MVC emerging trend for business conferencing

BANGALORE, INDIA: Video conferencing has long held the reputation of over promising and under delivering.  For decades it was promoted as a panacea for business efficiency and increased productivity through reduced travel time and costs.  The reality, however, was that video conferencing became synonymous with slow speeds, poor quality, jerky pictures, difficulty to use and high costs to operate.  In other words, it never really lived up to the hype.

As time has moved on and last year’s recession tightened its grip, a universal desire to cut costs and improve productivity moved up the boardroom agenda.  As video conferencing came into focus as a potential answer to these issues, what has changed to allow for wide scale adoption of video conferencing as a mainstream business activity?

The increase in technology, in particular, the benefits offered by next-generation networks, has allowed video conferencing to deliver on some of the unfulfilled promises of yesteryear.  Technology is now more agile and an ability to prioritize bandwidth has allowed video to run in real-time.  The resultant clarity of picture has led to users commenting that they actually feel as if they are in the same room as the other person.  For the first time, the technology is living up to the hype.

A recent report by telecoms analyst house Ovum, predicted that adoption of managed telepresence services will soar in the next five years, with businesses investing around $1.7bn on video conferencing between 2010 and 2014. 

Cable&Wireless Worldwide is having more conversations than ever before with our customers about the benefits of Managed Video Conferencing (MVC) and we expect to see a rapid growth in live deployments over the next few years. The economic downturn has seen many business travel budgets slashed, which in turn has become a springboard for companies looking to MVC as a real alternative to travel.

By delivering services that are able to optimise company performance, MVC is revolutionizing the way people meet and making video-conferencing a reality for many ordinary businesses. 

Many organizations face a cultural stumbling block when trying to deploy video conferencing solutions that, in the past, have been exacerbated by a poor user experience.  With disconnected faces and voices, some legacy video conferencing tools failed to replicate the experience of a face-to-face meeting, making them an unsuitable replacement.  The high quality of video conferencing technology now makes it feel like you’re actually meeting a person. People appear life-size on-screen and the meeting can take place in stereo surround sound. These suites enable those taking part to make real eye contact and observe other non-verbal signals such as body language or facial expressions that are so vital to a productive meeting. Users are also able to share desktop content between locations facilitating effective collaboration.  Of course, certain types of meetings, such as an initial customer meeting or a client pitch, will always require a physical element, however, for most other business meetings; MVC is a very compelling alternative.

Cutting Costs and Carbon

During the recession, businesses were keen to make cost-savings wherever possible, and business travel was an obvious area of opportunity. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s recent Austere Traveler survey showed 46 per cent of businesses are choosing to respond to the downturn by completely cutting business travel for internal meetings. Moreover, leading businesses are deploying video conferencing to communicate with suppliers, partners and even customers.

Companies are also coming under increasing pressure to recognize, and act upon their social and environmental responsibilities. Reducing carbon emissions is a positive step in the wider battle against climate change and a significant decrease in business travel enables companies to better align themselves with corporate responsibility.

C&W Worldwide believes that MVC has a big part to play in the future of businesses of all sizes.  Technology barriers that once made video conferencing systems difficult to use, expensive, and unreliable have been overcome thanks to advances in network performance and technology.  Taking the compelling cost-saving arguments to one side, the ability to dramatically cut the time employees spend traveling is enough to make most organizations relying on international business travel sit up and listen.  We’re living in a post-recession world, where cost-efficiency and productivity sit at the top of the corporate agenda, alongside the need to improve green credentials.  MVC is a valuable tool in the armour to allow businesses to achieve these aims.

The author is director — Enterprise Sales (India) at Cable&Wireless Worldwide.