New Years Resolution #2: Trimming the Fat with Teleconferencing

Everyone can stand to lose a few pounds after the Holiday Feasting Season­– even businesses worry about their "figures" at Year End! Nothing is worse than a saggy "bottom line," caused by too many unnecessary costs plumping up our expenses. New Year's is a great time for any group to resolve to work smarter and earn more in the upcoming year, by trimming a little organizational fat.

One of the best ways to get better annual results is to increase the efficiency of our communication technology.

After all, our group's success is built on our team, and our team needs to keep in touch and work together to excel. Luckily, communication technology is constantly evolving.

Even if you already use conference calls to increase your profit margin or effectiveness, you will be amazed at the new conference call Features Santa's Elves have been cooking up this year, and how much money you can save with them.

Background: Conference Call 101

For those who have yet to discover how effective teleconferencing is, here are the two classic ways to cut empty calories on your Statement of Expenses:

• For long distance meetings, Video Conferencing delivers all the benefits of face to face communication without the airfare and hotels. You can set them up in minutes, and they are free.
• Even if you are connecting up a team in the same town, or in the same building, conference calls eliminate time wasted getting to meetings. Teleconference meetings begin at the appointed time when everyone picks up their phone, and when they end, everyone gets right back to work.

Conference calls have always had crystal clear sound quality, too, because they use phones, not VOIP or Skype. Many companies offer courtesy Toll Free Numbers to keep participants from cluttering up calls with Skype echoes and robotic voices.

So far so good.

The Evolution of Conference Calls

But even if you are an old pro at teleconferencing, you might be amazed at all the new ways to trim operational fat that get invented each year. We all get stuck in our routines sometimes, and no one has time to keep up with every little improvement in modern communications. Making an organizational New Year's Resolution to explore more conference call features helps keep your organization more productive and profitable.

One of the systems that just keep improving in conference calls is Web Conferencing. The audio portion still happens on the phone, but the call is integrated through an online Personal Meeting Room using Screen Sharing so everyone can examine the same documents and presentations.

Another innovative feature to try out is Conference Call Recording, which automatically sends you an MP3 file of your entire call via email within two hours. Call records are perfect for social media posting, meeting minutes, and creation of permanent podcasts of presentations. Your meeting presentation can be mounted as a "TED Talk" by the end of the day, with a few mouse clicks. Recorded calls can be Transcribed into Word files for use in newsletters, as a legal record, or for presenters to use to evaluate their work.

Churches are using a lot of conference Call Recording for sermons, so their flocks can keep in touch wherever they fly.

Moderator Controls just keep getting better too. Now you can choose whether you want just a presenter speaking, selected participants, or everyone at once. The controls can help cut down on background noise, and help moderators keep calls running smoothly.

Moderator controls are free, and you'll find them in your online Personal Meeting Room.

Familiar feature upgrades

For those used to working with conference calls, all the regular setup features that make conference calls so easy have been retained. Call Scheduling still saves all your attendees' emails to make it easy to send out Invitations and Reminders and set up Recurring Calls.

You can still add or subtract attendees from drop down menus, but now you can even add automatic SMS reminders, because so many people respond best to a quick text.

"CU @ 10 AM re: Marketing."

Adding or upgrading your conference call techniques through a New Year's Resolution is easier than signing up at a fitness club, and much easier than actually showing up. Teleconferencing is free, you don't even have to leave your desk, and you get instant results.

Conference calls are "No sweat," and using more conference call features is the easiest way to boost productivity, trim organization fat, and develop a more muscular bottom line.