Businesses are adopting video conferencing as a part of an effective communications strategy that is designed to solve a variety of challenges they frequently face.
If your communications solution doesn’t include video functionality, you might be missing out on technology that can strengthen teams, create clearer communications, and improve employee performance.
With the rise in concern regarding the spread of the coronavirus, aka COVID-19, conversations and questions about alternative forms of communication outside of face-to-face are increasingly turning to video.
However, video conferencing has multiple business benefits that businesses may now recognize more so than ever, even after COVID-19 has passed.
This article will address some challenges businesses face and how video conferencing can help overcome those issues.
Challenge: Remote Team Members Becoming Isolated
Teams are most productive and efficient when every member feels connected to their co-workers and projects. When your staff doesn’t feel like a part of the team, motivation drops and impacts engagement and communication.
According to a CloudApp survey, more than 50% of U.S. office workers say they would collaborate more if it were done visually. This builds on the firm’s previous research that found 60% of people prefer to collaborate visually—especially true with the Gen X demographic.
If that's the case with office workers, how much more with remote workers?
Video chat and communication services address this challenge by making it easier for remote team members to collaborate effectively even when located in different geographical locations.
With video collaboration, teams communicate easier when fellow members can visually interact in real-time, instead of sending emails or IM messages. Communication misunderstandings through poorly written emails that aren’t well thought out, or convey an unintentional tone can be avoided, as well as the negative consequences.
Video conferencing reinforces a member’s position and value within the team thereby contributing to overall team building efforts.
Team building is always a core part of leading a capable group. It teaches staff about each other, helps foster trust, and makes your team more likely to work together to solve problems. Much of these positive elements of team building simply won’t happen behind a faceless email, chat or phone call.
Challenge: Lack of Eco-Friendly Corporate Initiatives
Green marketing is still a hot topic for companies and their partners, partially because customers prefer sustainable companies.
Since video conferencing tools eliminate the need for in-person meetings, the need for travel is consequently greatly reduced.
Less travel means less carbon emissions.
As an example, Aviva an early adopter of video conferencing, noted reducing its annual carbon footprint by about 25% when they shifted to video conferencing and re-evaluated their traveling priorities.
Your partners and providers are also looking for greener supply chains. Many now have requirements for companies to have sustainable initiatives or take efforts to prove that you’re reducing your carbon footprint.
Embracing video technology can help reduce your environmental impact while also improving your corporate eco-friendly image.
Challenge: Combating Rising Expenses With Smaller Budgets
While we discussed video as a method to replace air travel for carbon reduction, it also can be a vital tool for reducing expenses. By cutting travel costs, transitioning to video conferencing could save a company millions of dollars in just one year.
Utilizing video conferencing not only avoids unnecessary flight costs, but also removes related expenses such as ground transportation, hotels, meals, and entertainment.
However, video conferencing doesn’t have to be restricted to air travel reductions for executives and sales teams, it can also be applicable for utilization by the HR department.
From hiring, training, and retraining, video conferencing can be used as an effective tool to help employees receive the training and skills assessments required without appearing in-person. Interviews for new hires can still be face to face, allowing the interviewer to observe communication skills and etiquette necessary for a particular position or role.
Challenge: Improving Relationships and Accountability With Overseas Operations
We’ve specifically seen companies use video and unified communications to make it easier to work with regions traditionally thought of as hard to reach, such as Brazil or China.
Maintaining strong and trusted relationships with those in your supply chain is often difficult without frequent feet on the ground visiting facilities and talking face to face with production managers. However, video conferencing solves this challenge by removing those geographic barriers and ensuring communications remain frequent and accountable.
Since many overseas operations can operate in time zones opposite of your own, communications via email can go for long periods of time without a response. And when a response ends up being a clarification question, the back and forth drags on even slower.
By utilizing video for meetings, even if after hours, questions and concerns can be addressed efficiently and clearly avoiding confusion and misunderstandings.
Unified communication tools that include video instantly enable you to address multiple challenges businesses face when dealing with remote teams, eco-friendly initiatives, and establishing trusted relationships with managers or suppliers located in multiple geographical locations, whether domestic or global.
If you find yourself wanting to look at video as a part of your communications solution, let’s talk. It’s simple, affordable, and a quick conversation can determine if it might be right for you.
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Converged Technology Professionals is a RingCentral Premier Partner and a Mitel Platinum Partner experienced in helping businesses migrate their office and contact center operations and infrastructure to the cloud. Converged has offices in Milwaukee, Crystal Lake, Illinois, Indianapolis, and the Grand Rapids area and is ready to help add video conferencing into your communications strategy.
Suellen Meyers: December 21, 2023
