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Video transforms collaboration across industries

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Deepa
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BANGALORE, INDIA: In every industry, video conferencing is increasingly being recognised as a mission-critical business solution. Today, it is not just about video conferences in office environments; it is about delivering the ability to meet face-to-face in any environment.

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This transformation is due in large part to the integration of video collaboration into day-to-day operations such as mobile inspection on the factory floor, crisis response centres in government or video-enabled kiosks in banking.

Companies globally are now seeing the value of video collaboration beyond simple travel savings. Video collaboration is reducing time-to-market, increasing customer service, improving crisis management and streamlining decision making.

Today, key sectors such as government, healthcare, education and manufacturing are working with video collaboration companies to make business collaboration faster, more efficient as well as cost effective.

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Government departments are using visual collaboration solutions to interact with their counterparts and stakeholders in different locations. A collaborative approach leads to better engagement with citizens, businesses and different government departments leading to an improvement in delivery of services and higher productivity.

For example, in India visual collaboration solutions are increasingly being used by governments in the space of tele-justice, where there is a requirement for the creation of a protected legal and penal environment, removing the requirement for defendants, victims, judges, and counsel to sit in the same room during preliminary proceedings.

Healthcare organisations on the other hand, are using video solutions to provide faster services and an increased level of care to their patients. The use of communication technologies in the practice of medicine is changing the face of healthcare in India, as it is constantly improving and enhancing the access to quality and affordable medical services, regardless of location or time.

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This is also being supported by the steady growth and increasing availability of wired and wireless broadband networks across the country which enables easy usage of video technology for providing telemedicine. Today doctors in remote clinics can consult with their counterparts and seniors in larger cities with the aid of visual collaboration solutions - that enable them to show and discuss patient symptoms and issues in real-time over high-definition quality.

For example, in Korea, video collaboration solutions are being used by the Korea Correctional Facilities for the Ministry of Justice to facilitate telemedicine, connecting four correctional facilities across Korea in the Daegu, Jinju, Gongju and Cheongju Female Prisons to their local hospitals for remote patient care in an effort to reduce clinic and hospital waiting times, improve public safety, and lower travel costs associated with patient transfers and doctor's visits.

Education is another emerging sector rapidly realising and reaping the benefits of video collaboration. Collaborative learning is on the rise in classrooms as a connected generation of students and their teachers expect access to information anytime and anywhere. Video technology provides rich, interactive, visual solutions that impact all facets of education from student administration to course development to curriculum delivery to content management.

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Collaborative technology solutions are viewed as key assets to help education institutions meet the needs of the mobile generation cost-effectively while also addressing the requirements of the faculty. In order to provide enhanced learning experiences and reach students anywhere and anytime, educational institutions are blending interactive audio, video, web collaboration, and instant messaging (IM) tools to create comprehensive distance learning solutions.

For example, Abbotsleigh, a school in Australia, markets itself as "The Videoconference School" with an enhanced curriculum built on video and is a great success story on how visual interactions enhance learning. For three years, grade six students have been connecting with researchers in Antarctica via video as part of their programmed classwork.

Other virtual excursions have also included link ups to a classroom in Hong Kong to practice language skills with native Mandarin speakers.

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Manufacturing teams are using video collaboration solutions to meet face-to-face wherever they are, whether that be on a factory floor, in a R&D lab, on the go, or in a conference room or immersive theatre. This helps in streamlining the production processes and promotes manufacturing innovation. Take for example, the auto industry where there is a need for engineers from around the world to discuss the feasibility or design of a specific car design.

Today through new-age visual collaboration solutions available on devices such as the mobile phone or the tablet, it's much easier to actually show the prototype live and collaborate on the different aspects of the design in real-time, helping to speed time-to-market by accelerating the production process.

Around the world, in every industry, video collaboration is increasingly being recognised as mission-critical to remove the barriers of distance and time. Video conferencing plays an important role during emergencies and disasters in verticals such as manufacturing, defence or healthcare and helps corroborate the effective functioning across locations. There is therefore a need for richer and pervasive collaborative experience across industries and video is the way to go.

The author is managing director, India & SAARC at Polycom.

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