Internet / E-Commerce - Videoconferencing II : The Advantages..

Advantages

In this post, I will let you know 3 of the advantages of Video Conferencing to us.

1. Significant Travel Savings

The constant climb of air travel prices barely seems like news anymore, and smart organizations are finding alternatives.  Not only is video conferencing a direct replacement for many in-person business trips, but because there is virtually no cost to add additional key employees to a virtual meeting, you can easily bring the right team together.

2. Improved Communication

Video conferencing restores many visual cues necessary in long distance communication. Social psychologist Ray Birdwhistell demonstrated years ago that non-verbal communication constitutes about two-thirds of the communication between people. For example, eye contact enables us to ‘get’ a message from a speaker that voice communication alone may not successfully convey, creating essential social bonds and shared understandings. Audio conferencing and e-mail lose these non-verbal cues.

3. Increased Productivity

Everyone has experienced the classic never ending “conference call from hell,” and video conferencing all but eliminates those problems, even from large group calls.  Important meetings are shorter and more effective.  Video conferencing users report saving a minimum of two hours a week with the technology. The interactivity of group collaboration and document sharing greatly increases productivity.

Conferencing Quality

All of the pros and cons of video conferencing hinge on quality. Early versions of video conferencing quality had uneven clarity of the audio and video broadcast. Today, these problem still remain for low-end and consumer systems.  However, state-of-the-art technology now delivers excellent, reliable audio and video quality, making this one-time disadvantage one of perception, not reality.