Communication is perhaps one of the most important aspects of running a business well. Without it, the more people you have the more of a mess you have. It takes skill and insight to organize and orchestrate with a coworker, friend or loved one, communicating with several makes things even more challenging.
Board meetings, conferences and even small conversations all help people organize their efforts and work toward a common goal. So, as pointless as they may sometimes seem, they are there for a good reason. My father has worked in the manufacturing business since graduating from college. And, almost every time he came home, he would have another horror story about misplaced inventory. Employees consistently would manufacture parts that they already had in stock because they could not find them. It frequently cost the business thousands of dollars and when this was happening almost every month, it was painful to watch. It sounds like it would be a simple task to keep things in proper order and to make sure communication was clear, but it has proved to be pretty difficult.
So, how does a company make sure that they are communicating effectively and clearly? It is a good question and one that many are trying to improve. For starters, having everyone aware of business goals, objectives and keeping things orderly can help immensely. To help make these things possible are the dreaded meetings, conferences and more. These are probably the best ways to communicate– in person with the people involved. However, as businesses become global and with people on different schedules, getting everyone involved together at the same time can be difficult. As a result many companies have answered the demand to make conference calls, and web conferencing possible.
There are a variety of solutions offered for conference calls. There are conference phones for people who may need to make frequent conference calls and there are also dial in services for conference calls. Some of the phones make it feasible for several people in one conference room to talk to another group on the other end of a phone line. It sounds like a great solution and is, when people are divided into two groups. However, it gets more difficult when people are in three or more locations. To solve this problem, they have built phones that can connect to multiple phone lines at once. To look at some examples of each of these technologies, take a look at Polycom and BT, for example
Fortunately, there are other solutions for people who do not have these technologies available to them. There are also dial up services like those provided by 1-4-U conference calling. This company allows everyone to connect from different locations and share a conversation. For this service, the callers must pay to make the phone call and then an additional fee of 9 to 13 cents per minute is charged to be connected to the conference. They provide other services as well to help make the process a little easier. Operator assisted calls are available and for 35 cents a minute participants can call and hear a recording of the conference.
The solutions may not be cheap but, depending on the size of your business, clear communication can be worth thousands.
By David Wade