Me Time for Busy Women

5 Cost Saving Teleconference Tips known by large companies, but available to everyone

1. NO TRAVEL FOR WORKERS OR FAMILYS SAVES MONEY:
Any time you can meet with team members or even family members without actually leaving their offices or their homes, you have saved time and money. In the work environment, team members are receiving an e-mail with the link and sign in information and attending meetings at their own desks to share information.

This works for marathon meetings lasting over an hour or quick information sharing meetings. Online meetings saves the time (and hassle) of scheduling a conference room and allows reduced travel for those who are not in the same location. This can work for families too. Free services are cropping up where families can schedule a time to talk and share information and without traveling just like the corporations do!

2. MORE EFFICIENT COMMUNICATION SAVES TIME and ACCURACY:
When staff members (or even family members) get the same information at the same time, there is less chance of confusion. Information can be shared and presented to the whole group and the facilitator can take questions and answers to clear up any potential miscommunication.

The same meeting facilitator rules apply: Allow each attendee to announce their presence, repeat questions and allow everyone on the call to have an opportunity to speak or comment on the content. A good way to sum up is to ask each person what the number one take away is from this call and if they have anything else to say on the topic. This works for sharing family news -- such as "there is going to be a new member in this family".

3. CONDUCT TRAINING SESSIONS and SAVE MONEY:
Large corporations do not need to maintain huuge training rooms and auditorium style classrooms for employee training sessions like they once did. Today everyone has a monitor right in their office or very likely has access to one.

Besides live training, some online training sessions are self paced and employees have checklists and deadlines for completing the available training. When conducting live conferences, powerpoint presentations or browser based presentations can be followed and referred to for better content retention. Many training sessions involve several presenters to help maintain focus and to keep the attention of the listeners.

4. RECORD LIVE SESSIONS FOR LATER REPLAY:
Most large corporation already have access to Webex or LiveMeeting as an approved conference / webinar application. Again, with a little bit of research smaller companies or home based businesses can find free seminar products such as Instant Teleseminar which will allow them to distribute phone numbers and access codes. Each person dials in at the agreed upon time and the conversation or presentation is recorded for later playback. The link to the playback can be posted online or e-mailed for review or to be played by people who could not attend the live conference.

This is very handy to get people up to speed and accommodate travel and vacation schedules.

5. INSTANT MESSAGING FOR REAL TIME COLLABORATION = saves time & money:
Large corporations are using Instant Messaging for communication among coworkers. While on a teleconference it is quite common for someone to have information to share near the end of the meeting that they did not have when that agenda item was discussed. It's quite a time saver to say -- can we go back to agenda item #2, "I just IMed the procurement department and they said the delivery time is cut back from the originally estimated 6 weeks to 2 weeks, we will have that in house by the end of the month!" That looks a lot better on the minutes than "she will confirm the 6 week delivery time and report on that at next week's meeting".

Many Instant Messaging applications also come with an opportunity to share the presenter's computer screen to review documents. The presenter can "pass the baton" and other team members can update the document, drawing or plan. What once took several attachments being passed back and forth in an e-mail can now be resolved in one document-sharing meeting, Again, saving time is saving money.