In just hearing the concept of web conferencing, two benefits are immediately apparent. Since everyone involved can attend from any convenient computer, you’ll save time and money on travel and you’ll increase participation.

There are also some less-obvious benefits, though, which I’ll review in this article.

You can set up a reusable online meeting room.

Think of your online meeting room as a conference room in an office building. In a conference room, before hosting a meeting you have to bring in all the materials you’ll need, such as a projector to display a PowerPoint presentation.

In an online meeting room, you can also pre-load a PowerPoint presentation or other materials, which will be available to you when you begin the meeting. As an added benefit of online conferencing systems, you can keep your meeting room with all your pre-loaded materials and re-use it at any time, unlike a traditional offline meeting, where you have to set up the room again every time you use it.

You can easily record your meeting.

You can certainly record offline conferences, but it requires bringing in audio and/or video recording equipment, as well as additional individuals to operate the equipment. With web conferencing, once you log into the system you’ve already set up your recording equipment. All you have to do is press a record button and you’ll save everything that happens in your conference for future viewing.

You have greater control over questions and answers.

While offline meetings generally have time set-aside for questions and answers, you still run into a few problems. People may have immediate questions that could be most helpful to discuss as soon as they come up, or certain questions may be more beneficial to discuss with the entire group than others.

With web conferencing, participants can ask questions through a text-based form, which will silently be displayed in a panel that the host can easily view. This way, if a question comes up that can be of great benefit to the meeting, the host can address it immediately. Additionally, the host can view each question quickly, before asking it aloud, and decide which questions will be most appropriate to discuss with the entire group.

These added benefits of web conferencing apply regardless of where your participants are located—even if they are already in the same building! The next time you host a meeting, consider whether an offline meeting is really your most efficient choice.

The Less-Obvious Benefits of Web Conferencing