Diane RoyerVideo Everywhere?
Gone are the days where I would have to go to an office to find a video conferencing center. High quality video conferencing is available at the airport, hotel room, or home office. In the right context, video brings people closer and puts meaning into focus by adding body language. That’s the killer app right now for BYOD, as Nemertes Research analyst Irwin Lazar discusses in the fourth trend that we’re highlighting in our digital postcard - Video Collaboration: An Analyst Perspective.
This trend was discussed in our 12 Communication Trends White Paper. As valuable as video conferencing is, we know that we don’t use video conferencing all of the time, and bad technology or lack of IT support can get in the way of good communications.
Video in Action
One of my favorite examples from the discussion on Video Collaboration: An Analyst Perspective, is from the Veteran’s Administration. The VA implemented a video conference capability for service members returning from the Middle-East to get a free video counseling session with a social worker to determine if they have any post-traumatic-stress-related issues.
The VA allows the service members to download a HD video client on their desktop, facilitating a live video conference with a counselor. The counselors could then take in many more patients throughout the day, balance out remote, understaffed areas, and gain visual engagement enabling them to read body language and gauge the person’s attitude. The program improves the lives of veterans throughout the country and produced immediate savings of $742,000 for the VA.
Is your Video Support Plan in Focus?
The challenge we’ve seen is that a lot of the vendors go to market with the idea that, if we just make video conferencing cheap enough and easy enough to use, everyone will use it and video will replace phone calls — and that’s not really what we’re seeing. There has to be value created in adding video to the interaction, as seen in the VA example. These are situations when body language, facial nuance, or group interaction can add real value to the conversation.
At the end of the day it comes down to the quality of the experience. A video experience that is unreliable and suffering from poor transmission quality will not only ruin the entire experience but will waste precious time and possibly cost you the loss of a client.
Why not transfer that risk and quality management responsibility to a managed services provider (Avaya Video Managed Services)?
My advice is – do the math. Estimate your required internal IT management costs (resources, tools, training) and do the risk analysis assessment. Make sure that you’re ready for prime time and that you stay focused on the real end result that you need.
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Diane Royer Diane Royer is senior marketing manager of Avaya Client Services. Her focus is directing thought leadership for Avaya Client Services and integrating services into Avaya solution launches. Diane’s more than 30 years of business experience includes telecommunications marketing, sales and field operations. She has also worked as a market researcher for a leading international firm and as a loan officer for the U.S. Small Business Administration.
