1. Plan to Go Green

The first thing you will need to do is to create a plan and put someone in charge that will supervise the results. As with any other project, you will need to have regular meetings to assess the impact (or not) of the changes made to see whether the environmental footprint being left by your office is improving or not.

2. Carpool and Teleconference

Organize a carpool service and use teleconferencing services where applicable. Not only will this lessen pollution, but has the great potential of increasing efficiency and employee contentment.

3. Review Office Purchasing

Depending on your business, you may have a great need for paper-bases products. If electronic media cannot be utilized, then consider using recycled paper products instead. Start small then slowly increase the percentage of recycled paper you use in your office in order to absorb the costs, if any.

When considering office supplies, it can be economical to pay more for stationery if they are of better quality and last longer. Over time, the overall costs will go down as well as your use of plastic and other undesirable materials.

4. Using Less Electricity

Consider ways you can decrease your electrical consumption. Implement intelligent lighting and heating controls to save money and energy in your office.

Consider getting rid of inefficient office equipment and replacing them with modern, less energy-consuming alternatives.

5. A More Green Building

Consider contacting the building management where your office is located to involve them in the process of improving ecological sustainability.

No matter how many tips you can get, the best way to go green is by examining your daily tasks and business routine. Making small changes within your business workflow can make significant environmental gains over the long term and also allow you to more easily manage your budget and absorb the changes.

As a matter of fact, basic rules of engagement and behavior can mean the difference between efficiency and professionalism on the one hand, or disorder and time lost on the other. For conference calling can be a lifeline for many organizations whereby inefficiency becomes very costly in the long term.

So here are a few simple reminders to keep in mind when you are on your next conference call.

For Conference Hosts

- Publish an agenda and be clear about intentions and of what is to be accomplished for the conference

- Stress timeliness and make sure that you, as the moderator, set the example by being punctual

- Set the rules for the call to ensure less interruptions and a free flow of information is had through ordered conversations

For Conference Participants

- Be on time (enough said!)

- Don’t interrupt other participants when they have not finished making their point

- Keep in mind that any sound you make or background noise present will be amplified and heard by everyone else in the conference

- Don’t overdo the telephone conference commands (ex: mute function) available to you as it may generate a tone that can be heard by everyone in the conference call

- Try not to use a cell phone or speaker phone as it may cause feedback or echoing in the conference call

And voila! Simple enough, isn’t it? A few simple reminders to keep in mind which can help go a long way to ensuring your next telephone conference call goes smoothly and hassle free.

Conferencing Basics

Telephone conference calling is a service that allows you to arrange a telephone call with many people at once located anywhere around the world. Usually this service allows you to setup a conference call instantly with no prior reservations, simply by calling a phone number and entering a special access code on your phone.

Toll-Free Conferencing

Toll-free conference calling is simply a telephone conference call service that uses a toll-free phone number to connect to the meeting.

The toll-free phone service works like any other toll-free phone number you may already be aware of: the person calling will not be charged any long distance charges as it is free for them!

Why Conference Call?

Why do we even need to conference call? Very simply: because it saves money and time.  Conference calling allows you to get answers quickly from your team, follow-up on urgent matters efficiently and problem-solve with all interested parties in a timely manner.

Conference calling also can eliminate costly travel, allow employees to work from home and telecommute, take advantage of emerging sales opportunities quickly by connecting with clientele and much more.

Toll-Free vs. Toll

While there may be numerous decisions that will need to be made when choosing the type of conferencing service, one major variable is whether you will need toll-free or toll. To put it simply, the differences are the following:

• Toll: Less expensive service but participants may be charged long distance for the telephone call
• Toll-Free: More expensive service but participants can call for free

So which do you choose? It depends on your needs. In some cases, giving out a toll phone number may make sense. But at other times, toll-free is really the way to go. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when choosing:

1. Are participants local or international? If they are calling from abroad, it may make more sense to give them a toll-free number. Otherwise, long distance charges will be astronomical.

2. Does the participant have a long-distance plan available? Many cell phone companies offer long distance packages which can make it economical for you since you will not need to give them a toll-free number. Toll will do fine in this example.

3. Is the telephone conference call you are organizing an important sales call with potential clients? In this case, it would be better to offer toll-free conferencing as it would be very unprofessional to make your clients pay for the call.

Some Parting Words

A toll free call service can be an indispensable tool for some and a great convenience for others. Having the ability to connect with your clients, suppliers, employees and others instantly by telephone can greatly enhance your business efficiency.

Offering a toll-free conference calling option removes all the hassle for your attendees, increases participation and lends credibility to your operation. Consider toll-free call services for your next meeting.

Conference calling has indeed become ubiquitous, so much so that we often tend to ignore the basics, which can help reduce their effectiveness.

Here is a quick conference call how-to guide on getting started. Keeping these tips in mind can go a long way in ensuring a smooth conferencing experience for everyone.

Determine your needs

The first thing to do is figure out what your needs are.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Do you need international toll free service? Not all audio conferencing accounts come standard with this capacity.
• How many lines do you need? Just 10 or 100?
• Do you need operator assistance for the entire call?
• How many conference lines do I need per week/month?

Asking these questions will help you determine what type of service and payment options you will need. This step is essentially for choosing the right conference call service provider.

Choosing a Supplier

When choosing the right audio conferencing provider, there are considerations that you need to keep in mind.

•  Can you get a demo of the service to try?
• What is precisely included in the service?
• What are the services or features that are billed for separately? Sometimes, there will be hidden fees not announced plainly.

Organizing your Conference Call

Once you have the conference account setup, its time to start your planning. This part is important to avoid any embarrassing surprises when you do your real conference call.

• Do a test conference call to make sure everything works smoothly. There are always unforeseen circumstances and things you may have overlooked. It’s better to be made aware of them ahead of time if possible.
• Try out the various features ahead of time including recording, getting operator help during the call and telephone star commands. This will increase familiarity with the service but also give you the necessary tools to trouble shoot yourself should anything unexpected occur during the live conference call.

Preparing the live conference

When you feel comfortable with the service, it’s time to get started with the live call. But just before, keep the following in mind:

• Prepare a list of invitees and email them the invitation ahead of time. Use calendar appointments or regular email. If possible, inform participants ahead of time that they should be expecting an official conference invitation.
• Give the invitees a brief idea of what to expect on the conference call, both in terms of an agenda but also the technical side of telephone conferencing, as this may be the first time for some participants.
• Prepare the list of telephone conference commands and website links, if need be, in a handy accessible format.
• Create a clear agenda and timetable to ensure the audio conference is focused and on topic.

The Live Call

Now it’s time to start the call! Participants should have already been instructed to log in to the conference call five minutes before start time. As participants log in, keep these reminders in mind:

• Inform participants that the call will be starting soon and to take advantage of the mute feature so as to keep noise to a minimum as everyone logs in.
• Use the roster feature to see who has logged in to know when to start the call.
• Keep close watch on the time to make sure that you do not finish the conference meeting too late.

 After Call Action

Once the call is over, there still may be some things left to do. The following simple steps can be taken to increase effectiveness of conference calling:

• If the call was recorded, make the recording available to participants or to those who may have missed the call.
• Follow up with conference attendees on their experiences and see what could be improved on for the next call.
• Finalize meeting minutes and ask for an initial commitment from participants to attend the next conference.

Keeping these simple reminders in mind could help avoid unnecessary delays and setbacks when you organize your conference calls. Think of conferencing as a business tool that is there to help you improve your daily business workflow and as such, should be optimized for effectiveness

Whether providing conference call services or medical imaging equipment or any other product or service, we are all in the same boat!  Here are some of the major difficulties you can expect to face as a new entrepreneur and a few ideas on how to mitigate any negative impact.

Lack of Payment

As an entrepreneur, you do not want to waste time chasing your clients for payment. It can quickly become an administrative drain. More importantly, cash flow problems may occur and you can quickly find yourself in a difficult financial strain.

Try the following:

• Inform clients of the billing due dates and always be on time when sending them the invoices
• Give clients different options for ways of making payments
• Be proactive: if a client is progressively making payments at a later and later date, contact the client and see what you can offer them

Sole Entrepreneurship

Being an independent business owner will force you to make decisions in virtually every area of your company. While large corporations can afford to hire experts in their field to fulfill major positions, sole business owners do not have that luxury.  This can mean being forced to take decisions without the benefit of personal business experience.

What to do:

• Make a list of your weaknesses and don’t be afraid to pay for the services of an expert. In can save you time and money in the long term while also getting the job done better.
• Manage your time religiously and always expand your skill sets. Having even cursory knowledge in many fields related to running a business can help better prepare you and lessen the likelihood of making bad decisions.

Getting Around the Competition

Another major hurdle for entrepreneurs is being able to compete against the industry leaders.  How do you successfully gain a foothold in an industry where you are competing against adversaries with seemingly limitless advertising budgets, bottomless price quotes and endless corporate resources?

Get it done:

• Always go back to the example of Walmart: how did they do it? As an entrepreneur, you need to remember that you may not be able to beat the big players at their own game. That’s why you need to have a clear and identifiable competitive advantage. What do you do different or better than everyone else?
• Besides a clear competitive advantage, you also need to start thinking local. Even if you offer a similar product/service at a similar price, you can offer that service in a geographically-linked area, which makes your company a specialist in its field. You can also decide to focus on one aspect within your service industry and specialize in that.
• Another option is to do business differently. If the service offers no obvious competitive advantage, how about the way you deliver that service or the way you communicate it to prospective clients?

Lack of Resources

This is another big hurdle we all must face. With limited time and start-up capital/financing, how do we move forward with our business while ensuring that we have access to the resources we need for sustained growth?

Give it a Try:

• Work your network. Even before becoming an entrepreneur, you should have been busy compiling a list of contacts and suppliers. Now is the time to call up some favors and use your business network to help you access the resources you require.
• Develop a relationship with your local financing institution. Banks often have a plethora of resources available to you as an entrepreneur and can help you grow your business. If you have developed a relationship with a trusted adviser, they can become an important resource for you.
• Governments generally encourage entrepreneurship and for good economic reason! Examine all government resources available to you, both at the local and national level.

Entrepreneurs are a hard-working breed of people and entrepreneurship can be quite challenging. But with the right approach, most problems can be greatly mitigated while never being completely avoidable.

Business owners will undoubtedly continue to face critical challenges to their success; lessening any potential negative impact will go a long way towards ensuring that proper conditions exist for that success.

As a result, in the next couple of weeks, the blog will be featuring a series of basic how-to and informational articles on conferencing services in order to hopefully help clarify and differentiate the services being offered.

If you are looking to make a conference call for the first time, then check back on a regular basis for a series of helpful summaries on what the conferencing industry has to offer. From audio conferencing to web conferencing and more, the choices are plentiful and can be confusing at times.

In the coming weeks, we hope to clarify as much as possible the options available to you, the potential customer, to help you better meet your requirements.

The first article will be a basic introduction to telephone conferencing, our most popular service by far. Stay tuned!

Our service offers a host of security enhancements to ensure that your next conference call is as secure as possible.  The best part is that all these features are free with every Sky Conferencing 24/7 account.  Simply pick and choose the security feature you are interested in and you are ready to go.

Here is a list of the security features that you have access to:

Tones

Automated tones let you know if someone has joined or left the conference call instantly. If an unauthorized called joins the conference, you will know about it.

Name Record

Name Record feature tells you the name of the person that has just joined the conference call. As every participant joins the conference, they will be asked to say their name and it will be recorded and played back to the conference.  If the caller does not give their name or if it is someone you do not recognize, you will know about it immediately.

Instant Roster

The Roster feature tells you instantly how many people are on the conference call at any time as well as their names. Simply press the appropriate command using your touch tone telephone.

Pin Code

The Pin code security feature will allow you to add an extra level of protection by setting up a confidential pin for every conference call.  Once you dial in as the moderator, the system will ask you to choose a  pin. Every participant that joins that conference call will need to punch in the pin or they will be denied entry.

As the moderator, you get to choose a new pin for every conference call you do which increases the level of security.

Conference Lock

Conference Lock is the ability to lock your conference call so no one else can join, even if they have the correct passcode number.  Once all the participants have joined the telephone call, you simply press the appropriate command code using your telephone.

Online Moderation

With every account, you have access to an online moderation tool that lets you control the telephone conference call from the web and see who has joined in on the call. You will be able to see, in real time, who joins and disconnects from the conference call, as it happens.

The online moderation tool also gives you access to many of the touch tone features that are accessible via the telephone.

All these features give you the confidence in knowing that only the people you invite are listening in to the conference call. These  features are free and can be activated and controlled by the moderator of the conference.  The only exception is the pin code feature which can be activated by calling our customer service department (available 24/7) before your next conference call.

Whether discussing sensitive financial information, employee records or any other private matter, your conference call solution needs to provide as much security as possible so you can focus on what’s important to you.

But a web conference is often the best choice as a business tool, when a telephone conference is simply just not enough.

Here are a few reasons why you should consider web conferencing for your next meeting.

Visual and Interactive

Web conferencing adds an instant jolt of interactivity to your meeting. With multiple web camera support as well as powerpoint and rich-media  presentations, you will captivate your audience and deliver information like never before.

Easy to Use

Web conferencing generally does not require any software to be downloaded ahead of time, depending on the type of service chosen. Web tools also allow you to complete a system check ahead of time in order to ensure maximum compatibility during the web conference.

In this way, you can ensure that all your participants are fully able to see and hear your presentation with no surprises during the live conference.

Pay Per Use

Whether you need to do one web conference or 20; or whether you have 4 or 40 participants: web conferencing allows you the same pricing flexibility that traditional audio conferencing gives you  by paying only for what you use. No need to pay monthly fees and sign contracts for a service you may not use regularly.

Web conferencing services give you the flexibility and power you need to conduct advanced, visually-rich presentations for an improved overall user experience.

A Web Call Service

Calling from the web essentially lets you, as a host of the audio telephone conference call, add participants using the web moderation tool. When calling from the web, you have two options:

• Dial out to yourself in order to start the telephone conference
• Dial out to a participant to add them to the telephone conference

We will go over the two options below as well as why you would want to call from the web.

Call Yourself

The web moderation tool, as  brief reminder, is an online tool that is accessed via the Sky Conferencing website and allows you to control your telephone conference from the internet. One of the features of the moderator tool is the dial out.

In the screen capture above (click for larger size), you can the moderator tool displayed. The first option displayed is to call the host of the conference call. This is a simple way to dial yourself into the telephone conference directly from the web.

Call Participants

The other aspect of calling from the web is dialing out to participants and adding them to the conference call. The Sky Conferencing moderator tool, as seen above, lets you use your browser to directly call individuals and add them into the telephone conference call.

Why Call from the Web?

Why would you use the web moderator tool to call yourself or your participants when you can simply dial in directly using the telephone? There are a few reasons why.

1. Sometimes, you want to control at what time your participant joins the telephone call. For example, if you are interviewing a candidate for a job and would like to first discuss the individual in private with your hiring manager. Once you are finished, you can call from the web and add the candidate to the phone conference.

2. Some participants need to be called (instead of calling in themselves) either for financial reasons or due telephone restrictions in the area they are located in.

3. Calling out to yourself, as a host, is also advantageous in certain situations. For example, you may want to monitor who is joining the conference call by using the web moderation tool. Once you are satisfied that a specific person has joined, or that quorum has been reached etc, you can then call yourself from the web more quickly and easier.

These are just some brief examples of the web call feature and how it can be used to enhance your conference call experience. Give it a try for your next conference call.

Public companies have shareholders that are legally entitled to timely information regarding business operations and finance. That is why many companies have monthly investor relations conference calls in order to meet their legal duty but also to keep all interested shareholders informed on the latest events affecting their investments, be it financial or other.

The monthly conference call has become a standard practice among publicly traded businesses and a quick Google search confirms this. So why do companies hold conference calls with their shareholders or other interested parties?

Here are a few reasons:

• To update shareholders about new business opportunities. For example, a mining company holds a conference call discussing a recent trip to a new mine and the potential therein.
• To give a monthly summary of financial activity. For example, an investor relations call discussing quarterly income or a new stock dividend.
• To respond to recent public events affecting business operations. For example, how the Japanese nuclear situation is affecting delivery of electronic supplies.

There are many advantages that conference calls can offer for these types of shareholder meetings.  For example:

1. Ability to record conferences and make them available on a website for offline viewing.
2. Ability to have a question and answer session with a conference  operator and take questions from the audience in an orderly fashion.
3. Control your conference in real time and know who is on and who isn’t.
4. Ability to make rich media presentations using web conferencing.

So next time you would like to disseminate information to shareholders and other interested parties, consider a conference call.