New Frontiers in Video Conferencing: The Virtual Public Notary is coming

June 5th, 2017 by ali No comments »

Virtual conferencing allows public notaries’ customers to have their deeds formed and signed just with one click.

When dealing with bureaucracy, I think that it is difficult to imagine something more annoying than going to the public notary. However, despite the recurrent promises of politicians about bureaucracy simplifications and red tape shortenings, citizens still need the assistance of a public notary with many important business operations that imply copy and signature authentications. So, no matter whether you are buying the house of your dreams or opening new bank accounts; in any case, you’ll have to call in the notary at a certain step of the procedure.

In common experience, the problem with these professionals are time and money waste. Despite their apparent simplicity, authentications are operations for which you will be usually charged much more than you can expect. Another pain in the neck is the need to take an appointment and spend at least half day waiting for a public notary that is often too busy to give us quick attention.

All these issues can be easily solved with virtual conferencing today. Consider, for example, that one of the main reasons behind public notaries’ high professional fees is the need to pay the rent of the office. Through virtual conferencing, a public notary could operate from home, save money from the office rent and then decrease his fees.

To managethe appointments, there are many cheap agenda applications on the market that are perfect for the purpose. Documents can be easily scanned through any pc’s in-built web cam and then shared by using the special functionality that is present in most video-conferencing solutions. The authenticity of the signature can be then easily checked through the screen by simply watching the customer signing. Plus, in a video conference it is also very easy to shoot the moment of the apposition of the signature and keep a record in that way in the archives as piece of evidence. Solutions like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting http://www.rhubcom.com  can be integrated with most public notaries’ archive management systems, besides ensuring the necessary level of data protection and hacker-proof resistance.

In conclusion, thanks to modern technologies all the principal tasks that are usually performed by a public notary in his office can be done online today. Among the several available technical solutions, the ones that utilize on-premise servers are the most recommendable in terms of data protection and conformity with safety standards, although there are very good products also among the cloud-based solutions because of the newest systems of encryption that are able to  ensure similar high levels of data protection .

At this point, the readers will not be surprised to know that there are already some online services for notarizing. For example, Online Notary (https://www.notarycam.com); another one is Notarize (https://www.notarize.com) which is managed by the commonwealth of public notaries of Virginia. Costs of these new online services are quite affordable and customer satisfaction seems high. Maybe they cannot replace complex services – like asking for advice on complicated legal matters – but they can certainly be helpful in everyday life operations as having your signature on your bank account application certified and authenticated.

No comments »

Posted in Video Conferencing

Tags:

Are your Tax Audits going Virtual?

June 2nd, 2017 by ali No comments »

Video conferencing solutions like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting have made virtual tax auditing possible, as they assure customers and taxmen all the necessary privacy and data protection they need.

Tax audits are undoubtedly dreary for almost all tax payers in the world. Luckily, video conferencing can alleviate the process of getting a tax audit by giving you the possibility of having it to take place in the comfort of your living room. This would save at least time and the annoyance to drive though the traffic to one of those gray and squared building where taxmen exert their powers.

This is the reason why in 2011 I.R.S. (Internal Revenue Service, an US authority) launched a pilot program to allow tax payers to use video conferences to get assistance for their tax problems in 12 diffferent locations.The new virtual procedure started with sending a sign-in code to the taxpayers concerned through which they logged in to the virtual conference from their home or office computers. If it was necessary to show documents, they could be scanned by the computer built-in cam. Virtual audits were introduced with the purpose to replace the traditional correspondence audits, which are deemed as confusing and puzzling by most tax players.

I.R.S. program had been strongly backed up by the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent I.R.S. watchdog arm. In the meantime, some accountants had launched the first virtual auditing services, which confirm the trend towards the adoption of virtual conferences as a new way to sort things out with the taxman for taxpayers.

The technology to support virtual auditing is already fully available. Today’s web conferencing solutions offer a huge set of functionalities that range from document sharing to virtual conferences with multiple participants, and on-premise server based solutions like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) assure public officers and taxpayers the necessary level of privacy, security and data protection.

In facts, an issue involved in virtual meetings is data security. This problem can be tackled in two ways. The first is to strengthen encryption techniques; the second is working on the proxies and firewalls of the computers hosting web conferences. The first approach is the most used today, as most virtual conferencing services have moved to clouds. The second one has been adopted by the producers of on-premise server based video conferencing solutions, and it is more tested. In both cases, the result for producers is being able to provide users with reliable and fast services for virtual conferences.

Is thus virtual auditing the future for the US taxpayers? The problem is not technology, but politics. To my knowledge, the above-mentioned pilot program has not been continued by I.R.S..So, despite a promising debut, it seems that taxpayers cannot take this new service for granted. While virtual conferencing has been booming in other areas connected with public services like healthcare, tax auditing is still a difficult ground for innovators.  However, let’s give hope. I.R.S. attempt to introduce virtual tax audits is a signal that the wind of change has started blowing even through the gloomy taxman’s offices.

No comments »

Posted in Video Conferencing

Tags:

The Secret of an Easy Remote Support

May 25th, 2017 by ali No comments »

When your remote support team is in the condition to work smoothly, they get automatically able to deliver a faster and more effective service with subsequent better satisfaction of your customers. Let’s quickly see the common best practices to make your remote support work easily and steadily.

Never neglect the importance of things like remote support. The most of your customers will judge your company mainly on the base of the support they will get from you. So, how to make your remote support more effective? A strategy is to put your remote support team in the best conditions to work, as a happy worker is often a great assistant. Let’s go through the best practices to do that.

Choose the right tools. Your remote support team members have necessarily to utilize a tool for remote supporting to deliver their services. Prefer products with an intuitive and easy-to-use GUI, like R-HUB`s Remote Support Server http://www.rhubcom.com/v5/remote-Support.html In general, ergonomics is one of the aspect that designers take care of. But it is also important that the remote support product you are going to buy has all the functionality your team requires. So, it is not a bad idea to ask your workers their opinions before wasting your money on a product that is difficult to use.

Give your workers headsets. Your remote support team should adopt headsets and Bluetooth and abandon telephones. The reason is quite simple: smartphones and standard phones propped up between your workers’ heads and shoulders are one of the main causes of bad postural positions with consequent neck pains. And someone with neck pains is not going to service customers in the best possible way.

Assure your workers are silent and free-of-distraction environment. Remote support requires dedication and attention. On the other hand, your customers need to feel that the technicians that are serving them give them all their attention. Therefore, the working environment of your remote support team must be clean, relaxing and silent.

Take care of connections. It is difficult to imagine something more annoying than a spotting connection that fails at the climax of the conversation. So, do not save money on networks, lines, cables and connections. Again, better an on-premise server based solution, like R-HUB remote support server, than web browser based solutions, as it ensures safer and reliable connections between your organization and your customers.

Train your technicians. A good technician is not necessarily polite and good-mannered, or gifted with good communication skills. Yet, these qualities are important to deliver a good service. Fortunately, your team can be trained to excel even in these tricky areas today. Invest some money also on education and training, and you will never regret it. Remember that machines are important, but never as much important as the human factor.

Are you interested in the problems connected with remote support and remote support team management? You are going to find useful resources and interesting articles on this challenging topic on R-HUB`s blog at http://blog.rhubcom.com/

No comments »

Posted in Remote Support

Tags:

Why does Video Conferencing beat Physical Meetings?

May 25th, 2017 by ali No comments »

The right answer is because video conferencing has become an essential tool of the organization of work in the digital economy. Yet still important, money-saving concerns have become secondary today.

In the digital economy, the organization of work has been going through disruptive transformations in the last few years. This has changed video conferencing from a mere curiosity to an indispensable tool for everybody. The shifting from the traditional way of working in physical places to what has been defined as “virtual corporations” compels almost every digital worker to utilize video conferencing daily.

Why video-conferencing and not some other technology? Indeed, the benefits that the application of video conferencing has brought to the digital organizations are huge. Let’s quickly run through the main points.

1) Video conferencing helps telecommuting

Without video conferences, teleworking and telecommuting would be very difficult, as it is the only way to reduce the lack of interaction between managers and remote workforce.

2) Video conferencing helps managers to oversee remote collaborators.

Remote working poses new problems, for example checking and tracking remote workers efficacy and effectively. Video conferences allow managers to immediately see what their employees are up to .

3) Video conferencing makes your meeting independent from money and time concerns.

The main implication is that more frequent meetings are possible, and the coordination and control of managers on workers subsequently increase. This is then mirrored in an increase of workforce productivity, the main reason why so many organizations are going more and more virtual and less and less physical.

4) Video conferencing makes your remote communication more human.

Never forget that communication is almost all non-verbal and visual. While in a traditional phone call visual communication gets fatally lost, during a video conference you can fully enjoy the pleasure of a face-to-face meeting.

5) Video conferencing allows users to interact with more people at a time.

The simultaneously interaction with more than one people comes quite easy and comfortable in a video conference, even through mobiles. This feature, which is not present in traditional video calls, is very useful. For example, it enables managers to give directions to their remote teams from everywhere and at any time.

6) Video conferencing allows users to give live demonstrations.

Showing is the best way to persuading, and this is possible through video conferencing. Products like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) allows users to utilize a wide set of tools to make your conferences interactive and to engage your audience, like screen and file sharing, polling and raising hand buttons.

In conclusion, it is quite impossible to think of a digital working environment without a massive usage of video conferencing, as in a world of remote users, remote managers and remote workers; video conferences are the most effective way to communicate.

No comments »

Posted in Video Conferencing

Tags:

What are the Most Popular tools to Manage a Virtual Team?

May 21st, 2017 by ali No comments »

A quick overview of some of the most popular tools that helps to manage remote workers, from Dropbox to TurboMeeting.

It seems that virtual teams are more productive and efficient than traditional teams. Is that the reason why going virtual has become so popular in any digital and non-digital industry today? In any case, almost every manager will certainly have to deal with virtual teams and remote workers in next future. Therefore, be wise and ride the changes by starting to learn the ropes of virtual team management right by now. A fundamental step is to get an idea of which tools are available on the market for the purpose.

R-HUB TurboMeeting

Let’s start this quick overview with TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com), a suite of servers for virtual conferencing developed by R-HUB, a company based in San Diego.  A TurboMeeting server is an all-in-one solution that enables clients to perform a huge set of tasks, likehosting video and audio conferences and having access/giving support to remote computers. It is also a good solution for collaboration.

TurboMeeting strong points are:

– Its intuitive GUI that is easy to learn and use and that provides you with all the necessary functionalities to interact with your team in real time quickly and efficiently.

– Its lightweight and compact size that allows user to get rid of server rooms and server cabinets.

– Its being self-installing and self-updating machines. TurboMeeting servers do not require any devoted IT team and they scale up to 3000 participants per conference  without additional costs, as R-HUB adopted a flat license policy.

– It is safe. The on-premise server based technology that R-HUB use is deemed as the most reliable and secure. This makes TurboMeeting a great solution in industries that needs extra care for data protection.

Google Apps

Google does not mean only the most popular search engine of the world. Among the several activities of this famous brand, we find also office and communication tools that are daily used by thousands of clients throughout the world, like Google Doc, Google Calendar, Gmail Chat). They are all applications, which mean that it is not necessary to bring home any piece of hardware.

Google Apps strong points are, in my opinion:

  • There is a free version of each tool that enables users to utilize almost every feature of the paid versions. This makes Google Apps really cheap and in everyone’s reach. Small organizations and start-up with budget constraints will love it.
  • Their design and layout looks very similar to Microsoft office. Google Doc mimes perfectly Microsoft Office, at the point that I had nothing new to learn when I was asked to use it for professional purposes. So, no retraining is necessary for your remote workers.
  • You can use Gmail with your .com domain name, which gives a professional appearance to your email communication.

Yammer

Described as a social network for companies, Yammer is featured by a social media-like atmosphere similar to Facebook. Among its users, we found giants like 7-Eleven, eBay and Groupon.

Yammer strong points:

  • Social media-like atmosphere: Micro blogging, profiles, groups, private messaging, file uploads are some of the functionalities of this tool that applies the principles of Facebook design to virtual work environments.
  • Tested directly from Yammer. Their team is completely virtual and global, being composed of thousands of distant workers spread throughout the planet. Therefore, the team that test Yammer is the same that use it.

Dropbox

Dropbox is not exactly a collaboration tool, being purposely and specifically designed to share files of any sort thought the internet. It’s free, which makes it a popular solution despite its evident limitations, like the impossibility to implement read-only permissions for certain users.

Basecamp

This on-line collaboration tool is expressly designed for virtual team managers. Basecamp is not only about sharing information; it offers all the necessary functionalities to carry on with your team projects.

Basecamp strong points:

  • Purposely designed to manage teams. Basecamp allows you to perform almost all daily tasks that are necessary to manage your team. This allows you to stop using dozens of different applications to fulfill each individual managerial task.
  • Very rich in features. It is possible to share documents and files, to arrange virtual and real meetings, to set deadlines, to create to-do lists for your team members, and more.
  • Ease of use. You can see at glance what needs to be done and who is responsible for that.

If you are interested in tools for working from remote, you are going to find more resources on R-HUB`s blog at http://www.rhubcom.com

No comments »

Posted in Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing

Tags: