Employee Demand and Business Value Drive Video Conferencing Adoption

Video conferencing has become an indelible part of the enterprise landscape. Organizations are implementing video conferencing systems to reduce travel costs, encourage team collaboration and better engage with customers. Employee demand also continues to be a primary driver of video conferencing adoption, as workers expect to have the same video collaboration capabilities they enjoy on their personal smartphones, tablets and laptops.

While video conferencing was once the domain of large conference rooms and board rooms, huddle rooms have gotten a lot of attention in recent years. Typically designed to accommodate four to six people, huddle rooms provide an efficient environment for impromptu meetings and whiteboarding sessions. According to a recent report from Wainhouse Research, there are some 50 million huddle rooms worldwide, and two-thirds of organizations plan to add more of these small conference spaces in the short term.

For a relatively modest investment, organizations can equip huddle rooms with business-class video conferencing systems. Workers can engage with team members anywhere in the world without the hassle and poor quality associated with free, consumer-grade solutions.

Interestingly, however, large-room video conferencing systems are expected to see the greatest growth. According to the Visual Communications and Collaboration: 2018 Research Study by Nemertes Research, 35.8 percent of organizations are planning to increase large-room deployments by the end of 2019, compared with 29.4 percent that plan to add midsize rooms and 25.9 percent that plan to add small rooms. Just 6 percent plan to decrease deployments across all room sizes.

Currently, 20.1 percent of large meeting rooms have video conferencing equipment, compared to just 9.5 percent of midsize rooms and 5.5 percent of small rooms. Nemertes defines a large room as one that accommodates more than 10 people, a midsize room as one designed for five to 10 people, and a small room as one that accommodates fewer than five people.

The Nemertes Report confirms that employee demand largely determines whether organizations will implement video conferencing — 53.8 percent of those firms increasing deployments say it’s because of employee demand. Other drivers of video conferencing deployment include:

• improving ease of use (42.4 percent)
• the need to refresh older equipment (34.8 percent)
• corporate mandates (31. 8 percent)
• travel replacement (27.3 percent)
• falling costs (26.5 percent)

Organizations are mandating video conferencing adoption due to increased executive awareness of the benefits of the technology. While bottom line improvements can be difficult to quantify, Nemertes survey respondents say that video conferencing can improve the speed of business processes, provide for better customer engagement, reduce the length meetings and enable projects to be completed more quickly. It also allows for faster on-boarding of new hires and faster closing of sales opportunities.

The Rahi Systems A/V team has extensive expertise in the design, installation, configuration, and support of enterprise-class video conferencing systems. We can assist with any size project, from executive board rooms to large-scale training facilities to midsize conference rooms and huddle rooms. We also can help you develop a video conferencing strategy and a standardized approach that will provide a consistent user experience across your environment.

Video conferencing now plays an essential role in the day-to-day operations of many organizations. Let the experts at Rahi Systems help you select and implement the right video conferencing technologies to increase productivity and drive competitive advantages.