Video Conferencing
If you regularly need to travel large distances for business meetings, then video conferencing could be a viable alternative.
Video conferencing can enable two or more individuals in different locations to have meetings at short notice. Time and money that used to be spent in traveling can be used to have short meetings. Technology such as VoIP can be used in conjunction with desktop videoconferencing to enable low-cost face-to-face business meetings without leaving the desk, especially for businesses with wide-spread offices.
Video conferencing uses telecommunications of audio and video to bring people at different sites together for a meeting. This can be as simple as a conversation between two people in private offices (point-to-point) or involve several sites (multi-point) with more than one person in large rooms at different sites. Besides the audio and visual transmission of meeting activities, videoconferencing can be used to share documents, computer-displayed information, and whiteboards.
The technology used in video conferencing could be a dedicated system; however this can be expensive and only tend to be used by larger organisations. For small businesses, using your PC with software add on, a webcam and microphone will usually suffice. High speed Internet connectivity has become more widely available at a reasonable cost and the cost of video capture and display technology has decreased. Consequently video teleconference systems based on a webcam, personal computer system, software compression and broadband Internet connectivity have become affordable for small businesses.
Using a video conferencing facility can be considered when:- a live conversation is needed;
- visual information is an important component of the conversation;
- the parties of the conversation can't physically come to the same location; or
- the expense or time of travel is a consideration.