New enterprise video conferencing strategies must go beyond meetings

Today’s workflows are increasingly digital, and video conferencing strategies are necessary to support these changes. Organizations need to understand how to adapt their video conferencing strategies to support new use cases.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the way organizations use video conferencing. The pandemic has forced many organizations to close offices and have employees work remotely from home, necessitating the use of video conferencing to keep employees connected and maintain business continuity. Now, many organizations are looking to do more with video conferencing to integrate the technology with other business workflows.

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Many organizations are looking to use video conferencing technology for municipal communications, employee exchanges, and learning and training. In addition, they are developing or planning to develop customized video applications for distance learning, telemedicine, and customer support. With all of these video technologies in use, video conferencing content management systems and network support are becoming increasingly important to ensure a high-quality experience that is securely managed by the organization.

Irwin Lazar, an analyst at Nemertes Research, said that nearly 40% of organizations believe that video conferencing is critical to running their business. He cited the results of a survey of 528 global organizations conducted in May this year to study how the epidemic has changed the way organizations handle video conferencing and future corporate video conferencing strategies.

The study found that many organizations are increasing spending on video conferencing and new collaborative applications, including team collaboration and document sharing, to improve employee engagement and enable users to work more effectively in remote environments. A significant number of organizations are increasing network spending to support the growth of video conferencing, he added.

The pandemic has significantly accelerated the adoption of video conferencing, said Christian Rockwell, chief marketing officer at enterprise video conferencing provider Vbrick. Rockwell and Lazar recently discussed how the pandemic has changed video conferencing strategies and how organizations can move forward in an Enterprise Connect webinar.

“We are now five years ahead in terms of our understanding, adoption and willingness to invest in video conferencing and recognize the value of video conferencing before the pandemic,” Rockwell said.

Enterprise video conferencing strategy requires content management

As video conferencing usage increases, organizations need to proactively manage content and make it easier for users to search, store, and provide additional information from video conferences.

"Video conferencing content must be managed and protected," Rockwell said. Many organizations provide video conferencing content to internal employees as well as external partners or customers, and they need a system in place to distinguish between the two.

Lazar said organizations that don't have a plan to manage video conferencing content will find that user-generated video content will end up everywhere in the organization, complicating functions such as search, transcription and speaker recognition.

"That's getting people thinking about deploying video conferencing content management solutions," he said.

Lazar said video conferencing content management systems enable organizations to provide a central location to securely store and share videos, including recorded meeting videos and take advantage of advanced features. He added that one challenge with recorded meeting videos is that no one wants to go back and watch the full meeting. With more advanced features, key action items and discussions can be highlighted, making the recording more useful to those who missed the meeting.

According to Nemertes' research, the use of a video conferencing content management system is also associated with successful video conferencing applications.

“Organizations using content management solutions are seeing significant benefits from video conferencing applications in terms of productivity, cost savings and potential revenue opportunities,” he said.

CDN support increases video usage

Some organizations also incorporate content delivery networks (CDNs) as part of their enterprise video strategy to optimize the distribution and sharing of video. They can reduce packet loss, latency, and jitter in video conferencing content, as well as other quality issues that can negatively impact video conferencing performance.

Lazar said organizations that are most successful in video deployments are more likely to use a CDN to support video conferencing content as it travels from the organization's network to the mobile and wireless networks of remote workers.

Nearly 25% of organizations are using or planning to use a content delivery network (CDN) to support their video conferencing deployments this year. An additional 9% plan to deploy a CDN in 2021, the study shows.

The bandwidth requirements for video conferencing can be a challenge for organizations looking to live stream video conferences or provide video on demand to employees or customers.

“The minute a video conference starts buffering, you start losing audience engagement,” Rockwell said. “So, organizations need tools to manage bandwidth and distribution of video conferencing content to ensure the best possible experience.”