Whether it is for entertainment or information, video has become a regular feature in our personal lives. Most of us watch multiple videos daily, on our smart phone, tablets, TV or PC. Businesses have started to capitalize on this fact and streaming video is emerging as a practical and reliable tool in corporate communications within organizations across all sectors.
Government and educational bodies have made their own advances in the adoption of video technologies but it is the corporate world that stands out as the forerunner, driving investment and use of streaming video that workforces use to collaborate and share knowledge with both internal and external audiences, and that management employs to engage and empower employees.
A recent report by Wainhouse Research (click here to download the full white paper) shows that there are five key market trends driving this momentum in enterprise video adoption and setting the stage for continued increase in corporate streaming technology investment.
Here are the five identified trends:
Engagement: Whether by means of a webcast or a video conference, video has the potential to create more connected and engaged employees. It is effective, it grabs the viewer attention and can entertain and inform at the same time. Video is also a very personal, human medium to convey messages and this makes it easier for management to come across as more approachable but also for users in general to put a face to their voices and opinions.
Employee Generated Content (EGC): Up until not long ago, it took a lot of work, time and money to create a video, without any guarantee that the end product would work seamlessly. Nowadays however, almost anyone can create a video with a webcam and little else. Young people, even children, do it effortlessly on a daily basis. More than half of the respondents of Wainhouse’s survey said they have access to a camera at their workspace that can capture video. It is now easy to create and share videos at the workplace to communicate faster and better.
Mobile: The BYOD trend continues unabated and employees want to use their mobile devices for work. Forward-looking companies are therefore taking advantage of the fact that video is ubiquitous on tablets and smart phones and the result is that more and more businesses have already enabled video distribution to mobile devices and more are planning to implement this soon. Thanks to mobile devices, people can attend meetings, view webcasts and take part in training sessions without the need to be in a specific physical space. Important messaging and knowledge are readily available and easily shared either live or, more importantly, on-demand.
Integration: Many successful organizations already have other communications solutions in place to connect their employees and teams. An enterprise video platform that is able to integrate with those existing solutions can enrich and build out better ways for employees to learn and communicate. An enterprise video platform that for instance integrates well with an existing video conferencing solution provides the added benefit of removing the time element and allowing the message to be captured and recorded for future viewing.
Security: It is incredibly important that internal communication is secure. In the past, many video sharing options offered less than optimal security for companies. Now enterprise video platforms are developing robust and flexible security for an organization’s sensitive video content.
Enterprise video providers must continue to innovate in everything from network and content security to viewership analytics and network management. Solutions designed for the enterprise market must be both robust and flexible in order to address the expectations of corporate users exploring expanded investments in video.
It is clear that businesses will play a key role in driving innovations in online video. Frequent use and ongoing investment by business executives will drive platform providers’ product upgrade cycles and therefore improve the available software and delivery solutions. With this level of investment, development and innovation, there will be no stop to the continued uptake of streaming and online enterprise video.
