Today's companies are staying competitive in their respective marketplaces by using the highly interactive features of audio and web conferencing. Through such global conferencing providers as Netspoke, and WebEx and InterCall, businesses can improve their revenue, collaboration and customer satisfaction -- all in a time-sensitive manner.

How audio and web based conferencing saves time and money

While using the web services combined with calling features from these web phone conferencing providers, business conferences automatically become more productive and collaborative. Some of these benefits include:

• Tangible hard and soft savings, such as lowered travel costs and increased in-office time
• Through the Internet, simplified access to others inside and outside of the organization is achieved with almost no advance notice, because if someone wants to initiate the conference, only an e-mail or instant message is required
• Greater collaboration among people working on the same project who work in different locations
• Conferencing increases access to better training by more personnel

Conferencing tools and features

Web conferencing solutions fall into four categories: general business communications, collaboration strategies, project management, and training tools. A company must first identify how it will be using its conferencing features and then evaluate the conference technology based on its functions.

In fact, conference participants can now experience a more authentic conference because of how seamlessly the conferencing system fully integrates into their familiar presentation applications such as PowerPoint, Macromedia Flash and Microsoft Outlook, which sets up meetings and manages addresses online. Here are some examples of the latest conferencing tools:

• Application sharing allowing the conference leader to release a document to the participants in real-time
• Mood indicators which enable participants to respond to conference topics
• Live online polling to obtain quick conference participant feedback
• A pre-meeting virtual web waiting room where the conference leader places select online participants
• Video and webcam integration allows companies to broadcast a live video feed of the conference presenters
• Live online chatting to permit conference participants in different departments of the same company to send open or confidential instant messages to each other

What's behind the growth of these conferencing services

According to Wainhouse Research, the video conferencing sector, when combined with audio and web based conferencing services, is expected to grow by approximately 12 percent annually through 2007. Companies will increase their use of these innovative conference services when they realize their productivity increases dramatically because they will be able to make timesaving decisions across time zones. Travel and training costs are kept in line with budgets and face-to-voice interaction inside the conferences decreases miscommunications. Some conference service providers also offer pay-as-you-go contracts to broaden their reach and accessibility to smaller companies.

All of these beneficial services accommodate increased productivity, sales, and communication when the time arrives for companies to convene in their respective conference rooms.