How Video Conferencing is Saving Companies Travel Bill

Who wouldn't want to be sitting in the business class lounge of an airport sipping champagne and eating a delicious dinner? Unfortunately, the reality of business travel is rarely as glamorous. For many senior executives, business travel is actually pretty dreary. The rise of video conferncing systems has in part been due to executives wanting to cut down on the time spent travelling to meetings that could just as easily be conducted virtually.

It's not just executives that need to travel to meetings, all grades of office employees find that visiting clients is becoming more and more necessary, particularly when the economy goes sour.

All this adds up to an enormous headache for the accounts department. It's difficult to justify the high cost of business travel in a recession, even if it is necessary. One of the solutions to cut back on this heavy expense is to use video conferencing.

Luckily, the technology has advanced now so much that it's possible to conduct a live, face-to-face web conference on the internet without the massive cost of installing traditional video conferencing equipment. This allows it to be used by people across an entire organisation, not just the senior board-level.

A typical web conference will allow many people to connect to a single 'meeting room' which is hosted online. Microsoft's Live Meeting works by hosting one of these virtual meeting rooms on their server, and allowing access to anyone with an internet connection and either the Live Meeting software, or a web browser with Java enabled.

Participants can then enjoy the benefits of web conferencing with additional collaboration tools. They can, for instance, present material, edit spreadsheets and documents together, and record training sessions. This information can then be stored in the conference center and be made accessible to anyone who has participated in the meeting.

This is great not only for conducting meetings with colleagues in other locations, but also for meeting suppliers and discussing on-going work with clients. It might not replace real-life meetings with prospects or highly-valued clients, but it can certainly relieve much of an organisation's unnecessary travel.

Kinobo is an online retailer of computer electronics and software. We supply customers with webcams, microphones, headsets and other video conferencing equipment. We also offer a free trial of Microsoft Live Meeting web based video conferencing.