How can cloud services help your business meetings? How can the cloud help you to meet up, save time and get more done? Find out how to improve your business meetings in this blog.
If there is one thing that most people in business can agree on, it’s that meetings can be a real pain. They take too much time and too little gets done. One recent survey showed that nearly half of all employees think business meetings are a total waste of effort. Despite the poor reputation, meetings do have an important role to play. They can build a sense of camaraderie, create opportunities and help you keep everyone on the same page. That’s especially important if you have employees in remote offices, satellite locations, or working from home. Meetings can keep everyone informed, connected, and focused on the right things. With the right suite of cloud-based communication and collaboration tools, you can give your business meetings a much-needed transformation. They become easier to set up and more engaging to attend. They also can become much more focused and help you get important work done.
The 5 points below will show you just how simple and affordable your meetings can be.
Meeting Room For Everyone
Business meetings often revolve around traditional voice conferences, but they can be troublesome. First, you’ve got to schedule around the availability of your conference bridge. Then you have to initiate meeting invitations that include lengthy dial-in numbers and access codes that are easy to mistype and misdial. You are also limited in what you can do once you get everyone together as you can’t share your desktop or use video to see reactions. Boredom often sets in with nothing to look at so it’s no wonder most of us multitask during conference calls: We check email and text messages, browse the web and go hunting under our desk to search for that favourite pen we lost days earlier. Fortunately, you can conquer the boredom and break free from these ‘voice only’ limitations with today’s powerful new cloud-based meeting services. When you upgrade to the cloud, you and each member of your team get your own virtual meeting room to use whenever you want. Your personal meeting room can be used for spontaneous or planned meetings complete with video conferencing, desktop sharing, and multiparty chat. It’s all highly intuitive and easy to use.
- Eliminate delays at the start of your meeting. Participants simply ‘click to join.’ There’s no scrambling to find the right dial-in number and access code.
- Eliminate multitasking. With video conferencing, you keep people focused on the screen of their PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone where they can see and be seen by colleagues.
- Keep everyone on the same page. Share your whole desktop screen or display web pages, applications, and documents. You get rid of the confusion over where to find the file being discussed and can capture comments and edits in real-time.
- Shorten response times. Rather than having to follow up after the meeting to answer questions that crop up, use your meeting room tools to send an instant message to a colleague for the answer. Or drag and drop the name of a subject matter expert into your meeting to invite them to join in real-time.
- Gauge reactions and modify your meeting accordingly. Since you can see faces, you get a much better feel for how individuals are responding to your agenda. If you sense disagreement, invite discussion of alternate points of view. If you sense minds are beginning to wonder, ask questions, change things up and get folks re-engaged.
Video Conferencing Simplified
Room-based video conferencing is a great way to replicate face-to-face business meetings with remote team members, customers, or colleagues. But traditional video systems can be a nightmare. Most are grouped together with hardware from multiple vendors. Each piece of equipment seems to have its own remote control, so you never know what you are turning on or off. And the software is often complicated and hard to use. Lots can go wrong, which is why many room-based systems sit gathering dust. With cloud-based conferencing, the complexity disappears. Your video conference room gets its own virtual meeting space, just like you and your team members do. With a simple click, anyone can start or join a video conference as no special training is required. If you already have a video conference room, you can get better use out of your investment. And if you don’t have one, it becomes easy and affordable to set one up almost anywhere. All you need is a conference camera/speaker, an internet connection, and a large-screen display.
- Easy scheduling. From your office calendar, you can see whether your video conference room is available. If it is, simply make a calendar entry to book it and forward an invitation to your team.
- Faster startup. When it’s time for your conference, simply walk into the room, power up, and click a single button to get started. That’s all there is to it.
- Inclusiveness. Remote participants don’t need their own room-based system. Anyone can join in from a desktop PC, laptop, or any mobile device.
- Productivity. Since your business meeting is hosted in your virtual meeting space, you aren’t constrained by the software limitations of your room-based system. You get an integrated suite of tools to make you more productive. Content sharing functions allow you to start a collaboration session and review spreadsheets, presentations, or other documents with your team. HD voice captures every verbal nuance, and HD video relays crisp images. You can even use multiparty chat to ask a quick question or poll participants, without having to interrupt the flow of the meeting.
Meetings With Mobile Devices
With a simple software client, any mobile device used by you or your meeting attendees can become ready for any meeting.
- Never miss another meeting while on the go. You can view all your scheduled meetings and stay auto-synced with your office calendar.
- No more delays searching for phone numbers and access codes. Simply tap on an icon and your phone will automatically connect you to a meeting.
- Easily launch instant messages. send email to the meeting organiser or to participating colleagues.
- Connect with team members on demand. Your phone dials everyone up and establishes the conference for you.
- Keep things professional. Only your business phone number and identity are displayed when you join a meeting. Your personal mobile number remains protected.
Collaborative Workspaces
How many times have you been ready to hop on a conference call only to realise you aren’t sure where to find the file you are supposed to be discussing? Or perhaps you thought you had the right document, only to discover everyone else is using an updated version. With the collaborative online team workspaces offered with your new cloud services, you can end the paper chase once and for all. Simply drag and drop files into your team workspace and keep everyone in sync. You also can easily track tasks, due dates, and work history. Built-in contextual intelligence tools serve up the precise information you need when you need it – preparing you for every meeting, every call, and every interaction. All your business meeting features are in your team workspace as well. Message a single individual or everyone on your team. Click to dial a number or to launch a voice or video conference. Invite partners, customers, and outside experts to join in. Your team workspace can serve as a hub for the productivity applications you use each day. You won’t have to hop from application to application to get things done. Everything is accessible from one spot, regardless of where you are or what device you use to connect.
Future Proof Business Meetings
Having all your work content, meetings, and apps managed with cloud services means the possibilities are endless. Contact us at Teleconnect Service now to find out how the cloud could benefit your business and what you could save in the process. We can bring your teams together, with simple tools for collaboration and communication.
