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Why Video Conferencing is Essential for Your Business: 10 Key Benefits

A group of people having a video call discussing Onpage.

Whether your business has remote workers, offices in multiple cities, or teams of professionals who travel often, video conferencing is key to keeping everyone on the same page. 

 

 

What is video conferencing?

Video conferencing is an online meeting between two or more participants communicating in real time over an internet connection. It blends audio and video to create a virtual face-to-face conversation where you can see others’ expressions while hearing what they’re saying—whether they’re using a laptop, mobile device, or conference room meeting webcam.

 

With the power to bring people together, simplify collaboration, improve efficiency, and help you save money, provides advantages for businesses of any size. 

10 reasons to use video conferencing

If you haven’t already adopted video conferencing, you’re probably thinking about it. As you weigh your options and decide whether it’s right for you, let’s take a look at 10 advantages of video conferencing:

1. Improves communication 

Whether you’re a small business owner or part of a large company, clear communication is critical to understanding projects, setting expectations, and meeting your goals. Video conferencing can help: A report by Forbes tells us that “humans process visual far faster and more aptly than text or audio.” And, relative to audio conferencing, “62 percent of executives agree that video conferencing significantly improves the quality of communication. In addition, 50 percent of those surveyed believe video conferencing also improves the degree of understanding.” With the ability to maintain a visual on other people in the meeting, participants will be more engaged, multi-task less, and set themselves up to process and understand more clearly.

2. Helps build relationships 

When you meet face-to-face, you can make a personal connection, pick up on verbal and non-verbal cues, and begin to build trust. And while there may be critical connections that you’ll need to travel for, video conferencing can help bridge the gap for all other meetings, while still helping you connect on a personal level with customers, teammates, and remote workers alike. For the skeptics among us, research shows that video conferencing is widely regarded as a useful tool and helps people build relationships inside and outside their companies.

3. Saves money

By giving your team a simple way to meet face-to-face, video conferencing delivers a collaborative, “in-person” experience without the expense of travel. That means no airfare required for training, conferences, big meetings, and all gatherings in between—so you can focus precious resources elsewhere. Plus, with the power to meet virtually, you can hire the best talent and allow them to work anywhere. And once you get comfortable with the technology, it may even inspire you to expand your remote workforce—so you can bring on top talent no matter where they live and gain an advantage over your competition. A comprehensive solution like Microsoft Teams provides video, audio, chat, screen sharing, recording, and more under a single UI. This helps you avoid juggling multiple vendors or wasting valuable time switching between services or troubleshooting issues.

4. Saves time

Because you can meet virtually anywhere, video conferencing technology allows you to save travel time—so you can spend less time getting to meetings and more time focused on more pressing work. But it can also help you save time in other ways. By hosting a meeting rather than working through an issue via email, it can eliminate the disruption of a barrage of messages, reduce confusion (and the need for lengthy discussions), and get your team aligned faster, helping to reduce the amount of time it takes to complete projects or tasks.

5. Streamlines collaboration

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The best video conferencing technology delivers more benefits than just a way to see and hear your team. It offers features like screen sharing and real-time document editing, so it’s easy for everyone to examine the files they need, contribute to the discussion, and create a culture of across your business. With an engaged workforce working together whether they’re in the office, on the road, sometimes remote, or always at home, you’ll make faster, more informed decisions with input from across locations and time zones.

6. Improves efficiency 

  Clearer communication by way of verbal and non-verbal cues, screen sharing, real-time collaboration, and ability to join from virtually anywhere makes video conferencing a more efficient use of everyone’s time. Ending meetings at established times also helps keep people on time and on topic, and best of all, video conferencing is as flexible you want it to be—so it’s easy to quickly jump into a brainstorm, answer a customer question, start a spontaneous virtual huddle, or set up a regular check-in.

7. Increases productivity 

Because video conferencing makes it easy to collaborate on documents in real-time, you won’t have to contend with long email chains, lost messages, in-document comments, and version control issues—all of which can cause confusion, misunderstandings, and delays.

By having the power to hop on a call and collaborate in real-time, you can ensure everyone has a voice, all feedback gets incorporated, and questions are answered immediately. And you can quickly gather as a team to make sure that everyone understands the project before leaving the meeting. Plus, because video conferences eliminate the need to travel, your team can devote more time to more important work or life matters, even on days when they have meetings. It’s how the modern workforce would rather work—with more flexibility, mobility, and time back in their busy day.

8. Makes scheduling meetings easier 

  If members of your team travel regularly, scheduling meetings can be a challenge. But with video conferencing, they can join in from practically anywhere, including taxis, hotel rooms, airports, their home offices, and more. And because they can do it using almost any device, scheduling face-to-face meetings and keeping everyone up to date is easier. With more manageable calendars and control of how their workday flows, teams can spend more time pursuing opportunities for business growth, and remote workers are easier to engage and retain.

9. Creates consistent, accurate records 

 When you host an in-person meeting or an audio-only call, taking notes usually falls to someone on your team. And given the fast pace of conversations, details can easily fall through the cracks. But with video conferencing technology that also helps you securely record and transcribe , you can keep all the details intact. Not only that, but you can refer back to them when questions arise and share the session with those who couldn’t attend, which makes it easy to set everyone up for success.

10. Enables live events 

Whether you want to connect with your entire team, your complete client roster, or the public, video conferencing tools can help. With the power to share your message visually, these tools give you the ability to host panel discussions, webinars, product launches, and more—for audiences in your office or around the world.

Meet from anywhere with anyone with video conferencing

 

The advantages of video conferencing are clear—and many. To benefit most from all the ways video conferencing improves communication and empowers collaboration across your business, explore Microsoft Teams.

You can schedule online meetings with people inside and outside of your organization, using high quality audio and video that make it easy to work together in real time.

The Microsoft 365 team is focused on sharing resources to help you start, run, and grow your business.

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