Today the small medium sized businesses still look at video conferencing as a divergent item, a very new technology that they haven’t needed before.  If you go back in time to the 1980’s, fax machines were a divergent item.  Very few companies had them, but they soon became ubiquitous as their impact on how we communicate with paper became obvious — Purchase orders, delivery information, time critical letters all sent via fax instantly.  Email is another example of a divergent item in the enterprise.  Again in the early 80’s companies had very sophisticated email systems that worked only internal within their network.  Can you imagine doing email only internal to your organization today?  These became powerful ways to communicate more efficiently.  In the late 80’s if you did not have a fax number on your business card, you weren’t with it.   Email addresses also started to appear on our business cards almost overnight.

The advantages of video conferencing are becoming more obvious as the technology comes into its own.  Video conferencing has been around for many years, however in its early development, systems were expensive, difficult to use and the network standards were not established.  Systems were proprietary and only worked within a particular manufacturer’s product line.  The result was very little or no return on investment. In the late 90’s this all changed first with ITU, International Telecommunications Union standards, established. Video conferencing manufactures where able to produce lower cost, standards based products for the conference room.  The advantages of video conferencing started to become more obvious with a variety of applications like video arraignment for court rooms and jails;  Job interviews for Recruitment professionals; Healthcare consultations with doctors of various hospitals, etc.

Now the advantages of video conferencing are growing because it’s much easier to purchase the technology.  Cost has decreased substantially while the video conferencing technology becomes more refined.  Computer collaboration is simple on a videoconference. Secondary inputs like document cameras, DVD’s and other input devices are easy to connect to a system.  The advantages of video conferencing are growing fast.  Soon we will all have a public video number on our business cards, just like the fax number and email address.

Historically, the biggest advantage of videoconferencing was minimizing the travel budget.  This will always be a big advantage of video conferencing; however, there is a much bigger impact in productivity. One of our clients needed are large deployment of room systems in South America.  Their primary driver was productivity.  At the time the company was downsizing and expertise in their process engineering was running thin.  Also, it’s very difficult to travel from Brazil to Chile for example.  Plant managers and project engineers were able to collaborate and trouble shoot quickly and efficiently.  The video conferencing technology minimized production downtime in six countries.  This client was able to leverage engineering expertise at light speed through their network.  The bottom line was minimized down time and increased productivity with less people.

Think about how email affects your productivity.  Proposals, purchase orders, instructions, photographs all can be sent easily through email.  Imagine how productively would slow down or even stall without email.  Video conferencing will certainly have a similar impact on productivity.  Ninety percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have enterprise, standards based video conferencing. Initially many of these companies used the video conferencing technology internally as in the above example.  Today there is a drive to connect outside of their networks to the supply chain; key customers; and other critical stakeholders.  All these constituencies impact productivity.

Here are some examples on the advantages of video conferencing as is relates to productivity: One client is using the videoconferencing for focus groups.  They can get a much broader sampling without the constraints of time and travel.  Another company is using video conferencing mobile apps to support field engineers. Senior engineers can see problems and diagnose solutions in the field in real time without being in the field.  One company is using video conferencing in their sales department.  Salesmen are using the conference room or their own computer with a free downloadable app for the far end participant.  They can make face to face sales calls all day long at light speed.  The prospect on the far end needs no subscription or license because they use the free app.  As enterprise video conferencing technology develops more productivity applications will evolve.