Running a business of any kind is a costly venture. From raw materials to utilities and rent, there are more ways to spend money in a business than you may have originally thought before your grand opening. One of those additional expenses that you may not think about at first is the cost of meetings. Regardless of whether you’re opening a business of your very own design and creation or you’re entering into a franchise agreement with an establish corporation, you will be meeting with people more often than you may think. Whether it’s finding new clients through active marketing, discussing orders and desires with current clients, or planning future products and growth methods with your fellow business associates, you will be meeting with other people. Depending on your particular circumstances, these meetings can be relatively cheap overall or they can be quite pricy, especially if you need to travel long-distance. But thankfully, there are methods to reduce and potentially eliminate any costs involved with meetings through the power of video conferencing technology.
Potential Costs Involved with Meetings
To fully understand how you can optimize your business’s meeting costs, you first need to understand what sort of costs might be involved in the first place. Again, the details and actual numbers on costs can vary widely depending on your business’s circumstances and other issues, but there are still some basic factors involved with meeting costs you need to be aware of.
The most obvious, and usually biggest cost involved with business meetings is that of traveling to the location. If it’s just an internal business meeting on the premises, then it’s not going to cost much, but if you have clients you need to visit face-to-face in another city, or even another country, then you'll need to deal with some significant travel costs.
As you might expect, those costs include any airfare, fuel costs, car rentals, and so on. But those aren’t the only forms of cost involved with traveling. Effective Meetings highly suggests thinking about things like lost productivity, furniture costs (very circumstance dependent), and any equipment you might have to rent or buy. You also shouldn’t forget all your hotel and food costs as well. Especially if part of your meeting may be going to a high-profile restaurant.
Another major problem that can arise with meetings, particularly routine staff meetings, is the time wasted when they are planned badly. Had 2 Know emphasizes the fact that meetings where little is accomplished and a lot of time is wasted are some of the most notorious and pervasive time sinks in the business world. Which means they are some of the biggest money sinks as well.
Reducing Costs Wherever Possible
When it comes to reducing the costs involved with your business meetings, video conferencing services like Blue Jeans Virtual Meetings can help alleviate a wide range of problems. As you might expect, travel, the most prominent and expensive factor involved with meetings, can be just about completely cut away by using video conferencing. Not only does it remove the need to buy plane tickets and rent cars, Biz Tech Magazine emphasizes the fact that video conferencing also drastically reduces time and money wasted on meeting preparation. Additionally, many video conferencing services offer document sharing capabilities and other useful tools for improving the effectiveness of your meetings. Instead of printing out however many itineraries, memos, agendas, and so on for your meetings, you can just share the files across the platform, saving money on paper, ink, toner, and other physical requirements for printing.
Additional Benefits of Video Conferencing
Removing the need to travel is a highly beneficial reason for adopting video conferencing in your business as a way to optimize your meeting’s costs and efficiency. But it isn’t the sole reason to get a video conferencing service like those offered by Blue Jeans. Street Directory lauds the fact that video conferencing provides a fantastic platform for coordination between managers and employees, contractors and clients, departments and executives, and any other combination of business personnel.
You’re probably very aware of the environmental issues that are continually growing in stature today. If you’ve ever tried to think of ways to help cut back on emissions and your carbon footprint, video conferencing can definitely help in that regard as well. According to a report by the Carbon Disclosure Project, as reported by Tree Hugger, adopting video conferencing could cut CO2 emissions by up to 5.5 million metric tons by 2020. Plus, it could save those businesses that adopt it up to $19 billion (cumulatively) in the same time frame.
Your Business and Video Conferencing
The fact is that only you can truly decide if video conferencing is an appropriate option for your business. But the major benefits it can provide, from cost savings to environmental impact, are undeniable. So while the particular circumstances of your business situation will be the driving factor regarding your decision, you should also think of the long-term, and how a short-term loss on an investment in video conferencing could pay off big time later.
