Riverbank It management

Web conferencing is set to become a mainstream business tool, and soon. There are a lot of pressures driving us towards it:
• rising fuel costs
• volcanic ash reducing the opportunity and desire to travel (“will I get back?”)
• climate change pressures encouraging us to reduce travel • economic pressures to keep costs down
• the feeling that whatever changes the new government makes will not be good news

These pressures mean that change could come much faster than we anticipate. If you want to be in a position of leadership with your customers you need to be able to offer them virtual meetings over the web. The technology is all there, but there is a bewildering array of options and prices.

You can start simply and cheaply. All you need is a computer connected to the Internet, a headset and optionally a webcam. You can of course spend as much as you like, and £20,000 would buy you a very nice video conferencing suite.

You need to pick a web conferencing service provider. These range from free (eg Skype) to low cost (eg GoToMeeting) and upwards. In many respects you get what you pay for so choose carefully. Part of this choice depends on what type of service you need. Do you mostly want to have one-to-one or small group meetings, or do you want to run interactive seminars for small groups of people (a webinar), or do you have a large audience to present to (a webcast)?

Your final consideration is when and how to use web conferencing. This has much more to do with the nature of human interactions than technology. If you are meeting a potential new customer for the first time a face-to-face meeting makes a lot of sense. At the other end of the spectrum if you have a monthly progress-checking meeting with an established customer a web conference is almost certainly the way to do it. How far you travel along that spectrum is your choice. But the pressure to save time, money and the environment will most certainly be driving us further and faster towards web conferencing.

If you would like to find out more just ask for a web-based meeting to discuss how to get started.