Video Conferencing Return on Investment

For more than a decade video-conferencing has been available in various guises. Until relatively recently most solutions used bonded ISDN lines, as internet connections did not provide sufficient, reliable bandwidth. With the advent of ADSL, though, came cheap, high speed internet access for all. Good quality video conferencing can work with as little as 384kbps of bandwidth - and even the most basic ADSL products offer 512kbps upstream!

'This is all well and good', I hear your cry, 'but why should you invest in this technology? It's expensive isn't it?' - Let's do some basic calculations:

Let's say you have offices in London and Manchester, there are 6 people in the sales teams at each office and that they meet up at either office once a month. Let's also assume that they have an environmental conscience and go two-to-a-car; and that they are all dedicated employees happy to work an 11 hour day to avoid you incurring the cost of hotel rooms for the night:

3 cars x 207 miles x 2 ways x ?0.40 per mile allowance = ?496.80 per meeting
12 meetings per year = ?5961.60

Let's also take into account the time wasted while travelling, assuming a basic salary of ?20k:

6 people x 2 ways x 3.5 hours (a conservative estimate!) = 42 hours
?20000 pa / 52 weeks / 37.5 hours per week = ?10.26 per hour
?10.26 per hour + 13% employers NICs = ?11.59
?11.59 per hour * 42 lost hours = ?486.77 per meeting
12 meetings per year = ?5841.23

So we can see that the total spent on these meetings (excluding any lost sales due to appointments that can't be met) is no less than ?11802.83 per year!!! Even if they use company cars, the amount works out to ?7331.63! Meetings are not cheap!

This is where video conferencing comes in. Whilst, yes, it could be good for morale and team building to meet regularly, does this need to be every month?

Modern video-conferencing solutions can happily accommodate a team of this size - with auto-panning cameras picking up whoever speaks, good quality sound, clear pictures and minimal lag/latency. They can even display input from a laptop or pc. And in this example, if the physical meetings were reduced to bi-annual events, the equipment at each office could pay for itself within a year.

Not only do video conferencing set-ups make meetings more cost effective, they also make them more convenient. Sharing progress, brainstorming, problem solving all become the matter of a moment to arrange and can involve the whole team!

So don't write off video-conferencing as a solution based solely on price - consider the benefits to your business of instant communication and sharing.

Gear 7 can supply Lifesize's full HD video conferencing systems and we are members of Polycom's partner programme.

For more information, visit http://www.gear7.co.uk

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Is Your Advertising Producing A Positive Return?

If you're worried about whether your system's advertising and marketing strategies are producing any effective results, then you can measure them using call tracking. This unique tool enables smart business owners to find out whether they are making the desired impact on their potential customers or target market or whether they are doing something horribly wrong!

Appeasing The Customer

Call tracking is something that enables us to increase the satisfaction that our customers experience every time they decide to place a call to you. If your customer is satisfied and made to feel important enough, chances are, they'll soften towards your product and you, my friend are going to be a rich man!

One of the things which a lot of companies do these days is, they install call tracking and after their client and customer care executive have had a transaction or a conversation, a message is sent to them asking for their feedback on the customer care executive's behavior. Now the very act of doing that makes your client feel important which is, if you ask me, a stroke of genius.

Your client is made to feel like their opinion matters and if your client feels important then chances are, you've already won your battle. We all know that the first rule of marketing is to appease the client, after all, don't we?

What is more, this unique tool will enable you to repeat this experience over and over again with other clients, so you can get a complete picture of what it is that your clients and customers are looking for.

Leads and More

Call tracking is a great way to move ahead if advertisement tracking is what you're aiming for. Set up phone numbers and assign them to specific ads - on billboards, on the internet and using various other methods. When clients dial these phone numbers, they will, quite obviously be forwarded to your business systems, but you'll get to do a lot more than just tracking phone numbers. You, my friend, will find out where these inquiries came from - the source, so to speak!

Now what do you do with this data? You do a survey! You can find out which segments are most responsive to your advertisement and which segments aren't really interested. You can even find out the specific area or ZIP code that you should be aiming for and this will thus enable you to save thousands of dollars when it comes to advertising and ad campaigns! Neat, isn't it?

Call tracking systems are really reasonably priced and what is more, they provide a great return on investment. They can, in the long run, help you save a whole lot of money!

As illustrated above, you can save up a huge lot on marketing campaigns. It can even help you to pinpoint your target audiences for a new product so you can concentrate on them. But is strange that a lot of people view it as a waste of money; if you're one of them, just try it out, it's not going to hurt!

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