There are many new technologies and tools that promise the benefits of increased productivity. However most fail to be implemented with ease and get adopted by staff quickly. One area of technology that can be instantly applied to staff productivity is collaboration tools. The following overviews how collaboration tools can greatly affect three key areas - remote working, reduction of travel costs, and increasing the effectiveness of marketing and corporate communications.
When we say collaboration tools what do we mean? Typically in the telecommunications industry this means a set of tools or solutions based around conferencing and interactive media. This includes things like audio conferencing, video conferencing/bridging services, web conferencing, and video streaming/ web casting tools. There are others we can mention as well but for now let's focus on collaboration as different types of conferencing and live event tools. In the past, many companies would outsource these needs to a third party company and pay on a usage basis whenever they needed to use these tools. The costs were very high in the past as well so the use of the tools were often limited. Recently, many IPBXs can offer some conferencing services within the hardware itself so companies can use these features in-house without having to outsource as well as using in-house licensing of web conferencing tools. As a company defines its conferencing needs it's good to evaluate whether we truly want to outsource or handle these services in-house. In most cases, outsourcing offers more benefits and ease of use to staff that need to utilize these tools.
The focus of this discussion will be on where these tools can make the most impact to staff productivity. Also, my goal is to pinpoint applications of this technology that are easily adopted by staff and easy to use. The problem inherit in most technologies that look to improve performance is they are not widely adopted by staff so we never get the productivity gains that are expected.
Remote Working
The first area where these tools can be easily adopted is the ability to expand remote working capabilities. The idea of remote working is very prevalent in today's workplace. People are looking for more flexibility to work outside the office. Audio conferencing can easily help those that want to work remotely as it provides them with a great tool for holding virtual meetings that can be set up on the fly and utilized basically anywhere someone can get to a phone. What makes this tool even more relevant for remote workers today is the fact that just about everyone has a cell phone or a smart phone and can connect to these types of calls easily. By using audio conferencing remote workers can participate in group meetings, connect with customers when participants might be at different locations, and connect with vendors or other third parties to improve communication. The basic idea is that you have an 800 number that you can distribute to anyone you want to connect with and then you give them a passcode so they can dial into a specific audio bridge where everyone can talk together.
The benefits of using these services is the audio quality is better when dealing with multiple parties than trying to connect the parties yourself either through three way calling or through your own PBX's conference bridge tools. This means hundreds of users can be supported on one call. The other advantage is that you don't tie up the business lines of your company when you use conferencing services by a third party as opposed to doing it in-house where line capacity and conferencing ports becomes an issue. Lastly, the cost of third party audio conferencing has come down dramatically in the last couple of years which makes it much more accessible for companies to utilize. Many companies can purchase these services for as little as 2 cents a minute which is what their typical LD rates are today. Not only does this improve how remote workers communicate but it keeps their costs in line with typical company cost centers for communication.
The second easy collaboration tool to implement for remote working is web conferencing. When combined with audio conferencing these tools can again increase the reach and effectiveness of remote working. Web conferencing is used across many companies today and has been widely popularized by tools like "Web Ex" or "Go To Meeting". Although these services can be utilized in conjunction with audio bridges they can be utilized by themselves as well as a learning tool for example. Web conferencing takes conferencing services to another level as we can now share video, presentations, take polls, and handle questions by utilizing our laptops or tablet devices. Here again the remote worker gets the advantage of being able to conduct meetings and business from anywhere as long as they have a portable computing device and a decent Internet connection. With being able to show one's desktop and presentations, web meetings offer much more features than a simple audio bridge and can be used for many purposes. You can demo a product or solution, host a meeting, provide commercial teaching, offer training, or provide support to your staff or customers.
Web conferencing used to be very expensive as well but since there is much more competition now pricing has also come down significantly. Certainly companies still have to make an investment in this type of service but the productivity they gain is much more visible and provides great ROI. It's easy for staff to adopt web conferencing because most workers have been exposed to some type of web meeting in the past whether for HR purposes or simply for a business meeting. Most software or web solutions that support these tools are user friendly with most being intuitive to use. Practically I see web meetings being most effectively used for demonstrations to customers who are in remote locations or abroad, teaching internally and externally throughout your organization, as well as a great support tool for providing customer services to client or internal staff when they need to see what you are doing on their own screens (i.e. IT support). When utilizing web conferencing tools and audio conferencing a sales person or executive cannot not only work remotely with ease but they can participate in several meetings per day even if they are travelling making the most of their time.
Reduction of Travel Costs
This brings up our second key area where collaboration tools make a huge impact - the reduction of travel costs. When properly utilized conferencing services can eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings especially when those meetings require a lot of travel and/or many participants. For example, if a company can provide training to hundreds of sales reps over a web meeting instead of flying them all out to their headquarters or having to fly trainers to various offices they can save on travel expense. If a regional manager can conduct several meetings with staff or other managers without having to travel to each site it eliminates a lot of wasted travel time. This has become increasing important as gasoline prices and airline flights has risen in cost. The need for enterprises to reduce travel cost is increasing and conferencing tools help bridge the gap on how to get multiple groups to effectively communicate with each other.
Of course there are some elements lost in a meeting when not meeting face-to-face. One of the ways to ensure that non-verbal communication is not lost is to invest in video conferencing or telepresence. True high definition video conferencing was very expensive in the past and needed a lot of bandwidth in order to work properly. These days bandwidth is becoming much cheaper and more available while the equipment needed to perform live video conferencing is much less expensive. There are many more competitors for such hardware and often many options to choose from based on a company's need plus budget. Utilizing video conferencing and telepresence the look and feel of a true business meeting can be captured and recorded. This again reduces unneeded travel time especially for companies with foreign operations. Although most companies can afford decent video conference equipment at locations they sometime lack video bridges to connect this equipment. This typically is needed when more than one site needs to be on a video conference at one time. Video bridges can be very expensive and are better managed in the cloud (private network) than handled in-house. Many conferencing vendors offer video bridges on a pay for play service so they can be utilized when needed. When comparing the usage cost of this service against travel costs its easy to justify plus the vendor now takes care of a lot of the set-up and technical issues surrounding supporting video conferencing making it easier on users.
Increasing Effectiveness of Marketing and Corporate Communications
A third key area for collaboration is to increase the effectiveness of marketing and corporate communications to larger audiences. What I mean by this is creating a more engaging environment for a large number of customers or internal staff by creating virtual events without the needed resources associated with live in-person events. One of the tools that can help improve your needs for marketing or corporate events is web casting. The ability for companies to use web casting instead of live events offers them the ability to reduce their costs while keeping the effectiveness of their communication or messaging. An example could be a new product launch. Maybe your customers expand a vast geography and it would be extremely costly to launch a live product event in every major city you did business. You could use collaboration tools like web casting or web streaming to create live video based events where many participants could view your communications at once. The benefit of these services is the ability to conduct polls, gather registrant information, and handle Q & A throughout the web cast. These tools also offer a very effective medium as various videos and media can be merged together. Plus a web cast can be recorded to be viewed later on if the participant couldn't make the live event.
This eliminates the need for costly venues, travel, food service, and hospitality costs all while still increasing your brand and marketing effectiveness. Web casting can also be used for commercial teaching, training, or company wide communications like investor events. Lastly they can be used by executive management to communicate corporate messaging across large user groups in multiple countries with the addition of support for multiple languages. Again the benefits are the reduction in costs to reach audiences, the effectiveness of the medium, and the ability for the audience to easily interact. While live events often involved a lot of logistics in order for them to be effective, web casts can be set up much easier and can be turned around quickly. This eases the burden on marketing and corporate communication departments for getting specific messaging or branding out to large audiences.
In summary, companies that start to utilize various collaboration tools can reduce their costs and increase the effectiveness of their communications. They can easily implement these solutions so that staff can be more productive wherever they need to work and in less time.
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