Online Meetings and Webinar Tools for Business Communication

The way companies choose to communicate with their people says a lot about what they value. Businesses wanting to get an edge on the competition look for solutions that save time and money. Among the most promising tools available for online meetings and webinars is video conferencing. There are host of video conferencing service providers, whi provide tools that let you collaborate seamlessly, where be it students on a study project, remote teams at work place or project teams across the globe.

The Different Industries That Use Video Conferencing for Communication

A number of different industries including client services, education, entertainment, financial services, healthcare, HR, IT, legal, manufacturing, marketing, non-profit, sales, and technology use video conferencing to bring people together. Imagine the learning opportunities available when teams brainstorm, demo products, and share information with one another through a secure, virtual environment.

Video Conferencing is also making great inroads into the education system enabling students, study groups and faculty to interface seamlessly.

Education customers include:

• 7 of the top 10 and 20 of the top 50 US colleges per US News & World Report.
• 63 percent of the Ivy League.
• Over 40 percent of top-25 MBA schools.
• Institutions in over 10 countries and 34 states.

Collaboration gives students, staff, and faculty across the globe the opportunity to meet, share, and learn from one another. This is done through a “high-speed internet backbone to help deliver the highest-quality online interactions.”

Collaboration Tools for Small and Large Businesses

Small businesses, in general, need all the help they can get to keep costs down in their first years of operations. Some of the ways they do that is eliminate spending on unnecessary hardware and software. That’s where cloud-based solutions come into play. Users of video conferencing apps bring their own device to meetings eliminating the need to purchase and install special equipment on employee computers to attend conferences.

Online meetings and webinars tools most commonly used regularly include Google Hangouts, which allows people to connect with up to 10 people from all over the world via voice call, video call, chat, and multimedia messages. Professional services offer video connections to 100 people at once, making them a preferred solution for large enterprises. Interoperability makes conferencing immediate and low-maintenance. A professional grade video conferencing service should support the following platforms—and more:

• Web Browsers
• Mobile Devices
• Room Systems (H.323 & SIP)
• Microsoft Lync
• Other Software-Based Video Clients Such as Cisco Jabber, Polycom RealPresence, LifeSize Softphone, Avaya Scopia
• Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) Audio

The video-conferencing provider adds connections with new endpoints frequently. Checking the website is the best way to know whether something is compatible or not. Email and phone support answers questions and provides insight on the best video conferencing solutions for a company.

Additional Collaboration Tools

Other collaboration tools used on a regular basis by small businesses include social media and Voice over Internet Phones (VoIP). Engaging with clients, customers, and prospects is easy with the right tools. Some of the more popular communication tools used today include OfficeSuite, GoToMeeting, Unified Meeting 5, Fuze Meeting, Zoho Meeting, WebEx, Campfire, Yammer, and TeamViewer.

Yammer is a private social network created by companies wanting to “unite employees and share internal information”. It’s similar in design to Facebook and offers similar capabilities including profile pages, status updates, likes, private messages, chat, comments, groups, and more. Uploading documents and photos makes sharing information easy. Users integrate it with Office 365 and SharePoint for an additional cost than the $3 a month per user service charge.

Some companies prefer the face-to-face meetings of yesteryears. They do not, however, enjoy the expense of traveling from one destination to the next for meetings. Video conferencing connects people from different areas of the globe by giving them a convenient location to meet without added equipment expenses either.

In Closing

Online meetings and webinars tools for business communication have educational value. When it comes to sharing pertinent information, nothing beats cloud-based video conferencing. A true game changer, it brings people in remote locations together and gives them the chance to “see” one another and collaborate without the added expense of travel. Video conferencing service companies provide solutions for small and large businesses alike.

With new technology, it’s hard to know what works for your company until you use it. Most online meeting and webinar tools offer a free trial to give users a chance to familiarize themselves with the software and applications. You can opt for a free trial from a service provider like Blue Jeans Network if you are considering investing in webinar and conferencing software to explore video and content sharing with up to 100 people at once. It even allows you to record meetings to share with others at a later date.