Videoconferencing and Business Trips

In recent years, there has been increasing speculation that technologies like videoconferencing will eliminate or at least greatly reduce the need for business trips. While business trips are unlikely to go away, cost, changing technology and other factors are likely to start reducing business travel in the near future and may eventually replace much of it.

Considering all the costs and time they incur, there certainly are reasons why the business trip has remained such a big part of business even though many of the functions of these trips can technically be carried out in other ways.

One reason is simply that people have the urge to travel and go places. The business trip has the added advantage for individuals of being something that can be carried out at company expense and at least partially on company time.

There is also the practical aspect. People are evolved for face-to-face meetings and much our communication is non-verbal. Many feel they need the feelings of trust that only meeting someone directly can provide to build a business relationship, or that the only way they can really make sure something is done properly is to go there personally.

There are disadvantages to business trips though and compelling reasons why videoconferencing might start to replace more of them soon.

One is security. Be it real or imagined concerns about terrorism, diseases or just accidents, people feel safer closer to home and cyberspace is still very safe!

The time and resources business trips consume are their biggest drawbacks for most companies. With planning, travel time, jet lag, airfares, hotels and other costs, traveling is a major investment and has a negative environmental impact.

The cost and time required for these trips is not declining either. In fact, with increasingly crowded infrastructure, onerous security and rising fuel costs, the time and money most business trips require is actually increasing. In an integrated and competitive worldwide marketplace, these costs cannot be ignored.

On the other hand, the costs of videoconferencing and other communication costs continue to drop. As bandwidth grows and the technology improves, with everything from cheap web cams to systems that cost hundreds of thousand of dollars, videoconferencing is now within reach of an increasing number of businesses and even individuals.

With these facts in mind, videoconferencing is set to make more serious inroads into business culture. Videoconferencing is easiest to implement within companies and will replace trips taken for internal meetings first. However, as its use becomes more common and accepted and as the technology improves, it is likely to reach a kind of critical mass. When people get used to using it at least some of the time, they will be much more likely to accept its use in situations where only face-to-face meetings are considered appropriate now. Furthermore, with the costs savings of videoconferencing increasing factored into pricing, many companies may be forced to accept it to compete. more here 출장

With the technology increasingly in place and cost and time savings to be realized, attitudes and acceptance are the final barriers to an explosion of video conferencing and fewer business trips.