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Still nothing can beat face-to-face meetings, but if you want to significantly reduce your company’s travel expenses and make your meetings even more productive and cost-efficient, then online meeting solutions may be your best option.

SKYPE IT

To begin with, by using the popular free Internet telephony service called Skype, you can now conveniently hold multi-user voice conferences or video conferences with your business contacts without even having to go out of your office. You can do the same with your company’s staff members on assignment in different faraway locations or when they are traveling abroad. As long as both you and your business contacts or your staff have a computer equipped with a microphone and a webcam, you can have straightforward voice-and-video conversations with one another at virtually no cost.

To avail of the free Skype service, you have to download its free software from the Internet and install it in your computer. In addition to voice conferencing, the latest version of Skype now also provides videoconferencing support for Web cameras. Skype also allows for the creation and saving of logs of online conversations, which is very much like having a secretary to take the minutes of your meeting.

Another good online alternative to face-to-face meetings is the Collaboration and Meeting software. This software, which can be downloaded from the web, offers three major online-meeting solutions: LiveMeeting, GoToMeeting, and Webex. These three solutions are designed to provide even more conducive online meeting environments, ones that can approximate the features of a physical meeting as closely as possible.

OTHER TOOLS

LiveMeeting, a proprietary program of Microsoft, is designed for smooth integration with the Windows Desktop environment.This program makes it possible for online meeting participants to make presentations using Powerpoint slides, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets; share and upload their files to the computers of those who need them; and, through its unique polling feature, even conduct ad-hoc online voting among the participants.

What makes LiveMeeting very desirable to use is that it is capable of mimicking the typical meeting room for business conferences. Aside from supporting chat sessions in which any number of participants can be designated as main speakers, its also has an option that allows designated participants to control the computer of other participants who are online.

Microsoft offers a 14-day trial period for the LiveMeeting service. Those who decide to use it on a continuing basis can choose from any of Microsoft’s multiple subscription plans, which range from $375 a month for five virtual meeting seats to $750 for 10 seats. All of these plans will give users 24/7 access to the virtual meeting room.

If your meeting patterns are highly unpredictable, Microsoft has a pay-per-use option that will charge $0.35 a minute for each person in attendance. It must be kept in mind, though, that LiveMeeting is not a stand-alone program; it is simply an accessory for enhancing the quality of meetings. Those who intend to use it will therefore still need a phone line and an Internet telephony service provider like Skype.

ONLINE SHARING

Another service that provides a suite of online meeting solutions is GoToMeeting. Its features are similar to those of LiveMeeting, and the software for it can be similarly downloaded from the web. Like LiveMeeting, it also allows for online sharing of documents and for making Powerpoint presentations online.

GoToMeeting comes with a free conference call service that assigns the subscriber with a toll-free number and a unique meeting identification number. The service can be tried out for free for 30 days, and the monthly subscription fee is fixed at $49 for a maximum of 10 online meeting attendees, with no limit to the number of meetings. There is a drawback for its prospective users outside the United States, though: GoToMeeting provides a US-based interconnection number, so its users have to pay international long-distance rates.

Webex combines several of the key features of LiveMeeting and GoToMeeting. It offers built-in voice and video support, polling, whiteboards, and a pay-per-use option.

One other significant player in the online meeting space is Teamslide, a relatively new entrant. Teamslide aims to change the online meeting landscape by providing built-in Skype support along with a fast-loading, client-less interface. Although Teamslide does not offer as many online meeting functions as the other players, it delivers an effective portal for online meeting presentations and remote voice conferencing. It can also convert Powerpoint files into its own format.

The Teamslide software may be obtained by one-time purchase, and it can be installed on a separate server to give it an unlimited presentation capability. The price of the software ranges from $99 to $799 depending on the number of users, and a hosted version is available for those who subscribe to the service on a monthly basis.