Our clients ask this question all the time – why spend money on a commercial teleconferencing system when Facetime and Skype are free?

Some background for those who are unfamiliar: Teleconferencing allows people from various remote locations to join in on the conversation, and it will enable you to share documents, images, and provides the ability to record your meetings.

For most people, Facetime does the job well enough. You probably don’t need a commercial teleconferencing system if:

• You’re video calling for solely personal use
• You have purely one-on-one video calls
• You have relatively unimportant calls that don’t need to be referenced at a later date
• You’re not discussing proprietary information over video call
• You’re not concerned with lag or unstable connections

However, there comes the point at which some business owners need to upgrade. Here’s why:

Designed for Teams

While you can have multiple people on a call using Face-Time, you are not able to use anything but audio. Teleconferencing allows the benefit of having no restrictions on how many people attend the meeting.

Everyone Looks at the Same Thing

Every department in your organization is probably using analytics in some capacity – those analytics likely need to be shared during your conference calls. The ability to share screens allows for more concise communication of key performance metrics within the business. In addition, documents containing this data can be shared through most teleconferencing software.

Security for your Proprietary Information

This one is pretty self-explanatory – you communicate important information during your meetings, have an air-tight digital environment is paramount to keeping your data confidential.

Higher Quality of Communication

While Facetime is great, it can be incredibly laggy. When we install a commercial teleconferencing system, it’s designed to be incredibly high-speed, and incredibly high-definition. This system allows for richer communication and more coherent digital meetings.

If you’re considering purchasing a system, we hope this helps you make your decision! Please feel free to ask any questions here, or chat with one of our agents using the box on the bottom right corner of your screen.