Skyrocketing oil prices, the weakening dollar and a faltering economy are just some of the many reasons why virtual meetings are making more and more business sense today. Organizations of all sizes, with a particular focus on small to medium-sized businesses, are cutting back on travel and overall business expenditures to stave the effects of the financial downturn. However, at the same time, “face to face” business communications is perhaps more important than ever as businesses strive to maintain that personal touch when interacting with clients and prospects.

Fortunately, today, we have technologically proven video webconferencing featuring simultaneous, multi-window displays for fully interactive, live “face to face” meetings over the web. With these tried and true applications on the market, you can expand your current business communications services practice to include video webconferencing services.

Industry analysts continue to tout the burgeoning market as a real money maker. Gartner Group predicts the web conferencing market will expand at a rate of 23% through 2011. Frost & Sullivan agrees and believes the market will reach $2.9 billion by that same year. Even more shocking is the fact that web conferencing technology penetration rate is only in single digits (Frost & Sullivan), leaving tremendous business opportunity for you to sell into your client base!

This skyrocketing trajectory is based in large part on the maturity of the on-screen video quality. While some pixilation challenges do still exist when the picture window is expanded to full screen, long gone are the days of shaky, grainy video. Businesses can now host virtual business meetings online and simultaneously look into the eyes of all participants. New technologies allow for multiple on-screen windows displaying all participants on the conference. Imagine sitting at your computer and hosting a weekly team meeting with your staff that is spread throughout the globe. In this virtual meeting simulation environment, you can see everyone’s faces while they can see yours. You can even share video, presentations, pictures, files and more. The value proposition for jumping on a plane to conduct true face-to-face business is therefore waning.

Business Value of Video webconferencing

The business benefits of conducting such “virtual face-to-face” business interactions are growing day by day. Here are some of the most compelling ones:

Effective communication alternative – Nothing rivals true in-person communication, but video webconferencing does present a viable alternative that does afford greater relationship building capabilities than audio-only communications. It allows participants to at least simulate “face-to-face” interaction with staff, partners, customers, media and investors for a rich, interactive communications exchange. Furthermore, in the time it takes to travel to meet with a business contact, one could have infinitely more interaction time with the same individual in a simulated “in-person” environment.

Cost savings – Astronomical gas prices and the soaring costs of flying are another reason why video webconferencing makes more and more sense. It’s highly affordable price and near real-time functionality makes it a win-win for frequent-traveling executives and others who spend thousands on each and every business trip.

Time savings – In the time it takes for the average business person to pack, drive to the airport, wade through the security check-in and fly to his/her destination, one could easily conduct a virtual web-based meeting, complete a full day’s work and schedule three new web-based meetings over the telephone. The cost justification for business travel is being challenged by these virtual face-to-face interactions.

These and other compelling reasons make today’s video webconferencing a highly attractive, viable business communications solution for your customers. Moreover, its very affordable cost allows you to realize significant profit margins when reselling these types of services

Virtual Face-to-Face Interaction

Imagine yourself sitting down for your weekly team meeting and “chit-chatting” with a coworker on the side about something funny that happened with a customer last week. Once your boss calls the meeting to order, you each sit up straight in your seats and listen attentively. When it’s time to interject a comment, you raise your hand so as not to be intrusive, and wait to be acknowledged before speaking. This sounds like any old business meeting you’ve ever been in, correct? Well, envision this happening all from the comforts of your own home on your very own computer monitor.

The true sophistication of today’s feature-rich, high-quality video webconferencing solutions now make this virtual face-to-face interaction possible. Following are some of the more compelling capabilities of these solutions.

Content sharing – The conference host can share his/her desktop with all participants, stream video content for all to see, load a presentation for simultaneous viewing and more. He/she can even share an application on their desktop.

Recording and archiving – Imagine being able to document and even archive your business meetings for future playback.

Anonymous, real-time polling – On-screen, real-time polling features make it easy to solicit feedback anonymously from all participants of the meeting.

Your Business Opportunity

You have likely been selling long-distance and 3-way audio conferencing solutions to your business clients for years, and probably quite successfully. However, the market is evolving and so are the business opportunities available to you. With the emergence of web-based communications such as video webconferencing and even webinars and webcasting, you have an opportunity to up-sell your current client base and penetrate additional customer segments with an expanded array of offerings.

From one to many webcasting (broadcast via the Internet live or on demand) to webinars (online, interactive event) to video webconferencing, the business communications landscape is fertile ground to offer businesses inexpensive, efficient video communications. Regardless of whether it is for
training, sales and marketing communications, management meetings, and so on, these solutions can reduce travel time, foster interpersonal communications, reduce costs and help you expand your services business.

The time for web-based video communications is now. Act now, and don’t be left on the sidelines.