Teamwork without travel
When project budgets and schedules are tight, web conferencing solutions are the quickest, easiest way that teams based at different geographical locations can hold project meetings. With costs at an all-time low, online meetings can now be used as routinely as the phone.
Setup of virtual meetings in seconds
It takes next to no time to convene a web conference. The best available tools let you e-mail invitation links which take participants to the host's desktop in a matter of seconds.
Interactive collaboration on shared documents
Most web conferencing tools offer online collaboration: Besides desktop sharing, participants can display their documents as well as data and transfer mouse and keyboard control to other participants. Handy annotation tools enable participants to highlight or circle passages of text etc.
Get insights on the strengths and weaknesses of all assessed web conferencing solutions.
Meeting Efficiency
Online meetings are more efficient than face-to-face meetings, since meeting participants save time they would otherwise need for travel. Whether these meetings fulfill their purpose and actually are effective depends on other factors – as do face-to-face meetings: Is there an agenda? Were the meeting participants selected carefully? Is the approach to the topics at hand well-structured? These are only some of the factors that contribute to effectiveness. Naturally these factors weigh in more heavily with web conferencing since there is no social control as in a physical meeting room. Passive meeting participants could be reading their email or browsing the Internet, and there really is no way of knowing whether a participant is “really there” or not. To tackle this obstacle for virtual meetings and make sure that you have a clear structure that will lead to the desired result, we recommend the software Meeting Efficiency by the Parmenides Foundation.
