As the economy rebounds, business people have begun to travel again. A little more money to spare and a wider base of interested clients have sent business travelers back to the skies, making new connections all over the world. The New York Times reported that travel spending is up 4.3 percent, for an annual total of $273.3 billion. Almost half of that total was spent on group travel: conferences, meetings, networking, and personal interactions with clients. 

Business meetings may be a tried and true standard practice, but they have their downsides. Business travel across the board might be bouncing back, but those travel costs hit small businesses harder: they have less money on hand, fewer people available to travel, and have to send their travelers further from a single home office. Fortunately, for small businesses (and large businesses as well) looking for an alternative to those costly, time consuming trips, the Internet has provided a solution: online video conferencing. 

Easy Setup

Video conferencing systems have been in existence for years, but early versions failed to find a foothold, largely due to the complex, buggy installation process they required. Calls with multiple participants required a clunky, custom-built video bridge, and early internet connections struggled to maintain high-quality audio and video, leading to calls that felt clunky and awkward. Recently, however, new combinations of hardware and the software have vastly improved video conferencing for business. Blue Jeans Network, a video conferencing and collaboration service, pioneered cloud-based online web conferencing, which greatly simplifies the setup process. 

Cloud-based services remove the need for video bridges by hosting the call through their own servers. This also helps take the strain of your network and your clients, enhancing the quality of the call. You even have the option of entirely in-browser conferencing, saving you and your clients the hassle of long downloads and software installation.

Instant Access, Instant Collaboration

Not only does online, cloud-based conferencing decrease the hassle of setting up a network, cloud based systems run much more smoothly. Thanks to the ubiquity of webcams these days, you can connect to a business partner, potential client, or student just about anywhere.

Finding a system-agnostic service (another development by Blue Jeans Network) will make connecting to clients and students worldwide much simpler and easier. System-agnostic services are specifically designed to be compatible with any operating system and any device: email a link to a client or student, and they can join the conversation from their mobile phone with one click. These cloud-based, browser-based systems give a lot of control and flexibility to the client, and make a video conference feel like a real conversation and collaboration. Blue Jeans will even link in participants using other video conferencing networks like Skype, Cisco, or Microsoft Lync.

A conferencing network with good document sharing features will also improve that collaborative feel, both between you and your client/student and between teams within your business or in your class. Look for a service with a good, easy-to-learn upload interface as well as collaborative editing: many video conferencing services offer a “virtual whiteboard” that all participants can edit to exchange ideas, plan, and collaborate efficiently.

Eco-Friendly Solutions

Saving time and travel expenses are huge benefits to a small business, but video conferencing has some big-picture perks as well. The uptick in travel as the economy rebounds has lead to an uptick in something less desirable: carbon emissions. Microsoft itself has lead the charge to reduce the carbon footprint they produce with business travelling. According to a recent report in the New York Times, the software giant has pledged to reduce their travel by 59 million miles…and they’re using video conferencing to do it. Embracing the advantages of video conferencing is good for the planet (and potentially your company’s taxes) as well as being a time and money saver. Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist, described a single afternoon where he took meetings in Kenya, Ireland, and Finland, costing his company (and his planet) almost nothing in the process. There’s only one way to get that kind of result: high quality video conferencing. 

In Conclusion

For decades, if not centuries, business communication has relied on the old standbys: meetings, hotels, dinners, and handshakes. Of course, the need for travel and face-to-face collaboration will never completely fall by the wayside, but for small companies or classrooms without the resources for regular travel, video conferencing is a great way to level the playing field. The rise of online, flexible, browser-based services like Blue Jeans Network means it has never been easier to talk to anyone, anywhere in the world…and not just talk to them, but have a real conversation, and make a real, lasting, and valuable connection.