Can you really save money with online meetings?

How much do you travel for business? How much are you spending? Online meetings offer a never before time savings and cost reduction. First let's take a look at the average business meeting. Most business professionals travel for meetings, sales or training purposes. A recent study showed that 4 out of 5 professionals are traveling by car. Now that gas is averaging around four dollars a gallon, companies are rethinking travel expenses. The last company I worked for put an immediate halt to all business travel to try and drastically cut expenses. The drastic measures put a cramp in the way we did things. However, the travel hiatus made many of us find cheaper alternatives to meeting with co-workers. The results were surprisingly good, with the advent of desktop sharing, projectors and conference calls. We found that many of the meetings went very well and costs were cut dramatically.

What are the costs? In this example well just use travel by vehicle of with the average travel of 30 miles. Currently the standard reimbursement rate from the U.S. government is .585 cents per mile. Round trip we have 60 miles per person which is about $35. Include tolls and meal reimbursement you could easily spend $50 per person per meeting. That example is based on local meeting travel which is 4 out of 5 travel plans. Now take a look at travel that includes airfare and hotel arrangements.

Local travel cost
" Average 60 miles round trip $35
" Tolls and Meals $25
" Total local cost per person for your company is $60

Distance travel cost per day
" Airfare average cost 2006 data $230
" Taxi $106
" Hotel $120
" Meals $45
" Total per day cost $501

The benefits of online meetings.
By conducting online meetings, online training, and online events, online meetings offers an impressive return on your investment over the cost of conducting business face-to-face. As you can see the average costs per person are staggering.

We started using an online meeting service like MeetMeNow to save on travel expenses. With desktop sharing, video conferencing and VoIP options, the meetings were the next best thing to being there. Our company was saving thousands of dollars per month almost instantaneously. For $39 per month I can hold meetings up to 15 people. That price includes integrated VoIP, or conference calls, application sharing and video conferencing. Is your meeting expenses more than $39 per month? With MeetMeNow you could be saving hundreds or even thousands per month. These are real savings that can start retaining now. If you want to learn more about the latest in online meeting benefits and features check out our online meeting reviews to learn more how you can benefit.