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When you don't own a videoconferencing system

If you travel more than you would like for business, chances are you’ve wondered if videoconferencing could help.

Yet, there may be many reasons why you’re not taking full advantage of the technology. Perhaps you can’t justify the cost of owning your own system, or if you own one, you may find that the people you want to connect to sometimes don’t. There is a solution.

Conference Technologies belongs to several large conferencing networks, making about 3500 rental sites available to you around the world. We also offer our own state-of-the-art rental facilities in St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, Omaha, Peoria and Wichita. The cost is low –usually about $150 per hour per site– and the advantages high.

Thinking about the costs of travel
Cutting back on travel is the biggest reason organizations install videoconferencing systems. “It’s not so much cost of the airline tickets or hotels,” says Jimmy LoMonaco, CTI’s rental sales manager, “but the lost time and productivity involved in travel.”

For example, LoMonaco says, many law firms are using conferencing systems to take depositions. “The smart attorneys now are doing it by video,” he says, “because they realize it’s all about billable hours. Instead of spending a day on the road, they can spend an hour or two then move on to the next billable task.”

CTI customers use videoconferencing for everything from client and vendor meetings to staff collaborations and job interviews. “If you fly someone in for a meeting,” says LoMonaco, “chances are you’re going to feel obligated to take him out to lunch and even entertain him after hours. He’s going to lose the whole day, and you’re going to lose at least half a day. Instead you could rent a conferencing room, hold the meeting and be done with it.”

Worldwide facilities
CTI can set up a conferencing suite rental in any of 1300 cities worldwide, and we can connect to any system anywhere from any of these rooms, on a system-to-system or multi-location basis. In many countries, your conference attendees may have to travel to the nearest city to find a rental room. In the United States, however, there are hundreds of systems available for rental in rural areas, often installed using federal funds in hospitals, fire departments and school districts.

“It’s easy to set up one of these conferences,” says LoMonaco. “You can call us and we’ll take care of it for you. We’ll take the addresses of your people, find the closest facilities, handle contracts, do the testing, and set up the conference.” We take care of you with just one phone call.

As with other communications technologies, the cost of these systems has dropped dramatically as the quality has improved. Most conferences today are conducted over IP networks at little or no cost for the connection. ISDN charges remain high, but when you need to connect to an ISDN-based system, you can call into a gateway service with your IP-based system. There is no need to take on monthly ISDN charges. Again, CTI can set all of this up for you and handle any technical issues.

CTI facilities and services
The one drawback to using a rental facility is that you probably will be limited if you want to add computer presentations or collaboration to your call. Most rental rooms can share only a video and audio signal, with slides or documents brought in via a document camera.

A big advantage to using a CTI facility is that you can be sure it will be absolutely state-of-the-art. Assuming the other sites in your conference are similarly equipped, you can do a PowerPoint presentation, or show any document or graphic you have on your computer.

“The reason we keep our rooms so up to date is that we use them for demonstrating the technology to potential buyers,” says LoMonaco. “When you walk into one of these rooms, you’re walking into a facility designed to help you conduct business, to make you as comfortable, professional and productive as possible.”

Conference Technologies Inc.®  ~   Creating A Vision For Technology