Video Conferencing

How to succeed in business with a virtual office

December 28, 2008 - 3:11 pm

A virtual office can drastically reduce your outgoings by eliminating the need for office space rent and the costs associated with having your employees onsite. However, there are a few things you need to ensure before you go down the path of using a virtual office solution for your business.

Firstly, remember that when your staff are using a virtual office to work for you they won’t be onsite, so you won’t be able to keep regular checks on them. Therefore you need to ensure than you hire the right people, people who are self motivated.

Studio 18 Group’s Deb Beck says of virtual office employees:

Self-starters and self-disciplined–it’s definitely lonely working in a vacuum, and they need to be able to deal with this.

When you hire new staff who will be working for you via a virtual office you need to be supremely confident in them as employees. It’s also important that you set realistic KPIs and processes to ensure that you’re keeping track of virtual employee’s progress. Using video conferencing facilities is a good way of checking in with remote workers.

It’s also important to have strong and regular lines of communication. You need to know exactly what your employees are working on and what stage they are at in their projects. Regular video conferencing meetings are a useful way of doing this.

Save the Planet using Videoconferencing

September 18, 2008 - 7:28 pm

The World Wildlife Fund and European Telecommunications Network Operators Association released in a study the staggering fact that if only five to thirty per cent of business trips carried out in Europe were substituted with videoconferencing between 5.6 to 33.5 million tones of carbon emissions could be saved.

The Costs of Telepresence Technology

June 27, 2008 - 11:00 am

To date the take up of Telepresence in the serviced office industry has been slow due to the phenomenal cost of this latest telecommunications technology.

The larger players in the market include Polycom, Tandberg, telris, Cisco and HP and they have found it challenging to sell the new technology on large numbers. However this is definitely not down to a lack of quality. This revolutionary technology boasts high definition imagery and high quality sound. It is set to rock the way businesses and workers communicate with each other.

To give you an idea of numbers the Halo Collaboration Studio from HP costs a massive £277,000.00 per site. Close behind is Cisco at £150,000.00 per site and POlycom at £100,000.00. It’s not an official figure but its estimated that 250 units have been sold to a cross section of the five main providers. There is a reluctance to reduce costs as this technology is so advanced however there are rumours that HP are thinking of dropping theirs. There’s a possibility that telepresence needs some more PR to drive demand. The hope is that once people hear about it they will drive serviced office providers to invest in this groundbreaking technology. The benefits of videoconferencing on time, costs and productivity are well known and telepresence promises to deliver this and more.

Video conferencing

June 24, 2008 - 12:32 pm

Do you find yourself stuck in traffic for hours at a time just to attend a one hour meeting? Is it a struggle to get people to attend at the same time, same day? Arranging meetings can be a drain on resources, time and money. Video conferencing offers a cost effective solution and can be accessed at a serviced office location anywhere in the UK or indeed across the globe. So what are the benefits?

Increasing productivity

Rather than wasting time travelling to a meeting videoconferencing can enable people to meet quickly and efficiently. Its no longer a case of just looking at faces on a screen these days either. Most videoconferencing facilities offer you access to share any information type via video communication. This makes outcome of the meeting faster and more effective keeping you one step ahead of the competition.

Saving Money

Another advantage is the cost benefit due to reduced travel costs. You’re not paying people to wait in check-in queues or sit in traffic.

Saving Time

A videoconference solution prevents downtime and will be appreciated by staff who no doubt return jaded and sluggish if they’ve had to do a run-around trip the day before for a meeting. It is an excellent tool when dealing with international colleagues and clients and is a great way of enhancing relationship with contacts that are remote from you.