Companies that do business across multiple states are no longer a rarity these days. In fact, there are so many companies that conduct their businesses worldwide and have so many satellite offices around the world. These companies are all driven towards success, and that is all good. However, the drive to success may differ per site as each area would have a different leader, and each leader would have their set of ideas and goals. With this setup, it becomes a challenge to unify the drive towards a single objective. This is why weekly and monthly meetings have to be set up so that there will be constant coordination among site leaders, and this coordination would trickle down to their employees.
Setting up a weekly meeting is no easy feat, though, since the different areas would have their time zones and, obviously, their own locations. Having them fly to meet up at a particular location would definitely take up a lot of time and money, and these can be better used for other items. For a more affordable action plan that can be used on a weekly basis, it would be good to consider setting up conference bridges.
The concept of having a conference bridge is a neat thing, and it is the perfect solution for those who need to have constant meetings with clients, business partners, even teams that are situated in different parts of the country or globe. When you want to set up a meeting, you send out a phone number and a passcode that will be used for the meeting. The phone number is like the building, and the passcode is the room number. People dial the phone number; a voice prompts them for the passcode. Once entered, the phone line is joined to the corresponding meeting room and each participant with the same passcode will be able to hear each other and speak to each other.
There are different options that a person may have when setting up a conference bridge, and each option would have a different price point. The two major items that you would want to consider are the following:
- Toll dial in – this is the phone number that is to be used to “enter the building” where the conference would be held. The phone number will have an area code of a particular city, so those who dial in from a different state would need to pay long distance charges. This is ideal if all, or at least the majority, of the participants will be from the same area code, though that sometimes does not work since people who live in the same city would prefer to meet up with each other. The price point for this would vary for a few cents per dial in, and could be free if on a monthly plan.
- Toll-Free dial-in – this is a phone number that starts with either 800 or 888, meaning that people who dial in from any phone number within the United States would be able to do so for free, and this works well for those meetings that have multiple parties dialing in. The price point though will depend on the number of people who dial in, as well as the length of each bridge.
There are other factors that affect pricing, such as the maximum number of participants for each bridge, the length of each conference call, even the number of conference calls that you would want to host simultaneously. No matter what price it may have, though, consider the amount of savings that you will get when this is compared to traveling to a single place, renting a board room and perhaps even footing the bill for one night at a hotel. The phone was made for convenience, and setting up a conference bridge is one way of taking the convenience of a phone and raising it up a notch.
