People complain about business meetings for a variety of reasons. The cost in travel and travel time is often at the top of the list – especially for those running a small business.
Technology is opening the door to other ways of doing business meetings—ways that eliminate travel and even produce better results. Two options available from Microsoft are web conferencing and Instant Messenger.
Web Conferencing 101
With web conferencing, nobody has to book a flight or pay business class fares. The technology allows your business to present slide shows and share documents with large or small groups of people - all sitting in front of their PCs. Attendees typically call into a conference call centre for a voice connection to the meeting.
And, with no special hardware or software requirement, the cost of a web meeting is significantly lower than travelling long distances. All that's required is a phone, a PC with an internet connection and a browser.
How does it work? With Microsoft Office Live Meeting, a popular web conferencing tool, a meeting leader - or "presenter" - can schedule and invite participants to a meeting. Participants log on the Live Meeting website at the set time and the meeting begins.
Presenters let the attendees view their PC desktop at a Live Meeting session. Whatever presenters show on their computer screen can be seen by those in virtual attendance. For instance, they can deliver Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations or walk the audience through an Excel spreadsheet. Live Meeting also enables activities such as:
- Text chat
- Online polling
- Whiteboards for drawings
- Recoding and playback of presentations
Sales calls, training sessions, customer demonstrations, new product introductions and team meetings are just a few of the uses for web conferencing. Pricing is typically based on a subscription or per-minute basis.
IM: Not Just for Chat Anymore
Sometimes all you need to do to solve a problem is a brief, informal meeting with a couple key people. If those people don't have an office next to yours, instant messaging (IM) — that favourite online tool for online chatting — can provide a cost-effective alternative to a series of e-mails or long-distance phone calls. Here's what you can do with IM:
- Share applications and whiteboard—With Windows Messenger, the free instant messaging program that comes with Windows XP Professional, you can do more than conduct a real-time text conversation with co-workers or partners. You can review documents or use the whiteboard feature with online contacts in real-time, allowing you to work together on projects. For example, you can have a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation open on your computer, choose to share it with an online Windows Messenger contact, and then allow the contact to make changes. You can also open a whiteboard to share information as if you were sharing a pen and paper. You can also copy and paste information from any Windows-based program onto the whiteboard.
- Send and receive files and photos—You may decide you need to send a document or photo to your online Windows Messenger contacts. Windows Messenger lets you send files directly to your contacts, and notifies you when transfers are complete.
- Coming face to face: videoconferencing—Windows Messenger supports videoconferencing, so instead of travelling for a face to face meeting, you can schedule a videoconference meeting. Both you and your contact need a Windows XP-based PC, a sound card, a microphone and speakers or a headset, a web camera, and preferably a broadband connection to the internet.
- Voice Communications—You can use the PC-to-PC communications capabilities of Windows Messenger to talk to your contacts anywhere in the world over the internet, typically at lower costs than standard telephone services. In addition, when you sign up to a PC-to-phone service provider, you can call any telephone from your computer. To connect you need Windows XP, a sound card, a microphone and speakers or a headset, plus a connection to the internet or local area network. For telephone communications, you also need to choose a service provider.
More Business Meeting Tools
Office Live Meeting and Windows Messenger represent only a couple ways technology can help you minimise the cost and time for business travel. Here are a few additional technical tools to help set up and prepare for meetings:
- Schedule online meetings—Finding out who is available to attend a meeting can take as much time as the meeting itself. The Exchange Server 2003 messaging system — a component of Windows Small Business Server 2003 — lets you view co-workers' calendars. Using Office Outlook 2003, part of the Office Small Business Edition program suite, you can find times when co-workers are available and send out invitations to meetings with pre-configured replies.
Make meeting materials available—Often you want those you invite to meetings to come prepared. If you have a number of documents for attendees to review prior to a meeting, you can save time by having the most updated versions available on your intranet site. If you run Windows Small Business Server at your business, Windows SharePoint Services is a tool you can use to develop an internal website where you can post documents so that others can access them at any time.
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