The Steep Financial Impact of Too Many Video Calls in an MSP Workday

Summary:

Unnecessary virtual meetings cost small managed service providers (MSPs) at least $18,000 per year and MSPs with over 100 employees an average of $420,000 per year.

To solve this problem, we will provide you with an impact plan to recover time lost to virtual meetings. This plan provides crucial steps to evaluate and diagnose the current state of work; design an initiative and implement change; assess the effectiveness of the change; iterate and adjust the plan as needed; and establish a process of maintenance and continuous improvement.

By following this plan, you and your team can streamline communication, ensuring that video calls serve a clear purpose and have a significant impact.

Video call apps such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom have become ubiquitous for MSP team communication, collaboration, and decision-making.

While these interactions are essential for maintaining productivity and fostering teamwork, there comes a point where the sheer volume of virtual meetings becomes counterproductive — and costly.

The Negative Cost of Excessive Virtual Meetings

Video calls require a substantial commitment of both time and resources. That includes the salaries of attendees and the lost productivity from diverting attention away from duties like providing customer service. Studies show that each year, about $37 billion is wasted due to ineffective meetings.

To determine whether meetings are productive, you must first acknowledge the number of video calls consuming your MSP. Take a 25-person team, for example. Twelve hours of calls each week per person adds up to a staggering 300 hours weekly! Factor in that the average employee costs $40 per hour, and that’s $12,000 weekly in video calls.

On top of that, research indicates that employees can spend four hours per week preparing for status update meetings. And after each meeting, workers may require up to 21 minutes before they refocus on their tasks.

The evidence is clear. Excessive virtual meetings incur serious costs and affect the hours preceding and following the meeting. This includes the time spent preparing for the call and the period for decompressing and refocusing afterward.

The goal is to reclaim as much time back as possible. And to do that, you must shift the culture of meetings.

Get Hard Data About Your Video Calls

Hold on a second. Before you go and cancel all your virtual meetings, we must get some hard data. Otherwise, biases and opinions may influence the result of your changes.

Produce8 is more than a work analytics tool. We provide resources and coaching to help you collect insights, analyze results, and take action both individually and as a team. After working in Produce8 for just a few seconds, you can see how many video calls you had, how long they lasted, and how the time spent collaborating impacted your focus, productivity, and well-being.

By gathering data into your current video call habits, you can learn what changes to make. And you can have more productive discussions with your team about how time spent collaborating is negatively affecting their work and, ultimately, your MSP’s profitability.

Quantifying Savings with Produce8

Produce8 assists MSPs in optimizing their meeting efficiency by analyzing data on video call frequency, duration, and participant engagement. This allows MSPs to identify and eliminate unproductive meetings and reveal significant opportunities for cost savings.

By simply identifying the problem, your MSP can slash video calls in half in as little as two weeks. Is the problem poorly designed meeting structure? Too many ad-hoc calls? Or perhaps meetings with too many people? We can show you.

According to Steven Rogelberg, a professor of organizational science management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, reducing the number of unnecessary meetings could save your MSP approximately $25,000 per employee annually . For a workforce of 100 individuals, that can accumulate to a staggering $2.5 million in yearly savings.

It’s time we took the excessive collaboration problem seriously. Here’s how Produce8 will help you fix it!

Produce8 provides:

• Video Calls Analytics: Acquire a deep insight into your team's meeting schedule to identify and act on opportunities to reduce or consolidate meetings. This strategy enhances individual autonomy, enabling team members to decline unnecessary video calls that don't serve their primary objectives.
• Focus Hours: Track the impact of meetings on individual and team productivity. This helps your MSP schedule meetings during less disruptive times. The data provided offers flexibility for employees to manage their schedules and allocate time for focused work.
• Actionable Insights: Receive smart recommendations to help drastically improve video call efficiency and employee productivity in as little as one workday. These recommendations will enable leaders to define clear guidelines for when and how video calls should be scheduled, including preferred times, maximum duration, and the necessity of pre-circulated agendas. By having a company meeting policy and a document that guides the organization, you can ensure that video calls don’t cause disruptions to workers’’ workflow.

Every MSP team requires a unique strategy to overcome collaboration challenges. By first understanding how many hours are spent in video calls and measuring the impact those calls have on your team, you can enact changes that conserve time and energy. These changes will also catapult your team's efficiency and morale to new heights.

Ready to get started? We can help you create an effective virtual meeting guideline specific to your MSP. Book a free consultation with our team of expert coaches to start recovering 90+ minutes of your workday every day.