand yet with video conferencing), a great deal of business travel can be replaced with video conferencing. The cost savings can be tremendous.

One of the major reasons for the rise in video conferencing is that businesses can easily quantify the cost savings from reduced travel and thereby justify capital expenditure on the equipment. Direct, quantifiable expenses from travel quickly add up:

• transportation (airfare, car rental, train fares, car service)
• hotel accommodations
• per diem expenses

A positive ROI on a business video conferencing system is often seen from these calculations.

Productivity Gains

Improved work-life balance, better relationships, more effective communication, reduced isolation, greater convenience, access to diverse resources, time savings are all possible with video conferencing. And all add up to increased productivity!

Improved Quality of Life

Travel incurs other expenses that are far more difficult to quantify than direct costs but just as real. Stress and wear and tear on business travelers create imbalances in work-life balance, contributing to higher employee turnover, lower morale and decreased productivity due to fatigue.

Transportation delays, administrative time spent planning trips and lost productivity during travel are all genuine costs to an organization.

Effective Communication

You won’t find much dispute that video conferencing conveys vast more information than emails or telephone calls possibly can.

• Non-verbal communication is responsible for 50-90% of what we communicate.
• Non-verbal communication is naturally absent in email and telephone contact.
• Facial expressions, eye contact and body language are all conveyed in video conferencing.

The face-to-face experience of the video conference affords many benefits, including reinforcing relationships and eliminating many misunderstandings.

Convenience

Video conferencing enables multi-point live meetings with people across different time zones and international boundaries, all without removing your shoes at the airport.

People who are inaccessible in person can be made accessible with video (remote experts, potential employees).

Consider the value of video conferencing for spur-of-the-moment meetings involving multiple locations - impossible without video communication.

• How can you beat the speed of video conferencing for getting people together globally?
• Ad hoc meetings are said to be more productive previously scheduled ones.

Collaboration

Everything Cisco CEO John Chambers seems to be speaking of lately is collaboration (unified communications is out, collaboration is in…).

Well, the good news for video conferencing users is that the latest technology will be enabling collaboration like never before:

• No longer does video conferencing have to be a stand-alone communication system.
• Some video conferencing systems can now integrate with other enterprise systems (groupware systems, centralized directories).
• Visual information from PowerPoint, whiteboards, video clips and other multi-media can be a powerful component of communication and can be incorporated into a video conference.

Smaller Carbon Footprint

It’s good to know that all the gains in cost savings, convenience, and productivity are also environmentally friendly! Video conferencing can help us green our favorite planet.

Carbon dioxide emissions from air travel are staggering, measuring up to 6 tons for one round-trip from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Airplane emissions deliver CO2 directly into the most vulnerable part of our atmosphere so using video equipment is a no-brainer for the Earth’s health.

Opportunities are Everywhere

Not only businesses but also teaching institutions, health care facilities and other sectors reap tremendous benefits from video conferencing.

Education

In educational settings, video conferencing applications enable:

• Contact between students and remote faculty during research, sabbatical or conference
• Guest lecturers to interact in the classroom from distant locations / other institutions
• Faculty and the administration to collaborate with colleagues at other institutions
• Students to interview with potential non-local employers

Telemedicine

In medicine, video conferencing has accomplished nothing short of save lives in the telemedicine sphere. Where specialists are in short supply, they can be tapped into remotely, administering diagnosis and recommending emergency, life-saving treatment at significant cost savings.

Interested in learning more about how video conferencing can benefit your business? Give one of VoIP Supply's IP communications specialists a call at 800.398.8647 to learn more about how video conferencing can improve your business!