One of the most popular and useful features of a hosted cloud system is video conferencing, which allows employees to connect and collaborate face-to-face, regardless of where they are located.
Here are 7 reasons why your business — and your employees — will love hosted cloud video conferencing, and wonder how you ever managed to survive without it:
1. Dramatically Reduce Travel Costs
Business Travel News’ Corporate Travel Index study reveals that the average cost of business travel in the U.S. — including meals, car rentals, hotels, and incidentals — has climbed to a whopping $325 per day. And this doesn’t even include the flight!
While video conferencing won’t eliminate all business travel, it can certainly reduce the need for employees to leave the office in order to connect with colleagues in other areas. Not only will this save thousands of dollars a year, but it’s a big win for employees who don’t have to trudge through busy airports and wait for (seemingly endless) flight delays.
2. Keep Remote Workers in the Loop
One of the biggest challenges that remote workers face, is that they can sometimes feel alienated and cut-off from in-office staff who are closer to the action. Video conferencing lets remote workers connect with their in-office colleagues as if they were basically in the same room.
3. Record Conferences for Reference and Record Keeping
How many times have employees overlooked something they covered in a previous in-person meeting? Or how often do supervisors and managers who did not attend a meeting wish they could have a reference to confirm that key messages were conveyed, and specific employees made a relevant contribution? Well, with video conferencing this is easily possible. In this sense, video conferencing is even better than reality!
4. No More “Who is On the Call?”
One of the most tedious and inefficient rituals of traditional audio conference calls is not knowing who is actually on the call. At the same time, automatic announcements (e.g. “George has joined the conference”) are hardly a solution for large gatherings, since the announcements can go off every few seconds. With video conferencing, nobody needs to guess who is on the call, or be told who has joined. They simply see who has arrived (and who has not) with their own eyes.
5. Make Sure Participants are Paying Attention.
Another major advantage of video conferencing vs. traditional audio conference calls, is that conference hosts can see who is engaged and paying attention, and who is checking email, staring out the window, or maybe even sleeping! This makes video conferences much more productive, and they take less time as well — which is a win for everyone.
6. Avoid Background Noise
Vacuum cleaners, people singing “happy birthday to you”, cats…the list of background noises that are overheard on a traditional audio conference go on and on. And even if participants have audio controls, they often don’t use them to mute themselves (or don’t know how to use the controls in the first place). With video conferencing, the power to mute and even remove participants is with the conference host, who can take care of either task with the click of a button.
7. No More Waiting for Latecomers to Arrive
Who hasn’t been stuck on a traditional audio conference call waiting for latecomers to show up? The awkward small talk, the “oh no every minute this starts late means a minute it will end late” anxiety, and so on. With video conferencing, hosts can use a conference bridge to dial a participant directly and easily bring them into the conference.
At Carolina Digital Phone, our state-of-the-art hosted cloud phone system is built to support video conferencing. We can equip your business with:
- Conference Room Systems that feature an 18x optical zoom HD camera, 360-degree omnidirectional pickup microphone array, and (optional) touchscreen interface connected to a projector or compatible TV.
- Feature-rich IP Videophones that have built-in HD screens, cameras and microphones, and are perfect for enabling staff to connect face-to-face when using a Conference Room System is not possible, available or desired.
- Desktop and Mobile Apps that allow employees to start or join video conferences from any desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone — which is ideal for remote workers, field staff, and other “road warriors”.