A teleconference is a meeting (conference) held over a distance (tele), hence the name. It is a tool for businesses to communicate over long distances. Using the telecommunications technology, two or more parties meet from two or more locations.

The technologies that come under for teleconferencing include video conferencing, audio conferencing, and data conferencing.

With the amount of money that businesses are spending on these technologies increasing, it is obvious that the importance of teleconferencing in the corporate business world cannot be ignored.

Teleconferencing technology allow businesses to have meetings over long distances, conduct business briefings, employee training sessions, conduct interviews, organize workshops and seminars, just about everything between employees who cannot easily come together.

It is most commonly used in the business environment for distance staff meetings, distances learning and training, and job interviewing. So, teleconferencing definitely makes a business more efficient and helps the business to save money.

How you may well ask. Let us consider the following points.

NO MORE FOOTLOOSE: With teleconferencing, a business can save a considerable amount on travel expenses. Communication will be by using the telecommunication methods, which is more efficient and convenient.

An organization’s employees don’t have to move and travel from one place to another incurring expenses. Staff meetings, learning, training can all be conducted over teleconferencing, reducing employee movement to the minimum.

APPOINTMENT TIME: Businesses can utilize teleconferencing for recruiting and interviewing potential employees. One of the benefits of teleconferencing in the recruitment process is that the business has the ability to interview more candidates for the same expense. This reduces the cost of flying the candidates over for the interview.

In addition, interviewers from more than one geographical location within the same business can participate in the interview process, in a team effort, without the hassle and expense of travel to a central site. Result is tremendous cost saving.

FACE-ON- FACE-OFF: With teleconferencing providing the facility of conference calls, business employees do not have to personally meet each other face to face. Conference calls make information exchange between offices, employees or from one business location to another very simple, with just the click of a button.

No cumbersome meetings to organize or lengthy mails to compile. In fact, teleconferencing has reduces the personal meetings between employees to the bare minimum unless really necessary. This has also reduced the disruption of work and time in attending meetings or reading and replying to mails. And definitely, the cost of teleconferencing is much less that a formal meeting!

THE NEED IS SPEED: Web-conferencing techniques are also available with teleconferencing. This allows the easy conducing of meetings and making business plans. With the help of applications like Excess, PowerPoint, businesses can benefit by transmitting images from one place to another in a matter of minutes.

Also, web conferencing includes instant messaging servicing that can allow businesses to use instant messages to communicate or set up specially designed chat rooms to conduct discussions, meetings and planning of projects.

GROUPIES NO LONGER: One of the major advantages of teleconferencing is its potential to reduce the cost of group meetings. The most obvious benefit of teleconferencing is that of staff meetings of dispersed personnel within the organization.

This usually takes the form of management meetings, where personnel meet from different hierarchical levels of the business, to review management objectives, performance, goals, or other management issues. With teleconferencing, this process gets simplified with less movement of staff and no need to arrange the formal set up.

Teleconferencing can also be used as a means of sharing information, such as product design, within the same hierarchical level of the business. This can help your business save money by saving time required to convey data and information to different groups within the organization.

THE CUTTING EDGE: More and more businesses are using teleconferencing to secure a competitive advantage. This competitive advantage results from both tangible and intangible benefits. Definitely when teleconferencing is used in place of traditional business travel, there will be a tangible benefit of cost savings to the business organization.

However, there are also reasons for teleconferencing that may not yield calculable benefits, yet contribute to the competitive advantage of the business. For example, it may be possible to allow more frequent staff meetings within the business because expensive travel is not necessary.

The bottom line is that with teleconferencing, businesses can communicate with relatively less expense. Teleconferencing saves precious time and money, which are essential to the profitability of a business. There definitely will be initial expenses involved with setting up the necessary equipment and technology, but it provides tremendous saving in the long run.