Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

Rain, Rain Go Away

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

If you live in the Northeast you can certainly relate to the title of my blog today.  I have barely been out of the house it seems in the past two weeks as I have been on conference calls dodging the rain drops.  A hurricane followed by a tropical storm have spurred people to contemplate building an Ark.  My home and our conference call service offices have been spared any damage but many people have not.  And to them I send my thoughts and prayers for a speedy recovery from what is some of the worst flooding ever.    Especially my friends and customers in Vermont who really had no warning for some of the worst damage the storms could impart.

As devastating as the weather has been over the past couple of weeks, our customers have had the advantage of continuous communications throughout with our conference call service.  I have suggested many times on this blog to have conference call information at the ready in case of emergency and it has certainly come in handy for our customers.  We have customers in Vermont who literally could not get to their place of business if they wanted to and were ostensibly cut off.  But conference calls with their employees enabled them to maintain lines of communication and continue their businesses without interruption.  And with the Zip Conferencing Pay As You Go service there isn’t even any cost unless you use the service so there is no excuse not to have conference call information in case of emergency.

And the hurricane season is not over.  Another named storm is brewing in the Atlantic and could once again threaten the East coast with wind and rain.  We were lucky that Irene did not have the damaging winds that were possible but the rain certainly did its damage.  Next time we may not be so lucky so be prepared.  Also, when the hurricane season ends the next thing we get to deal with is the snow.  And if last year was any indication we can’t wait for global warming to get us out of trouble any time soon.  Several times in the Northeast last year we were paralyzed and could not get to office buildings.  Our business was not affecting thanks to careful planning, is yours?  Make sure you have a back up communication plan in place with conference calls and web conferencing just in case you need them.

So anyway, rain, rain, go away and help poor Texas anyway.

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Enjoy Summer While You Can

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

I was on a conference call the other day and the first topic of conversation was the fact that it is the middle of August and where did the summer go. It is hard to believe it is the last two weeks of unofficial summer! Amazing. I can still vividly remember being stuck in last winter and all the bad weather and long periods of cold. I could not wait until the spring and so looked forward to the summer. And don’t get me wrong I have really enjoyed this summer. I think we have had pretty good weather here in New Jersey and I have no complaints. But where does the time go?

The conference calls have kept going as people try to maintain their businesses during the summer but I can already sense the conference call traffic growing in anticipation of people gearing up for after labor day. Kids get back to school and people get back to business. The fall is a time to catch up from the vacations and gear up for the end of the year. I have mentioned before that conference calls are a good economic indicator and I think the economy is definitely doing better. I have seen existing customers doing more conference calls and many new customers signing up and getting positioned to move forward in this economy. Certainly nothing like it was in the fall of 2008 when there was a lot of contraction in the economy.

Anyway, the title of this blog was Enjoy Summer While you Can and that is what I would like to end this with. There are basically two weeks left to summer before we have to really get back to business. And before you know it we are in the throes of the holidays and the year is over. So sit back and enjoy these last two weeks. I hope you have nice weather where you are located and get a chance to enjoy it. Life is short and you need to take advantage of every chance you get to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

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Conference Calls help you Go Green

Friday, October 30th, 2009

I have addressed the money saving opportunities a number of times on this blog, but another great benefit that conference calls provide is the environmental benefits.  Yes, conference calls can help you go green!

Conference calls do offer a number of benefits to it users in saving money and increasing productivity.  Conference calls also give its users the ability to conduct their meetings without travel which is where the opportunity to help save the environment comes in.  I am not aware of any study that has come up with but if you just use the numbers we know you come up with some staggering statistics.  In 2009 it is estimated that there will be about 50 Billion minutes of audio conferencing alone done in just the US.  If you use an average conference call of 5 people for 45 minutes you get approximately 225,000,000 conference calls being held with an average of 5 people.  If the 5 participants in these conference calls only had to travel an average of five miles to get together face to face they would have to travel a total of 5.5 billion miles.  And if you use an average of 18 miles per gallon of fuel you will see that they used a total of 300 million gallons of gasoline to travel to these meetings.  That is the total amount of gasoline the US burns in a single day.

And I think if you think about the calculation you quickly realize that I used some pretty soft numbers, like the 5 miles average travel distance.  I would bet that it is closer to 100 miles or more considering that people are doing conference calls on a global basis and most people would not even be able to drive to a meeting that has been replaced by a conference call.  If you include flights and taxis and rental cars that would be involved in all these meetings I would not be surprised to hear that replacing 225 million conference calls with in-person meetings would save over a billion gallons of gasoline.

So, as you can see, using conference calls instead of doing in-person meetings doesn’t just save you money and time, but it also helps save the environment.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls for Small Businesses

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

According to a lot of the pundits out there, including President Obama, there is a surge in the number of new businesses that are getting started.  This is because people have been laid off from their existing jobs and are starting out on their own instead of trying to find a job which is difficult at best right now.  And with the start of all these businesses a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to figure out how to promote their businesses and stretch their precious capital.  This is just another reason why conference calls continue to grow, because they are a great way to reduce expenses but still get the job done.

New small businesses need to get their ideas to new customers, investors and prospects without breaking the bank.  One of the ways to do this is with a conference call instead of the expense of traveling.  It has been well documented in this blog how companies are saving thousands of dollars by choosing to conduct a conference call or a web conference instead of travelling to an in-person meeting.  Nowhere is it more important to save money than in a new small business.  Most small businesses just don’t have the money to be travelling around the country.  But with a conference call and a web conference a small business owner can present their product or service to potential customers around the country without leaving their office.  And the cost of doing a conference call or web conference these days is very affordable to even the small business owner.  In fact, with the advent of the Internet which has allowed small businesses to sell their products and services globally, the need to present to customers in remote locations has increased even more.  The ability to present to people from great distances using conference calls has expanded the marketplace for small businesses.  No longer are their goods and services limited to a local area.  The technology now available has literally helped some small businesses survive where they otherwise would not.  A conference call and web conferencing can also make a small business look bigger in the eyes of the customer by allowing them to present to anyone, anywhere.  And their office is simply a PC and a telephone.

If you have a small business and you are not taking advantage of conference calls and web conferencing in your business I urge you to examine your processes and try using the technology available to help expand your business and reduce your costs.  It may just make the difference in the life or death of your business.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls for Non-Profits

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

In this blog I have spoken a lot about how businesses benefit from using conference calls to reduce their expenses and increase their profitability.  Well, the benefits of conference calls is not exclusive to companies that make a profit, non-profit entities can benefit as well from the use of conference calls.

The inherent nature of a non-profit is that they are supposed to be trying to leave the bulk of their money for the use of the charity, whatever that is, but they still have activites that need to be performed to keep the non-profit going.  One of the thise activities is soliciting donations and conference calls work well when you are trying to get a group together to get donations.  Many of the non-profits have found that soliciting donations in a group setting is more effective than doing it one on one.  There is a herd mentality when someone provides a donation and others are present.  The other participants do not want ot be out done and are more willing to contribute.  A conference call allows a non-profit to perform this type of activity without the need for an in person meeting.  And just like a for profit company, they save time and money by performing it on a conference call.  And the participants benefit as well since they do not have to leave their home or office to participate on a conference call.

Another activity that would be very costly for a non-profit without the help of conference calls is the regular board meetings that need to tak place to run their charity.  Usually there is a benefactor and a board of trustees that needs to meet on a regular basis to help runa non-profit organization and many times they are spread around the country.  Without the help of a conference call the participants would need to travel to a central location and incur the high cost of travel and so forth to attend the meeting.  Not only is it more expensive, but many of the members would not be able to attend without the conference call.

And, in many cases the actual activities of the non-profit itself are assisted by the use of a conference call.  Depending on what the charity provides, the use of conference calls allows them to perform their charity without the need to physically be present where they are doing their work.  Sometimes this means they can assist more people across a wider geographic area because they can do it remotely.  It also means they can perform more work because they are not incurring the high cost of travel, even within their local area to perform some of their activities.

So, don’t think that conference calls only help the bottom line of a for profit company, they help non-profits as well.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls Explode

Friday, June 19th, 2009

I have been in the conference call business since 1995.  At that time many people had not even been on a conference call and web conferencing was little more than an idea.  Over 50 % of the conference calls we ran back then were operator assisted because the concept of running a reservationless conference call was foreign to most people.  Now the technology has made it simple to run a conference call from any phone at any time without the need to schedule the call and web conferencing and sharing your desktop with someone thousands of miles away is just a few clicks away.  It has been an amazing ride and newer technology promises to make conference calls even easier and more compelling for the customers than ever.  No wonder the amount of conference call minutes has exploded to over 40 billion minutes a year and is expected to continue to grow to over 70 billion minutes by 2012.  Zip Conferencing is poised to bring you the best technology the industry has to offer at rates that make the service affordable to everyone.  Never before has this technology been so easy to use and so affordable.  In this blog I hope to bring you some of the conference call applications used by customers across many industries in hopes it will help you find a way to improve communication in your company.  I welcome any input and feedback on Zip Conferencing, questions about our services, the web site and I hope you will share the ways that you are using conference calls and the benefits they bring to you.  Just like the technology itself promotes, there are power in numbers and sharing makes us all better.  Enjoy!

www.zipconferencing.com

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