Bevil Wood­ing

The game-chang­ing po­ten­tial of en­ter­prise video con­fer­enc­ing has long been tout­ed by savvy ven­dors and trav­el-weary busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives alike. Yet, it is on­ly re­cent­ly that the tech­nol­o­gy has made a tan­gi­ble im­pact on the cor­po­rate world. The in­tro­duc­tion of hy­brid con­sumer-cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions so­lu­tions like Skype, Jab­ber, Google Talk, and Ap­ple's Face­Time has giv­en video con­fer­enc­ing a friend­lier, more in­tu­itive face. This, against the back­drop of in­creased ac­cess and af­ford­abil­i­ty of In­ter­net and cloud com­put­ing, is in­creas­ing­ly pro­vid­ing eas­i­ly-shared low­er-cost soft­ware op­tions for firms. Now, com­pa­nies are ea­ger to in­te­grate video con­fer­enc­ing so­lu­tions in­to the very fab­ric of busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions and process­es. Ac­cord­ing to a new re­port by Glob­al In­dus­try An­a­lysts Inc the glob­al mar­ket for video con­fer­enc­ing mar­ket is ex­pect­ed to reach US$14 bil­lion by 2017. This is ex­pect­ed to be dri­ven by fac­tors such as a rise in num­ber of mo­bile work­ers, grow­ing promi­nence of telep­res­ence and in­creas­ing adop­tion of video call­ing and con­fer­enc­ing so­lu­tions, among small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es (SMBs).

In both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors, de­ci­sion-mak­ers are be­com­ing more aware of the im­pact that telep­res­ence can have not on­ly on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but on cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture. The im­pact of In­ter­net-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools at home has fu­elled end users with in­creased ex­pec­ta­tions of telep­res­ence so­lu­tions at the of­fice. Fol­low­ing the slump in sales dur­ing 2008 and 2009, pri­mar­i­ly due to the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, the video con­fer­enc­ing mar­ket has seen a re­cov­ery since 2010. Huge pent-up de­mand for cost and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty op­ti­mis­ing so­lu­tions and a steady resur­gence in en­ter­prise spend­ing pri­mar­i­ly have fu­elled new in­ter­est. But it is not quite busi­ness­es as usu­al. Firms are un­der­stand­ably look­ing for a greater re­turn on their video con­fer­enc­ing in­vest­ments. Many are look­ing be­yond the usu­al, ex­pen­sive, en­ter­prise so­lu­tions from Cis­co, Poly­com, Al­ca­tel-Lu­cent and Avaya to new low­er-cost op­tions. Video con­fer­enc­ing is get­ting cheap­er, eas­i­er and more ubiq­ui­tous.

Re­turn on in­vest­ment

Con­duct­ing busi­ness vir­tu­al­ly can bring huge ben­e­fits. Mar­ket­ing ma­te­r­i­al from the big-name video con­fer­ence play­ers is filled with case stud­ies show­ing sig­nif­i­cant trav­el and meet­ing cost re­duc­tions.

This is be­ing borne out by what we're see­ing here at home. Resur­gence in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, re­newed fo­cus on cost sav­ings, grow­ing mo­bil­i­ty of busi­ness­es, in­creas­ing num­ber of mo­bile work­ers and new in­ter­est among SMBs, are all dri­ving growth. Many are us­ing a mix of free or pub­licly avail­able tools, such as Skype, Google Apps for busi­ness, Viber, Fring, and Yam­mer to sat­is­fy their com­mu­ni­ca­tions needs.

But work­ing vir­tu­al­ly al­so means busi­ness must act more in­tel­li­gent­ly to over­come the very re­al chal­lenges and dis­ad­van­tages of vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Low-cost and high-end video con­fer­enc­ing tools need prop­er band­width to de­liv­er high qual­i­ty con­fer­enc­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, es­pe­cial­ly when span­ning in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal dis­tances. Im­age lag and pix­i­la­tion can make even the most pleas­ant of video con­ver­sa­tions awk­ward and frus­trat­ing when you hear the voice be­fore the lips move. In­vest­ment in ro­bust in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture is crit­i­cal. In ad­di­tion to prop­er hard­ware, en­ter­prise-grade video con­fer­enc­ing re­quires band­width ca­pac­i­ty for both up­load and down­load. Busi­ness­es have to work with their In­ter­net ser­vice providers to en­sure that they get ad­e­quate ca­pac­i­ty re­quired for ef­fec­tive two-way video con­fer­enc­ing-at an af­ford­able price! Thank­ful­ly, as broad­band speeds in­crease, soft­ware in­no­va­tion flour­ish­es and com­put­ing pow­er mul­ti­plies, video con­fer­enc­ing qual­i­ty will con­tin­ue to im­prove.

The hu­man el­e­ment

There are al­so non-tech­ni­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. Years of in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence calls of the au­dio and video type have taught that there are very re­al cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers to ef­fec­tive vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Con­fer­ence calls with cul­tur­al­ly sim­i­lar Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries such as Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed King­dom, South Africa, New Zealand and Aus­tralia are gen­er­al­ly no prob­lem. Con­fer­ence calls with non-Eng­lish speak­ers, by con­trast, can have ma­jor is­sues. First­ly, you have to speak clear, per­fect Eng­lish, be re­spect­ful and avoid col­lo­qui­al speech. Al­so, as you move east­wards, per­son­al re­la­tion­ships be­come more im­por­tant. In­vest­ment has to be made to meet per­sons you will be in­ter­act­ing with reg­u­lar­ly. Any­one who has done busi­ness in In­dia, Sin­ga­pore, Japan, Malaysia or Chi­na will ap­pre­ci­ate this cul­tur­al re­al­i­ty.

There is an­oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy can­not change: time. To­day's mar­ket­place is glob­al. If you're in Trinidad and have a cus­tomer call, team meet­ing or project re­view with peo­ple in Ban­ga­lore, some­one has to be up at 1 am to get on the video con­fer­ence call. So while it is in­evitable that some trav­el, lo­cal as well as in­ter­na­tion­al, can be sup­plant­ed by video con­fer­enc­ing, a hap­py medi­um has to be reached be­tween the need to trav­el re­in­forced by what can be ac­com­plished through video con­fer­enc­ing. In­creas­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty in new mar­kets and man­ag­ing cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships will re­main top pri­or­i­ties for growth-ori­ent­ed com­pa­nies. Video con­fer­enc­ing is not like­ly to re­place the in-per­son re­quire­ment of a com­pli­cat­ed sale any time soon. Video con­fer­enc­ing has its place. That place is to com­ple­ment rather than re­place face to face in­ter­ac­tions and busi­ness trav­el. Af­ter all, build­ing busi­ness is about build­ing re­la­tion­ships, and that al­ways has been and al­ways will be a face-to-face game.

Dos and don'ts

Do:

• Pre­pare your space. Deal with any­thing that could de­tract from the smooth run­ning of the meet­ing, such as ex­ces­sive light com­ing in through a win­dow, in­ap­pro­pri­ate back­ground or noise from a hall­way. Al­so, make sure every­one is in their seats be­fore the sched­uled time.

• Have an agen­da. Make sure that all par­tic­i­pants have the agen­da and any oth­er ma­te­ri­als well in ad­vance of the meet­ing.

• Ap­ply ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy. In­vest in cam­eras and mi­cro­phones that are ap­pro­pri­ate to your room size and num­ber of ex­pect­ed par­tic­i­pants. Do your home­work and you'll find there is equip­ment for every bud­get. Just don't ex­pect cin­e­ma qual­i­ty video from a bud­get Web cam and don't ex­pect a dis­count store mi­cro­phone to pick up the soft spo­ken an­a­lyst at the far end of the con­fer­ence ta­ble.

• Test your equip­ment. No one wants to lis­ten to "Are you hear­ing hear me okay now?" for 15 min­utes af­ter the meet­ing was sup­posed to start. Test your In­ter­net con­nec­tion and your au­dio and video equip­ment in ad­vance.

• Be cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive. Do your home­work and in­ves­ti­gate any spe­cial or pe­cu­liar cul­tur­al is­sues you need to bear in mind for your in­ter­na­tion­al calls. Jokes, puns or cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions can back­fire hor­ri­bly in vir­tu­al meet­ings. Be care­ful, be sen­si­ble.

• De­vel­op writ­ten meet­ing pro­to­cols. Have clear­ly de­fined meet­ing pro­to­cols for in­tro­duc­tions, speak­ers se­quence, at­tire, eat­ing and gen­er­al meet­ing flow.

Don't:

• Cross talk. If you ab­solute­ly have to dis­cuss some­thing pri­vate­ly, mute your speak­er or stay off cam­era. As far as prac­ti­cal, an­tic­i­pate is­sues and pre­pare re­spons­es with mem­bers of your team be­fore the con­fer­ence.

• Mul­ti­task. Check­ing e-mail on your smart­phone, tak­ing your eyes off the cam­era to look at your lap­top or tablet can dis­tract oth­er par­tic­i­pants, or worse, come across as rude. Fo­cus on the meet­ing and sched­ule your oth­er work for af­ter­wards.

• Ap­pear­ance. As a gen­er­al rule, par­tic­i­pants should dress as they would for an in per­son busi­ness meet­ing. The meet­ing space should al­so be suit­ably prepped.

Ap­pear­ances say a lot about the im­por­tance you as­cribe to the in­ter­ac­tion. Make it count!

Bevil Wood­ing is an In­ter­net strate­gist with the US-based re­search firm,

Pack­et Clear­ing House and the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing, and

Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing