Audio conferencing is a valuable tool for organization-wide meetings, Web based training, and ad hoc meetings with potential students, customers, and vendors.

Many organizations use provider's conferencing services rather than those available on their telephone systems for a variety of reasons including:

• To more easily manage high volumes of conference calls
• Easier conference call set-up for participants
• Declining costs to about 7¢ per minute, per participant depending on volume discounts
• The desire to outsource conference call administration

Providers
Audio conferencing providers with the largest customer base are AT&T, Verizon Communications, InterCall, MessageBank, and Choruscall.

On-demand conferences
The simplest, least costly, carrier provided conferences are those that users set up on demand without reservations or operator assistance. In these conferences, the conference leader tells participants the time of the conference, the carrier's toll-free telephone number, and the code that each participant dials after they reach the toll-free number.

Operator assisted, reservation based conferences
Operator assisted conferences are optimal for conferences of more than about twenty participants. They require advance reservations, cost more than on-demand calls, and offer additional features. They are often used for investor updates, meetings with high-level executives such as executive boards or trustees, and training seminars. A useful Web based feature provides conference leaders indications on their computers of which participants have joined the conference.

Billing
Billing errors are the most time consuming, painful part of administering telecommunications services. Adequate customer services departments able to spend time correcting billing errors are often more important then saving a few pennies per minute. Most conferencing services provide paper based as well as online bills. Online billing has the advantage of being more easily sorted by for example, department, project, or accounting code.

Implementation and Training
Successful implementations depend on careful planning, vendor support, and communications with users about important policies. For example, employees that book conferences need to understand the need to notify carriers of cancellations to avoid cancellation fees. Conferencing vendors offer training online, via written instruction and in-person. Because of the cost, live training is usually reserved for key administrators. If training details are negotiated before signing a service contract, there is a lower likelihood of inadequate training.

Ongoing administrative tasks
Large organizations need a method such as email notification to easily add and delete users to eliminate liability for the cost of fraudulent calls by former employees. Training new employees is an important way to ensure ongoing employee satisfaction with the service. Some organizations have spare instruction cards and participant codes so that they can efficiently provide conferencing to new employees.

PBX bridges for in-house conferences
Another option is purchasing audio conferencing equipment (bridges). Bridges enable employees to set up their own conferences of more than six or eight people. Bridges can be in the form of cards within PBXs supporting six to eight simultaneous calls or stand-a-lone devices. In-house solutions eliminate the billing hassles but require in-house training materials and support.