Barriers to Video Conferencing in Your Business and How to Overcome Them

Like a bottle of wine gets better with time, so does technology. For example, video conferencing has been around since the 1960’s. The early solutions were mainly for large enterprises that had deep pockets to invest and help in funding R&D manufacturing. Over the years, video conferencing solutions have steadily evolved in terms of price, size and features; from proprietary and non-proprietary solutions to room-based, desktop and mobile applications.

Business owners today know that telepresence tools are critical assets for the staff, but if left unused they will not address the issues hindering employees from using video call technology. On that note, here are the most common barriers to video conferencing adoption, some you may have already noticed in your organization. Included below are some tips on how to jump clear of these hurdles and ensure that your business is reaping the maximum benefits from investing in video conferencing systems. This will help you build and maintain a more collaborative, connected, and productive workforce.

Quality

Subpar video call quality, in addition to the chances of them dropping or freezing, are often enough reason for your employees to stop using video conferencing altogether. Video call performance issues will continue to plague your business until everyone upgrades to high-quality Ethernet services. However, there is another solution for your internal teleconference operations.

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) will and can solve a host of quality issues. This solution allows your IT professionals to prioritize traffic to ensure that video data and VoIP data is sent over existing networks at higher speeds than a common medium like YouTube videos. Although Ethernet service is less expensive and easier, the easy way is not always the best. If you want to ensure that employees can use tools like a Blue Jeans video conferencing camera to collaborate with co-workers and clients in distant locations, MPLS is the best choice.

Employees

The other hurdle to video conferencing systems adoption is people. For starters, people do not want to offer the kind of attention a video meeting requires, and another barrier is the ease of use of many video conferencing solutions out there. In regard to the first, technology cannot do much to solve it, but with the use of smartphones and tablets increasing in the office, more and more people are now coming to accept video conferencing as part of their work life.

The millennials can also help provide a solution. Their generation is more familiar and supportive of video call systems. As they begin to take up higher positions in businesses and organizations, they are more likely to push for the use of the technology along with handheld, personal touchscreen devices.

According to IT Pro Portal, 53 percent of the workforce find video conferencing tools too difficult to use. To get around this, implement a step-by-step training process when you introduce video conferencing tools to slowly assimilate your employees in cubicles, offices and meeting room to the new technology. Once video conferencing systems become second nature, you will find that employees will use video calls as the primary means of official collaboration.

Cost

Basically, video conferencing features are not costly, but hardware to create the infrastructure is more than cheap. Most of the costs are related to phones, screens, projectors, cables and many other accessories that may be required. However, if businesses were to calculate the ROI for video conferencing technology, they would immediately spot the value of such a system and encourage staff to use them. A lot of the savings come from mitigating and, sometimes, removing the need to travel. You’ll also eliminate the need to book and pay for conference spaces, travel, or hotels for long-distance or remote employees to all gather in one place.

Flexibility

In today’s era of bring your own device to work, IT customization solutions have to be flexible and scalable. A major issue is that a majority of organizations have outdated and unfit video conferencing hardware for high performance. Organizations proverbially shoot themselves in the food and cause employees not to use these tools by offering the old technology. In fact, 49 percent of employees are not happy with their organization’s video conferencing hardware ability to connect and interoperate with existing systems.

The solution is in the cloud. When you migrate your business’ communications applications to the cloud, you are inherently becoming more flexible than premises-based solutions. This allows you to scale users within your organization up and down, deploy new features and applications faster, and centralize management.

The benefits of using video conferencing along with the associated hardware and software in a hosted environment are enough of a reason for you to deploy the solution. However, you may have to take a few more steps to make sure that the technologies are put to optimal use and generate ROI.