Article - May 2010

Don’t let the ash cloud your judgement when it comes to conducting business meetings

There is one particular service connected with serviced office centres that has proved to be a big hit recently, especially with the business community, mainly because of a recent set of unconnected events.

In the days before we had wider bandwidth speeds, if you wanted to tout your wares to potential clients, or conduct important meetings with other members of your management team in different locations around the world, you would literally have to take time out and get in a car, on a train or even travel overseas by plane.

As I’m sure you appreciate this can be an expensive business, and leaves the productivity of the business traveller under some question, as nice as it probably was to get away from the shackles of the office and the same routine for a while.

Well, ever since the global recession companies have had to tighten their belts and come up with more innovative ways of courting clients and conducting meetings.  Business people have been made to wake up to the fact that it is either their expensive trips that get cut, or it will be their jobs.

This has maybe been a blessing in disguise for business and industry though, as it means the popularity of one particular service has made meeting with clients and colleagues anywhere in the world easy. Video conferencing has come to the rescue and is quickly becoming the number one choice when it comes to conducting business meetings.

The benefits of video conferencing do not begin and end simply at the door of the corporate meeting though.  When you think about it properly, it has many different applications, all equally important for the advancement of the business world.  Many serviced office business centres have a meeting room with a video conferencing facility as standard.  This means that the service itself has been opened up to companies of many different sizes.

If you run a small business it may mean you need to outsource a lot of work to professionals scattered around the country.  Video Conferencing allows that connection to take place smoothly and results in a much more fluid transition of ideas.  Video conferencing also enables senior managers to conduct seminars and training with colleagues in other regional offices as well as doing presentations to board members.

The benefits and advantages of video conferencing were highlighted even further recently with the disruption to overseas travel by the ash cloud caused by an eruption of a volcano in Iceland.  This has brought home the need to adapt, often at short notice, and the companies which already had experience of this service under their belt proved to be better equipped at doing exactly that.

While some business people, who were set in their ways, were worrying about how and when they would get to their important business meetings, the companies in the know had already conducted theirs using video conferencing in a conveniently placed business centres.