Business travel isn’t what is used to be. Years ago it was fun and something different to break the routine. Today it’s miserable at the airport with new security measures, and planes are jammed with passengers. Airlines are also nickel and diming us to death with a la carte services like fees for non-carry-on baggage. The raw cost of travel is certainly going up, but you also need to consider your time. The real cost of travel is not the plane ticket and hotel room — it’s your time. Simple math will certainly illustrate travel costs for a meeting vs. a video conference. When you add your time and the minutia for preparation for an out of town meeting the cost triples and goes way up from there.
We calculated this time factor with a small law firm. We found that they are hemorrhaging money on their time away from the office to see clients and interview expert witnesses. We calculated that the equipment would pay for itself within three months and the hemorrhaging would then stop. One attorney at this firm was in Greece on vacation, and a critical deposition popped up while abroad. He was able to use our mobile app from Greece and attended this deposition with very little disruption to his vacation. Imagine the cost if he had to fly back to the U.S. on a moment’s notice for one day and then return to Greece for the rest of his vacation. The cost on the mobile app was under $200.00, and he has access to his conference room 24/7 from anywhere in the world.
Time is really money and this adds up exponentially in high end service businesses like law firms, architectural firms and engineering firms. Look at your travel budget, but also look at the time your people spend on airplanes at airports and behind the windshield. The value of their time plummets just getting from point A to point B. Your travel budget can easily be cut by three quarters while your face time with key accounts, partners, vendors and others critical to your business goes up significantly with videoconferencing.
Saving money on the travel budget is simple and very easy to calculate. Click on the following link and get our R.O.I. calculator that will clearly show you savings against travel costs and measure depreciation on the equipment. https://www.jwhornvideoconference.com.php53-8.dfw1-1.websitetestlink.com/video-conferencing-vs-travel-roi-calculator/. Our calculator also considers the value of time as there is a field for hourly wage for travelers going to the meeting. To help you budget for equipment expense start with $6,000 per location, so if you have 4 locations your budget would be about $24,000.00 total budget — This is a solid starting point.
J.W. Hornyak Videoconferencing & Telecommunications
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