In the world of business, time is the most valuable resource that a company can have and it should be saved by all means; which is why this article will be talking about conference calls.

As much as technology has improved and has given us new tools to be able use our day more efficiently, there are still certain aspects that are beyond our control that regularly eat away at our 24 hour day, the biggest culprit being travel-time.

It is amazing to see how the art of business has developed during the last few decades and what is available to us, but it is equally surprising to see how many companies don’t take advantage of it all.

While we do have email, chat and phone calls for communications purposes, they all have flaws when it comes to team meetings. Email doesn’t allow instant questions and answers, chat (like email) requires typing which doesn’t “roll of the tongue” and regular phone calls limit conversations to two people.

Conference calls, however, generally allow up to 50 people to participate in a single call without compromising quality or creating lag.

Here are 3 good reasons to do conference calls:

1. Saves Time On Travel The time you can save on travel can be priceless. Assuming you had 50 people participating in a meeting (which is not likely, but great as an example) and travelling time totalled at 1 2 hour per person for a back and fourth trip, your business could effectively save 50 100 hours from 1 meeting! Not to mention the time it can save from potential travel disasters. Especially taking the volcanic eruptions of 2010 into consideration and the chaos it caused to air travel, planning a conference call instead of flying certainly has its benefits.

2. Cuts Travelling Costs In addition to saving travelling time, conference calls can virtually be done from anywhere in the world, eliminating travel costs. Of course there are costs in dialling into the call, but these can be significantly lower than flying, taking a car or even using public transportation.

3. Recording While it is possible to record meetings, this can often be problematic when larger groups are involved as it can be hard to place a recorder in a good location to hear everyone – an issue you will not have with conference calls as everyone will be speaking directly into their phone.

There are of course downsides to conference calls, such as not being able to draw things on paper to explain things, but this is a minor issue when compared with the vast benefits.

All in all conference call and audio conference systems are very easy to use and many provide consistent quality along with other beneficial features.

James King has been working in the business services industry for over 15 years. He enjoys writing about business, technology and especially conference call facilities.