Video Conferencing Best Productive Tool for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, you know that human resources are some of the biggest resources that you can draw upon as you start your business. Learning to use the best tools for productivity give you a leg up on the competition, save money, save time, and help your staff reduce their stress levels and feel more engaged with their projects and other team members. Make the most of all your resources by making money smart and people smart decisions.

Growth of Videoconferencing

The growth of videoconferencing in just a few short years has jumped from 549 million users to a projected 2015 total of over 3.5 billion users, according to statistics aggregator Statista. In the uncertainty following the 2008 economic crisis, companies needed to find ways to save money but at the same time not sacrifice effective meetings and professional interaction. However, videoconferencing is not all that new. Face-to-face video chats have been commonly used since Yahoo Messenger was a big deal back in web 2.0 days. Skype, now owned by Microsoft, is one of the best-known face-to-face video chatting applications available. Chances are that many members of your company staff have used either one, and are familiar with their operation.

Videoconferencing is simply an extension of that technology used to bring together a larger group of people, in a way that engages them with each other. Meeting with someone face-to-face is a whole different level from teleconferencing, email, or group chats. You’re not just hearing tone of voice or reading words on the screen, but seeing expressions and body language – bringing communication back to the level of face-to-face without requiring exhaustive travel and expensive arrangements for accommodations, transportation, and food.

Motion Is Not Progress

When you consider the number of industry events that the average business traveler will attend, not counting regular in-house meetings, the number of days and hours spent in travel can be considerable. However, there are also hidden costs to business travel that most do not consider. Verizon commissioned a white paper on videoconferencing that came to some surprising conclusions about how business travel can affect the day-to-day operations of business.

• Attending meetings has a strong impact on employee morale. 73 percent of traveling business professionals cited stressors such as being away from their family, and another 63 percent were concerned about work piling up in their absence.
  
• 92 percent of employees value meetings that provide an opportunity to contribute. Successful meetings also seem to be a factor in job satisfaction.
  
• On the flipside, 91 percent of meeting at attendees admit to “daydreaming” and another 39 percent have dozed off at meetings – something that many will sympathize with.
  

Making your meetings more effective and engaging can bring up your productivity, and increase employee morale in addition to relieving the drain on your travel budget. Reserving the travel budget for important events or vital meetings can also relieve a significant amount of stress on your office support personnel who need to cover for other absent employees.

Thinking Outside the Phone

While it’s easy to see the value of videoconferencing via cloud-based applications such as Blue Jeans
when it comes to meetings, there are also other tasks that can be best fulfilled by putting a face on them.

• Interviewing distant job applicants by videoconferencing.
  
• Engaging with customers via videoconferencing for customer service or support services.
  
• Engaging staff in tutorials, webinars, distance-learning, or other instruction.
  

Gigaom Research’s white paper on videoconferencing and collaborative engagement looks at the factors that help to determine success in videoconferencing. Ease-of-use is the prime factor in encouraging staff to make use of videoconferencing. While it is tempting to adopt a videoconferencing service with all the bells and whistles and every feature imaginable, there are times when this can in fact be counterproductive. Your videoconferencing application should be able to go live in just one or two clicks. Choosing your videoconferencing solution should also take into account all the different ways that your staff on and off-site will connect; a large room-based system may not have the flexibility that you want or need. Anyone who needs to initiate a meeting should be able to start one from any device, or be able to join with a simple click.

Get Up and Running

Choosing your videoconferencing service might at one time have required an IT team and a significant chunk of capital, picking a system to fit and flex with your business has never had more options available. When bringing on board any solution, from a mobile service like Blue Jeans to a large-room system, the savvy entrepreneur needs to keep in mind that solutions need to fit your business, not your business be made to fit the solutions. By keeping in mind that your business comes first will be able to find a satisfactory fit or all your needs.