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Web conferencing sounds good and the numbers look great. But how useful is it and what can you really expect to see happen to your bottom line?

A fresh look at video or many corporations, particularly those within the SME category, soaring fuel bills and a host of economic pressures means the cost of travel is becoming unsustainable. But for many SMEs, it is at just such times that the ability to reach new customers and support existing ones is most crucial.

This means identifying realistic and viable alternatives to travel which offer genuine savings without compromising on the quality of service offered. Increasingly, this means looking afresh at electronic and web-based collaboration tools.

Web conferencing – next generation collaboration

Many companies now offer web collaboration tools, without compromising its high levels of customer including big players such as Cisco Systems, which recently acquired WebEx’ WebOffice; Microsoft’s Live Meeting; Adobe’s Acrobat Connect; and Citrix Online’s GoToMeeting; as well as smaller niche players including DimDim, Glance and ReadyTalk. 

This new generation of web conferencing provides easy, efficient and affordable ways for small groups to meet, or for take customers through real examples to ensure they individuals to present to large audiences. It combines the internet with voice conferencing to enable online meetings, audience response tools and interactive features.

Web conferencing allows participants to see each other, but is more often chosen for its tools. It supports a very natural form of information sharing and collaboration, with all participants able to work on documents with the same participants able to work on documents with the same degree of access and control as if in the same room.

Similarly, it allows one person to deliver a full visual presentation to a large audience without presenter or viewer having to leave their office. Such presentations and demonstrations are also highly interactive if required, offering a 'hand-raising' feature for audience members, polling, and mini-surveys. And all, or aspects, of the session can be recorded for later replaying – particularly useful for presentations, demonstrations and training sessions. 

What can you do with it?

The applications of web conferencing are many and varied; in fact, anything which employees, colleagues and customers normally do in person can be supported, enabled or enhanced by some form of web-based interaction. It can be used for informal and even spontaneous chatting between two individuals; it can be used for high level presentations to or from senior executives; and equally for interaction with established and prospective customers.

“Because web conferencing supports the way people actually work, organisations using it tend to experience rapid organic uptake,” says Kelly Low, Sales Director Western Europe, Premiere Global Services (PGS). “They may subscribe for one particular reason, but once the service is available people find all sorts of other uses which support interaction and productivity in ways which were never part of the original vision.”

The major application areas for web conferencing are:

Demonstrations and preliminary sales presentations: Products or services can be demonstrated over a web link, either through videos showing a device in action;   interviews with existing customers; technical drawings or specifications; or highly focused explanations of particular features. This application enables sales professionals to progress discussions with prospective customers to quite an advanced stage of negotiation before having to travel, eliminating the cost of speculative calls. 

Training sessions: A single trainer can provide live interactive training on programs and tools to individuals in diverse locations, offering a complete range of facilities. These include live demonstrations; interactive desktop work (where the trainer follows the trainee’s progress, taking over their desktop where necessary); taking questions; prompting trainees who appear uncertain or are not participating actively; and recapping to ensure participants understand.

Non-technical training, such as sales training, can also be delivered in this way, and may be prepared as a package to which employees have access at their convenience. 

Presentations: One-to-many presentations on any topic using standard PowerPoint files can easily be delivered across the globe using web conferencing. Video and interactivity is an option but not always necessary. Typical applications include year-end figures; product launches; status updates; internal announcements; and quarterly results.

Research and development: Knowledge partnerships and research teams, where team members are often located in different geographic locations, stand to benefit enormously from web conferencing. Voice and video conferencing allows a constant informal chatting, while the whiteboard and other electronic applications allow participants to present their interim results, pose ‘what if?’ questions, review ongoing research, and hold regular meetings. 

What do you get back?

Cost savings: What is the bottom line saving which can be achieved through web conferencing? “It’s substantial,” says Simon Bushell. “Just consider the cost of flights. Two sales professionals, two return flights and probably a night’s accommodation, simply responding to a sales enquiry – which might come to nothing. That exercise could easily cost thousands, and at least, many hundreds. We estimate that standard usage of web conferencing during early negotiations can halve the costs of communicating within and between organisations. In some cases, where substantial travel is involved, this can rise to 80%.”

Efficiency and productivity: Web conferencing also provides significant efficiency and productivity gains. The ability to gather together key people in the same meeting, irrespective of their geographic location, means that minor discussions, informal team meetings and even major corporate announcements can take place within days – or even hours – of the triggering event. Regular co-workers can maintain a low-level chat whenever they need to; teams can stay up to date and respond quickly to information submitted by remote members; senior management can pass on key decisions to employees at the time of their choosing.

Auditability and management reporting: A key benefit to using web conferencing tools is that everything which passes across them can be recorded. This offers, firstly, a powerful ability to pass on information, whether a brief chat, product demonstration, training session or corporate announcement. With relatively little editing, detailed and important information can be made available for download by employees or customers in an instant. Secondly, the ability to record sessions provides a powerful auditing and reporting capability which enables management to track receipt and delivery of workflow items.

Work life balance and flexibility: Web conferencing makes the location of individuals almost irrelevant to their job role. With relatively little management input it becomes   easy to establish close and regular connections between employees on the road, at home, on a customer’s premises, or hot-desking around different office locations. This enables employers to offer genuine workplace flexibility to all employees on a much wider and more comprehensive scale. 

Reduced energy consumption: Less travel, reduced need for large meeting rooms, less need for office space. Increased use of web conferencing adds up to significant reductions in energy consumption, emissions and heating and lighting, which have a big impact on an organisation’s bottom line. Web conferencing can make a direct and specific contribution to green policies, making companies using this technology more appealing to work with, and ultimately more compliant with the increasing raft of green standards and legislation.