Why Video Collaboration Adoption Matters in the Enterprise

When you think “enterprise” do you think of rigid corporate hierarchies and miles of red tape? Me too. That’s why I think the corporate structure that many of us operate within on a daily basis has reinforced the idea that change in a large enterprise is nearly impossible, especially for those of us outside of senior management. But, video conferencing and collaboration technology have played a big part in making change possible, which is why so many video administrators today say that “driving adoption” is their #1 goal.

When you work for a large organization and you get a great idea, one of the biggest barriers prohibiting it from spreading like wildfire (other than corporate hierarchy) is poor communication. So many great ideas have come and gone in the enterprise, and been lost simply because we don’t even want to think of all the BS, (pardon my abbreviation) and red tape that it will take to get the word across and the communication required to get the ball moving. Want an example?

The Problem with Enterprise Communication

Here are a few mediums for example that clearly demonstrate the communication problem:

Let’s pretend you have a big idea that you need to get to the top fast.

• Email is a great way to not get your idea through to the person you’re trying to reach. As an email marketer who’s done his research, I can tell you that executive inboxes are a nightmare, and the execs of course don’t have time to read every email. A best practice is to go ahead and send your message, “Hey can I get 15 minutes of your time to discuss…”, assume that your message will be ignored, and don’t wait around for your contact to read it.
• Voice calls will enable you to reach a person, but you don’t have all day to explain the5 points of attack in your game plan, and you can’t expect your boss to remember every detail over audio.
• IM (instant messaging) is like a mixture of both, but ultimately fails in the same places where both email and voice fail. IM’s are often ignored, and the approach decreases the perceived importance of your message because well … it’s an IM.

Reason #1 : Video Collaboration is Better

Wave a magic wand and pretend that there are no barriers to communication in your organization. Anyone can easily reach senior management, heads of the departments and executives in real time. Notice the word “collaborate”. I’m using this word here to describe an exchange that is rich in communication – problem solving, resolution, and whiteboarding are often involved.

Video conferencing and content sharing save companies time and money. Plain and simple face to face communication is always ideal because you can get more accomplished in a shorter amount of time. This is where video collaboration is a no brainer. Enterprises need to move faster and traveling to meet in person often isn’t fast enough. I’ve been on 30 minute video calls on a bridge with multiple parties from different locations that would have otherwise taken days of emailing / face-to-face meeting scheduling and audio conferences to complete.

Reason #2 : Communication Outside of the Organization

Video adoption is spreading across the enterprise space. According to our data from the2015 Enterprise Video Collaboration Usage Report, video usage has doubled over the last 2 years. If your organization doesn’t have an intuitive means of communicating via video, you will notice that you guys are bit behind.

Your partners, vendors, customers, sales opportunities and competitors are using video and web conferencing. If driving video collaboration adoption isn’t a goal of your IT team, you’ll waste more time and miss out on effective communication outside of the organization.

Driving video adoption has it’s own set of best practices for reaching your goal fast – I recommend reading some of our best practices for driving video adoption coming soon. We’ve worked with a lot of IT teams and video administrators on this in order to be successful.

Reason #3 : Speed and Efficiency

Your problem at this point in time is most likely not, “Man I wish I could get senior management to recognize our organization’s need for video collaboration.”

It’s probably something like this…

“Man I wish there was a way to increase user video adoption across our organization.”

Senior management has already bought into the idea of using video collaboration. The issue now becomes managing, improving and growing usage across the user base.

Every enterprise IT team is charged with managing call quality, issue resolution and security for UC (unified communications) and collaboration technology. You know that all of these responsibilities require speed and efficiency to complete tasks successfully. Driving adoption is no different. There is a sense of urgency that comes with the responsibility of driving user adoption across a large organization and managing that effectively.

Enterprise companies that we work with use collaboration analytics tools to track, monitor and improve their network in order achieve their adoption goals more quickly and efficiently. After all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Here are a couple of questions you should be able to answer: How many video minutes does your company use annually? How does that compare to audio minutes?

Check out our most recent 2015 Enterprise Video Collaboration Usage Report with information on annual video usages for over 60 enterprises across a wide range of industries.