Video conferencing is a business solution whose time has come. Although the technology is far from new, in today's economic and environmental climate, it may be more suited to business than at any time since it was created.
Traditionally, video conferencing is used strictly internally for routine meetings among staff or between regular clients of a company. The scope for international dealings and high-level meetings through video conferencing has rarely been capitalised upon, as international businesses seek to maintain their prestige by booking expensive and often unproductive flights around the world for their executives. Video conferencing may save money and still let you talk to someone face to face, but for many businesses before the recession, keeping the image of success was more important than such mundane considerations.
However, in the wake of the economic recession this has dramatically changed. Companies, authorities and other organisations in both the public and private sector are under unprecedented pressure to save money and cut out unnecessary expenses. In the case of air travel for business, telephones had already made most physical meetings mostly superfluous for simply discussions of business. Now, video conferencing has done the same for work itself.
The first thing to note is that video conferencing is a much more reliable service than it was in the 1990's. Significant improvements to communications systems around the world have reduced communications lag, with the majority of businesses operating on broadband systems that can easily handle the real-time stream of data without too much loss in video quality. Handling live video streams from several users is well within the capacity of most business networks.
However, what's made video conferencing so attractive in recent years is the current climate. Not only in the economic sense of the word, but in the literal; climate change makes video conferencing a green solution as well as a cost-efficient one.
It’s not only good PR for your company to go green - it’s also good business sense. The rapid growth of the air travel industry has made it a prime target of climate change campaigns around the world. As governments around the world take increasingly overt action to meet reduced carbon targets in time for 2020, air travel will be one of the worst afflicted industries. By seeking to reduce carbon levels through financial incentives, governments are likely to introduce steeper environmental taxes on the industry. The airlines will offset their extra costs onto customers, and even those in business class will feel the sting.
Cutting your carbon footprint has more direct benefits for your business too. Although this has yet to be implemented fully in the UK, businesses and the private sector is one of the main areas where governments encourage cuts in carbon production. As a means of incentive, companies which make significant reductions in their carbon footprint and come under a certain bracket can benefit from a 'green bonus', effectively a significant tax break for fulfilling environmental obligations.
Conversely, if your company continues to produce masses of carbon wildly disproportionate to the nature of its business - for example, by flying execs to one side of the world and back again for an hour long meeting - then they can expect to be penalised. This will take the form of a significant tax increase, and could stretch to official regulation of your operations depending on the severity of the UK's final 'green policy' regarding commerce.
Whilst face to face physical meetings will always be an important part of business they have never really been essential. Often they are little more than an expensive formality - and the expense of that formality is only going to increase. Video conferencing provides a means of sustaining the personal aspects of business relationships and meetings - and with new technologies such as remote desktop access, collaborative hosting and many more, it can even be a more practical way of doing your day-to-day business
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