Whether you are planning to host a team meeting or an interactive session with one of your clients, web conferencing tools make work easier.
However, all tools are not equipped with the same set of features and capabilities.
That’s why we need to be specific while choosing web conferencing software for our company.
And if you have been facing confusion regarding the same, here are five tips that will make this selection easier for you.
1. Be Aware of All Use Cases
All web conferencing tools come with a different set of features. But are all of those features useful for your needs?
It’s important to consider all potential cases where you may need to use web conferencing software. This will help you find out the top features that you are going to need in a conferencing tool.
As a result, you can prioritize one tool over the other, depending on the features that they offer.
For a better understanding following are some common use cases:
- Collaborations
- Sales demos
- Webinars
- Company-wide meetings
- Presentations
2. Types of Content Supported by The Tool
When a conference is going on, you or any of your team members may have to share several files that are relevant to the meeting.
This means that the tool of your choice must support the content format that your company uses most actively.
For example, if your organization prefers using Microsoft word over Google docs, the web conferencing software that you choose must allow sharing of MS word documents.
3. Consider Security Factors
Data security is another important factor that you must consider while picking a conferencing tool.
Most web conferencing tools that you may come across will offer a certain level of encryption for keeping your data secure.
But how to make sure that the level of security that they provide is good enough for your needs?
Keeping it simple, if your conversations are going to include sensitive information, proprietary or confidential documents, it’d be good to consider web conferencing solutions that offer 256-bit encryption.
4. Make Sure That the Software Is Independent of the OS
If your entire team (this means every single employee across all of your offices, wherever they are) isn’t using the same operating system on their computers, you must pick a tool that is not OS-dependent.
An OS-dependent web conferencing system will work only on the operating system that it is programmed for.
So, if you buy software for macOS, it won’t work on Windows or Linux. Similarly, if you buy a tool for your Linux PC, it won’t work on any other operating system.
This is why the choice has to be mindful.
5. Customer Support Is as Important as The Software
Whether you are new to this tool or have some experience around it, at some point in time, you may need help.
The best place to get this help from is the customer support centre.
And what happens when a conferencing tool vendor’s customer support system isn’t qualified?
Customers’ problems go unattended and unanswered. Surely, you wouldn’t like that as a customer.
So, make sure that the tool that you choose promises strong customer support and is happy to provide help when it’s needed.
Final words
Finding a good web conferencing tool for your business can be challenging. You wouldn’t want to invest in something that may not be useful after a year. You wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time learning about the tool. And you wouldn’t want many other inconveniences.
In this post, we mentioned five tips that one must keep in mind while choosing a web conferencing software to avoid all such problems.
Hopefully, this was helpful.
Web conferencing stock photo by fizkes/Shutterstock
