BeingThere video conferencing Software

Fact: You can now literally meet ‘face to face’ via video conference with stakeholders just about anywhere in the world without leaving your desk. This is a significant advancement and its implications are worth thinking about for a few minutes.

Below is a 2 minute exercise that I hope is of use to you in contemplating the relevance and opportunities ubiquitous laptop video conferencing presents to your business:

1) Make list on a piece of paper of your key relationships that make your business tick (i.e. top 3 clients, suppliers, staff and contractors)

2) Next to each relationship describe how important meeting ‘face to face’ is to the relationship and also why you meet face to face (e.g. selling, building trust, managing, brainstorming, coaching/counseling etc).

3) Next consider how being able to run regular quality ‘face to face’ meetings via video conference with the person(s) involved would benefit each relationship (especially the people you can only see every 3 months). Some examples might be:

- Increased trust leads to increase in sales

- Increase of geographic reach leads to increased size of addressable market

- Reduced travel costs results in reduced cost of service delivery

- Clarity of communication leads to a reduction in error related costs

- Zero travel time fast-tracks meeting and decision making cycles for global teams

If you have found are some exciting possibilities in the above exercise and would like to find out more, please contact us to discuss what is possible .

In times of economic growth, efficient use of staff time plays a major role in a business’ ability to expand with resource industry.

For businesses planning growth strategies and how they can capture emerging business opportunities with the inevitable shortage of time and staff, it is worth noting advancements in video conferencing which offers the resource industry a more cost and time effective way of managing your business.

The technology now enables businesses to host high definition ‘face to face’ meetings with remote offices and staff, external suppliers and clients regardless of where they are located for around the cost of a telephone conference . All you need is a PC, webcam and a good internet connection.

So how does video conferencing add value to business?

Outstanding Customer Service

The recent improvements in quality and reduction in entry costs makes video conferencing more accessible than ever, opening up exciting opportunities for business to provide outstanding service to their clients. An example of this might be making technical experts available for ‘face to face’ video meetings with the clients regardless of where they are located.

Save Time

An issue which plagued businesses during the last resource boom was achieving more with limited staff resources, which boiled down to making the most efficient use of staff time. With reduced costs and ease of setup, it is worth considering how much unproductive travel time could be saved if 1 in every 3 meetings could be run via video conferencing.

Time poor Executives and Regional Managers are now able to participate in quality ‘face to face’ project, board, client and on-site meetings directly from their office.

Train and coach your staff on-site

Video conferencing provides a very time efficient method of delivering ongoing training and coaching to staff without taking them off site – everything from daily one on one session’s to weekly group sessions. Not being bound by travel means that training can be delivered a series of short weekly sessions which more closely matches adult learning patterns delivering better results.

Given the significant improvements in video conferencing, it is well worth considering the opportunities it presents to business’ in the resource industry that are looking to do more with less, in light of the impending time and skills shortage of the resources boom.