Meetings are a fact of life, and it’s also the case that there is simply no substitute for face-to-face time. If there are major decisions to be made, then it’s generally best to make them in person – the phone and email just aren’t reasonable substitutes. There is so much nonverbal communication that happens in an exchange that such media can strip out a significant level of content, leading to misunderstandings and potentially serious problems. At the same time, however, meetings can be extremely inconvenient, especially when they involve multiple people and take place in another country. video conferencing is one way around this. Technology has progressed to the point where telepresence video conferencing can be a good substitute for the real thing, obviating the need for costly and time-consuming travel. There may be occasions when you still need to meet in person, since no system, no matter how advanced, is perfect; nevertheless, audio visual conferencing can be a viable way to ‘meet’ now.

Travel is expensive and time consuming, and it is often enormously costly in terms of man-hours to send someone to a meeting or conference – especially when they are likely to spend many hours in transit for the sake of an hour or two in the same room as someone else. There is also an environmental cost to be considered, something that many firms are now aware of. Even if they are not, then this is going to have an increasing financial effect, as this is realistically the only way of limiting Carbon emissions. Therefore travel will increasingly start to show up on companies’ balance sheets.

In a connected world, there is less and less cause to travel to meetings, however, and large companies and charities are finding video conferencing an economical alternative to doing so. Audio visual conferencing can almost give the impression of being in the same room as someone else, and is far more sophisticated than a Skype call – which, although outstanding by the standards of recent years, is behind the competition in this sense. Telepresence video conferencing is a step closer to that all-important face-to-face meeting, for which there is realistically no substitute. You might not be able to shake hands with the others, but you will be able to see them close-to, read their expression and be able to put their words into context – something all but impossible with even a phone call, let alone email. It’s a technology that has recently come of age, and is the perfect solution to the time and financial costs associated with globalisation.

Please visit http://www.edgevision.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.edgevision.co.uk/

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