The power and affordability of video conferencing is changing the way small and medium businesses operate.
So says Graeme Victor, CEO of telecommunications solutions company Du Pont Telecom, who maintains that the days of the nuclear business operation in which all employees operate from the same geographical location at all times are drawing to a close.
With the advance of broadband communications, growing numbers of employees are able to work from remote sites and home offices. Now, the ability of SMEs to accommodate a virtual workforce allows them to compete with larger businesses for the best available talent because now they can hire people for their skills, rather than their physical proximity to the office.
“However, video conferencing takes the ‘virtual business’ to a new level,” Victor says.
“Because it allows users to see one another—and read each other’s facial expressions and body language—video conferencing lets them interact as though they were in the same room. This makes the remote interaction much more productive than a simple phone call.”
Video conferencing helps strengthen dispersed employee teams. Because they are able to meet “face to face”, remote employees are more easily integrated into the organisation. It improves their ability to interact and collaborate with their colleagues.
In addition video conferencing makes it possible for SMEs to interact with customers and partners on a more personal and immediate basis without having to spend time and money travelling to far-flung meetings.
Victor emphasises that to get the most value from the technology, SMEs must pay attention to the video conferencing systems they deploy. Relying on free services like Skype may seem appealing, but issues around reliability, quality, management, security and control may make these applications less than desirable.
He offers the following checklist for SMEs to see whether they could benefit from business-strength video conferencing:
- Your employees, partners and customers are in more than one location.
- You need to cut travel costs and other expenses.
- You want to drive better collaboration in your business.
- You want to improve meeting usefulness and employee productivity.
- You are moving into a new location.
- You are already using consumer-grade services on their own.
“Video conferencing can pay for itself in a matter of months with savings on travel and related expenses – and that’s without taking account of benefits like promoting a greater feeling of inclusiveness among remote employees and greater productivity with employees using the time they would have wasted travelling, on actual work,” Victor concludes.