Conference Call Audio Web

I've been asked to write on the business benefits of teleconferencing. Let's get the obvious ones out of the way -- sure beats carrier pigeons.

 

 

Seriously, folks, it's great if things like the ability to get contributions from all your employees is important to your business. If not, well, you can save the money and make decisions in silos. Be sure to get a good price for your office furniture when you go out of business.

 

Few businesses need to be sold on the advantages of an Intranet -- you can post things for everyone to see, be reasonably sure everyone's on the same page, using the same version of the software, knows what to bring for the company picnic/softball game so you don't end up with 28 potato salads and three six-packs of beer, when what you really wanted, of course, was 28 six-packs and three potato salads.

 

Great. Now for that added something extra, invest in teleconferencing software to go along with your Intranet. It's not a huge deal -- if you don't feel like owning your own equipment, pay a monthly fee for the service, no downloading or hardware. Set it up right and you can do slide show presentations in Indianapolis and have it viewed in Istanbul and Indonesia.

 

Because, we're guessing here, maybe you have some people whose input you'd value, but they're not local to everyone else. I'd call it a "business benefit" to be able to pull everyone in on the same meeting regardless of location, but that's just me. You might be different.

 

And what about people who aren't even employees – yet? One tech company enjoys bringing its prospective hires to its location in Bozeman, Montana, to either sell them on the location ("Wow, this is sooooo beautiful...") or find out if it's not really for them ("Um, the snow doesn't melt until when?"). But companies can teleconference employment interviews and save lots of expense if the on-site tour's not such a big deal.

 

Chances are you've had some experiences with teleconferencing yourself. So you might have noticed that it's an inexpensive, efficient, effective way of sharing information and touching far-flung bases. And unless your brother-in-law runs a local hotel, you like that.

 

There are other add-ons -- you need to decide if it's worth it to you to add video, there are some situations where that makes sense, and others where, while it sounds neat, really don't add much business value to the event.

 

In Famous Writers' School they taught us that it's always a good idea to include a "Yes, but" paragraph or two in your columns, to present the argument against what you're writing about and deal with them. Well, if anyone can come up with a good reason why in the 21st century it makes sense not to have teleconferencing capabilities, other than "unmanned drones can lock in your cave location from satellites," I'm all ears.