Conferencing isn't just a cheaper and more productive way of collaborating or getting work done. Using the latest technology, meetings can be setup within minutes, even if the people involved are spread across the world.

Conferencing has taken huge steps forward in recent years. Calls are much easier and quicker to organize. For a formal meeting, you may still want to plan ahead but if you want to gather a few people together for a quick impromptu discussion, that's just as easy. Conferencing has become a much richer experience too. Using appropriate tools with an audio conference, people can see and work on documents while they speak or communicate through business emerging applications such as Instant Messaging. The next generation of video conferencing services will transform and improve the experience as HD (high definition) is with television. By placing large HD screens and cameras carefully around a meeting table, it's possible to look people in the eye; facial expressions and gestures are as clearly visible as if participants were in the same room.

Gartner has described conferencing as a 'birthright' application for high-performance workplaces and it's easy to see why. The increasing pressure of globalization causing dramatic competitive pressures has redefined how partners, suppliers and colleagues need to more effectively collaborate across the world.

While the evident benefits of productivity and efficiency are quite seductive, conferencing can have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. Time that would have been spent travelling can be put to better use, and conference calls are much cheaper than plane tickets, hotels, and travel expenses. The challenge for many companies, though, is that the costs of travel and conferencing fall in different areas or budgets and many times are not strategically aligned.

As we look more strategically at the benefits there emerges a further win-win opportunity to businesses - one that allows them to maximise the return on their investment in new converged networks and IP telephony. Those who have already completed the introduction of IP telephony across their organization and have connected their various premises through IP VPNs have the most to gain.

If organizations use their IP VPNs to connect everyone, significant cost can be saved. By adding a managed conferencing service to their corporate network, the majority of calls can be brought 'on net' where savings of 20 per cent or more can be achieved as a result.

While 80 per cent of organizations have started to introduce IP telephony, only 20 per cent have completed deployment. The remainder still operate a mix of old and new telephony systems across their facilities.

Then there is the potential impact to areas around corporate responsibility to include work life balance, environment impact on CO2 emissions and diversity of the available workforce.

So what can you do to gain control of conferencing costs in the meantime?

One option is to select a single global supplier for conferencing services. Look for a supplier that offers local access numbers for its conferencing services in many countries. Such global conferencing solutions remove the need to make expensive international phone calls.

Another option is to choose a global supplier's hosted conferencing service. In most respects, this is the same as choosing an on-net managed solution. Calls from employees using the IP telephony systems are effectively 'on net'. Everyone else connects in by dialling the local access number for their country, with their calls being connected to the conferencing platform through the supplier's global network.

Whichever option you choose, there is one more thing you need to do to maximize and 'enable' the benefit and effectively embed a culture and behaviour that exploits the capability in your organization. Unless there is a well orchestrated effort to educate and communicate to the actual end users to drive the appropriate behaviour it won't happen.

Bottom line - there are few opportunities as rich for businesses to leverage and impact their overall organizational competitiveness in a world that clearly becomes more competitive itself every minute.

Jack Blaeser is President and General Manager at BT Conferencing, 617-801-6600; email:jack.blaeser@bt.com; web: www.btconferencing.com.