There’s no doubt about it, the internet has dramatically changed the face of trade across the world. Local businesses, national brands and global giants all work much more quickly and efficiently with the rise of the internet.

One of the most recent internet innovations that are having a dramatic impact on business communications is video conferencing.

Video Conferencing and Your Business
Video conferencing utilises the convenience and the speed of the internet, and companies across the globe are using video conferencing as their preferred means of holding remote meetings. This time-saving technology enables individuals across multiple locations to actively participate in business discussions and decisions on short notice.

This cost effective form of communication can be utilised at any time, enabling face-to-face business meetings without any participant ever having to leave their desk.

Video conferencing can also be used to enable more employees to work from home. Again this offers a number of benefits, most important of which being cost. The less employees you have working at the office, the less office space you need and the lost costs are involved.

Video conferencing has a number of benefits, most important of course are its cost effective nature and ease of connectivity. There are several ways that you can use video conferencing to improve the communications between the people working in, for and with your business.

How to Use Video Conferencing to Benefit Your Business
It is essential that businesses utilise the very latest technology in order to survive and thrive in the current fast paced markets. Here are a number of ways you can utilise video conferencing to benefit your business.

Provision of Training
If you’ve got offices (and therefore staff) located across multiple points throughout the country then travelling to each destination to provide training and resources can be costly and time consuming. Instead, link up all personnel with a web conference. You’re presence doesn’t have to be physical to be powerful!

Sharing of Ideas
When you’ve got a killer idea that you need to develop further then you’ll want to get all of your best thinkers together at once. However, there’s no guarantee that your most creative minds are all in the same place at the same time. Bring together your brightest and your best using video conferencing and share the ideas online.

Proposals and Sales Pitches
Hiring sales staff to pitch both nationally and internationally will obviously ensure the longevity of your business, but the costs of flying them back and forth to various locations could also cripple your business. You can reduce these costs considerably by authorising your sales team to organise meetings with prospects online and you can use video conferencing in order to submit proposals and make those all important sales pitches.

Investor/Shareholder Meetings
Video conferencing allows you to hold your investor and shareholder meetings quickly and easily, ensuring you have more time to spend doing what you do best, and that’s making sure your business is successful and profitable!

Setting up your first video conference may seem a little scary, but once you’ve adopted this technology you’ll be actively looking for ways to integrate it into all of your business communications.

The Rise of Video Conferencing in Business
A research report held in 2010 found that of the 1,800 corporate employees that were questioned, more than 54% were using video conferencing on a frequent to daily basis. That was three years ago, and you can be sure that more and more businesses (including your competitors) are using video conferencing to boost their business communications.

Video conferencing on mobile devices is being used in a number of different industries such as manufacturing, energy and public safety. The technology has made it incredibly easy to get live feedback from what were once isolated sites or hard to reach locations, such as a manufacturing plant floor in a business that is located in another country.

Disadvantages to Video Conferencing
Despite its obvious advantages, research has suggested that some businesses and employees have struggled to successfully adopt video conferencing.

Some feel that they have to work harder with video conferencing to deliver and interpret information, compared to a face to face meeting.

About the Author
William Taylor is an entrepreneur and uses video conferencing at his business several times. Recently he did a conferencing session with his client who is a cisco authorized distributor.