DownUnderOnTop

For more than a decade video-conferencing has been available in various guises. Until relatively recently most solutions used bonded ISDN lines, as internet connections did not provide sufficient, reliable bandwidth. With the advent of ADSL, though, came cheap, high-speed internet access for all. Good quality video conferencing can work with as little as 384kbps of bandwidth – and even the most basic ADSL products offer 512kbps upstream!

‘This is all well and good’, I hear your cry, ‘but why should you invest in this technology? It’s expensive isn’t it?’ – Let’s do some basic calculations:

Let’s say you have offices in London and Manchester, there are 6 people in the sales teams at each office and they meet up at either office once a month. Let’s also assume that they have an environmental conscience and go two-to-a-car; and that they are all dedicated employees happy to work an 11-hour day to avoid you incurring the cost of hotel rooms for the night:

3 cars x 207 miles x 2 ways x £0.40 per mile allowance = £496.80 per meeting
12 meetings per year = £5961.60

Let’s also take into account the time wasted while travelling, assuming a basic salary of £20k:

6 people x 2 ways x 3.5 hours (a conservative estimate!) = 42 hours
£20000 pa / 52 weeks / 37.5 hours per week = £10.26 per hour
£10.26 per hour + 13% employers NICs = £11.59
£11.59 per hour * 42 lost hours = £486.77 per meeting
12 meetings per year = £5841.23

So we can see that the total spent on these meetings (excluding any lost sales due to appointments that can’t be met) is no less than £11802.83 per year!!! Even if they use company cars, the amount works out to £7331.63! Meetings are not cheap!

This is where video conferencing comes in. Whilst, yes, it could be good for morale and team building to meet regularly, does this need to be every month?

Modern video-conferencing solutions can happily accommodate a team of this size – with auto-panning cameras picking up whoever speaks, good quality sound, clear pictures and minimal lag/latency. They can even display input from a laptop or PC. And in this example, if the physical meetings were reduced to bi-annual events, the equipment at each office could pay for itself within a year.

Not only do video conferencing set-ups make meetings more cost-effective, they also make them more convenient. Sharing progress, brainstorming, and problem-solving all become a matter of a moment to arrange and can involve the whole team!

So don’t write off video-conferencing as a solution based solely on price – consider the benefits to your business of instant communication and sharing.

Gear 7 can supply Lifesize’s full HD video conferencing systems and we are members of Polycom’s partner programme.

I use and highly recommend GVO Conference Video Conferencing Software. Taking time when choosing a provider GVO Conference Video Conference Software is my recommendation.

Comments are closed.