Online Meeting Costs
Are Online Meetings Cheaper?
Meetings are an essential activity of business life. It does not matter if you are running a one-man operation or work in a conglomerate, meetings with suppliers, colleagues, subordinates, and/or superiors are needed. The level of interaction and collaboration depends on the meeting but generally this is quite significant.
Generally, there are two ways to meet: Face-to-face and online. Before, it used to be more practical meeting face-to-face because the alternative was quite prohibitive, and the level of collaboration and interaction was limited. Nowadays, however, thanks to the flexibility of Internet Protocol, availability of large capacities of IP backbone and the growing sophistication of online meeting software, all one needs is a computer and access to the Internet to conduct an online meeting.
The major advantage of online meetings is that they are cost-effective. Consider these:
- There is no need to reserve and prepare a venue. Let us look at the cost items you will be saving on this category.
- Venue time (number of hours for the venue x cost per hour)
- Electricity (lights, air conditioning, projection equipment, etc.)
- Equipment (video camera, tape recorder, LCD Projector)
- Consumables (Whiteboard, whiteboard markers, paper, paper clips, etc.)
- Coffee and meals.
- Savings are also realized on participant costs, especially in the case wherein the participants are not close to the meeting venue
- Travel costs (e.g., air or land fare, gasoline, car rentals, per diem, etc.)
- Accommodation costs (board and lodging)
- Productivity downtime (wages x travel time)
- Higher productivity due to the ability of the participant to join several meetings at any given time while still undertaking his current work.
There are, of course, costs that are incurred when an online meeting is conducted:
- Internet time
This is equal to the number of participants connected to the meeting x cost per hour. Given that Internet costs are quite low, and are continuing to decline, these costs will probably compare with the cost of the coffee being served in a face-to-face meeting.
- Depreciation of computers
This is equal to the depreciation of the computer expressed in hours. Considering that these computers will still be needed even if online meetings are not held, and the depreciation is quite low given that computers are not really that expensive anymore, this will probably be relatively as expensive as the whiteboard markers.
- Electricity
This is equal to computer time expressed in hours x electricity per hour expressed in kilowatt hours x cost per kilowatt hour. This will probably approximate the cost of the electricity for the video camera.
- Telephone charges
For the teleconferencing feature of most software to work, the participants need to call in. Long distance charges apply but will probably not exceed US$10 per hour per participant. These costs should not even exceed the travel cost per participant.
- Software use subscription fee
Depending on the software, this cost will be about US$3 to US$ 5 at the worst per participant per month.
Considering the costs mentioned above, there is a significantly clear advantage for meetings conducted online in terms of cost. If you further consider that by having online meeting software you can eradicate much of the guesswork because of increased collaboration, then the advantage of online meeting software is even more emphasized.
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