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Conferencing alternatives: many companies have installed their own videoconferencing or teleconferencing systems, but others are opting to use service providers for such solutions. Here are two examples of such outsourced conferencing services

Communications News, Feb, 2004 by Rena Wish Cohen

Teleconferencing cuts costs

Until a year ago, Chicago-based law firm Tressler, Soderstrom, Maloney & Priess conducted telephone conferences the old-fashioned way. Fifty-five partners in seven offices around the country relied on a conventional operator-assisted audio conferencing service to hold long-distance telephone meetings with each other, as well as with third parties, often summoning dozens of participants from coast to coast to dial in simultaneously to discuss complex litigation matters. This reduced travel expenses and expedited group communication, but there were two significant drawbacks.

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First, every call had to be pre-arranged with an operator to ensure the availability of enough ports to accommodate all participants. This required at least 15 minutes of secretarial time and a minimum of an hour of advance notice, adding undesirable administrative overhead, as well as precluding the spur-of-the-moment calls frequently necessary in a legal environment. Second, the price tag was more than 40 cents per minute, with setup fees of $6 or more per call based on the number of participants.

Tressler solved both problems by switching to the reservationless audio conferencing service offered by its long-distance provider, Milwaukee-based Norlight Telecommunications. Conference calls can now be convened at a moment's notice, using an automated system that requires no operator intervention.

With this on-demand system, there is no need to pre-book a call, estimate attendance or meeting length, or even inform Nurlight that a call is going to be made. Attorneys can host a teleconference on demand simply by e-mailing the date, time, dial-in number and passcode to participants. Ports no longer have to be reserved in advance because the reservationless conferencing software that Norlight uses is able to intelligently anticipate the number of users and duration of a call based on previous call behavior, and then allocate ports according to statistical probabilities.

The financial benefits have also been significant. With Norlight's system, Tressler has cut its per-minute teleconferencing rate by 40% and also eliminated the need to pay setup fees for each call, thanks to the automated nature of the service. At the firm's current average usage of 5,000 minutes and 20 calls per month, that adds up to a yearly savings of more than $11,000. The per-minute fee is the same regardless of the number of participants on the call.

"With reservationless conferencing, the fact that we no longer need to preschedule a conference has enabled our attorneys to share new developments in complex cases or discuss other issues with dozens of colleagues and/or joint defense teams involving other law firms with as little as five minutes' notice," says Robert Fuhrman, information systems coordinator for Tressler, Soderstrom, Maloney & Priess.

"We use this capability nearly two dozen times a month to convene meetings on topics ranging from partner business to depositions, emergency filings and court rulings on a given case," Fuhrman says. "It makes it much easier to communicate with large groups and keep all parties up to speed."

Tressler's switch from operator-assisted to on-demand conferencing required no changes to the network or PBX infrastructure--Norlight maintains the necessary conferencing bridge hardware and reservationless conferencing software. After successfully testing the service with a small pilot group, the law firm switched its teleconferencing contract from its previous provider.

At that point, Norlight assigned a permanent toll-free, dial-in number for ' Tressler's exclusive use, plus 55 different passcodes, enabling each partner and a few supervisors to initiate mad host their own conferences with the same dial-in number and conference ID each time. This eliminates the need for conference originators to obtain a new set of numbers for each call and redistribute them to frequent contacts before every session.

Although a maximum of 40 participants pet call is recommended, Tressler has hosted up to 70 participants simultaneously with no degradation of service. The moderator has complete control over the conference with a few touch-tone commands. Call organizers can mute their own line, mute all lines except theirs, dial out to add participants, lock the conference to additional participants, and summon a conference operator to troubleshoot a problem with the press of a button. Participants can mute and unmute their own lines or call an operator via touch-tone, as well.

Norlight bills identify calls by passcode so that Tressler can easily track usage and assign calls to the appropriate parties for chargeback purposes. The service also gives Tressler the option of storing any audio conference for later listening by those who are unable to participate in the live session, and of having the entire call transcribed and taped.

The instant conferencing system has become such an integral part of Tressler's operations that the conference room in the firm's new office in Chicago's Sears Tower has been equipped with eight microphones and a series of speakers designed specifically for conference calls. Everyone in the room can hear participants in other locations, including the firm's satellite offices in Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, Newark, New York, and the Chicago suburbs of Lincolnshire and Wheaton, without the use of individual handsets. The moderator controls all functions from a telephone at the podium.

Technology Industry

Conferencing alternatives: many companies have installed their own videoconferencing or teleconferencing systems, but others are opting to use service providers for such solutions. Here are two examples of such outsourced conferencing services

Communications News, Feb, 2004 by Rena Wish Cohen

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