Although unified communication and collaboration solutions that incorporate video conferencing technology have long been touted as a way to boost the overall efficiency of a given enterprise, too often the implementation of such a system fails to yield a positive return on investment. However, according to market research firm Frost & Sullivan, this is because many companies do not properly incorporate this technology into their everyday workflows.

Historically, the top benefits of video conferencing have been that it makes it easier for geographically distributed people to communicate, thus eliminating travel costs. While in-person meetings offer innumerable benefits, facilitating such an event is often cost-prohibitive for many organizations. A number of businesses instead turned to video conferencing, but Frost & Sullivan noted that this means a unified communication and collaboration solution is only being used occasionally. In order to boost the effectiveness and benefits from such a system, it should be utilized far more frequently.

“While the primary reasons for deploying video conferencing are eliminating travel expenses and facilitating meetings with remote participants, its full benefits will be apparent only when, it is embedded in everyday work practices,” Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Mark Hickey said. “The regular use of video conferencing facilitates productivity gains through enhanced user participation, the inclusion of visual components like document and multimedia sharing and enabling specialist use cases like medical examinations.”

Facilitating effective communication and collaboration between outside partners and internal departments has long been key to ensuring continued business success and quality profit margins. However, this has become increasingly difficult to accomplish as emerging technology trends such as bring your own device make it easier than ever to complete mission-critical tasks away from a central office. As a result, the market research firm noted that video conferencing has to become more prevalent to keep all end users connected.

Overcoming lingering video conferencing fears

 
Indeed, corporations are coming around to video conferencing and unified communications, as Transparency Market Research reported in March that the total global market value of unified communications will grow from $22.8 billion in 2011 to $61.9 billion by 2018, indicating an expected 15.7 percent compound annual growth rate between 2012 and 2018.

Nevertheless, despite its expected future growth, many businesses remain reticent to embrace these technologies. In particular, Frost & Sullivan stated that many end users are worried about how they can best incorporate a solution with the wide variety of endpoints introduced from implementing a BYOD policy. Plus, considering that Cisco Canada found that 41 percent of Canadians polled do not want their employer to have a well-defined BYOD program, trying to effectively manage all the devices using the conferencing system becomes even more difficult.

To address these concerns, Frost & Sullivan recommended that companies leverage cloud computing. With a hosted unified communication and collaboration as a service (UCCaaS) solution in place, enterprises can more easily ensure that employees and partners have access to the same system regardless of their physical location.

“For now, cloud computing offers flexibility and increased productivity gains by combining video with file sharing as part of a UC solution,” Hickey said.

To get the best possible UCCaaS solution, turn to FlexTEL. Thanks to their best-in-class implementation strategy and deep industry expertise, FlexTEL makes sure that the UCCaaS system put in place is ideally suited to meet any company’s needs today and well into the future.

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