Video Conferencing for Business Success

© AberdeenGroup 2011

Video Conferencing for Business Success

The SMB Guide to Video Conferencing

Hyoun Park

Research Analyst3/29/12

© AberdeenGroup 2011 2

Defining the SMB

Aberdeen looked at 62 companies using video conferencing that were under $250 million in annual revenue and under 1,000 employees.

These companies were then split into a top half, labeled Leaders and a bottom half, labeled Followers, based on their performance.


The Performance of SMB Videoconferencing

To define value, Aberdeen focused on two key metrics: Travel Reduction and ROI. Leaders saw significant travel reductions and paid back their investment. Followers had done neither.

SMB Leaders

SMB Followers

Change in Travel -16% NONEReturn on Investment from Video Investment

111% 21%


Questions and Assumptions for Today’s Presentation Video Conferencing has traditionally been used

to provide executive communications and corporate communications in large enterprises.


Ease of Videoconferencing Adoption


Desktop and Mobile Video Drive Business

SMB Leaders

SMB Followers

PC-based video conferencing within corporate campus 88% 41%PC-based video conferencing outside the corporate campus 74% 38%Mobile smartphones for video conferencing 38% 24%

Tablets 22% 14%

Leaders were more likely to adopt both the PC and mobile devices as videoconferencing endpoints.


And the Future Will Be Increasingly Mobile

Over the next 12 months, Leaders plan to implement both tablets and smartphones as video endpoints much faster than Followers.

SMB Leaders

SMB Followers

Tablets 39% 18%Mobile smartphones for video conferencing 29% 16%


Getting Business Value from Video

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3


So, How Did They Do It?

What did Leaders do that Followers failed to do?

How did Leaders reduce travel and achieve ROI?

Was it the approach, the processes, the people, or the technologies?


Why SMBs Adopted Video

Unsurprisingly, the top two pressures to adopt videoconferencing were: Need to reduce travel costs (64%)Employees lose too much time for corporate travel (54%)

However, the third pressure was a key differentiator between Leaders and Followers.


Focus on Revenue

Leaders were two-and-a-half times as likely as Followers to believe that it was an imperative to make revenue-producing activities more engaging.

This meant using video at the point of sale or as a demonstration tool during a complex sales cycle. By aligning video to sales, video conferencing became exponentially more valuable.


Technology vs. Culture: Which Reigns Supreme?

In comparing these strategies, Leaders were more likely to focus on supporting multiple form factors!


Biggest Challenges for Video Adoption

For Leaders, corporate culture was still a big issue. For Followers, the challenge was that the company had not fundamentally bought into the value proposition.

SMB Leaders SMB Followers

Corporate culture is not conducive to a video experience 47% 31%Perception of poor video and/or audio quality from solutions 43% 42%No budget for video collaboration equipment 30% 58%


Videoconferencing Policies and Value

SMB organizations de-emphasize formalized policies to a greater extent than their larger counterparts.

Even so, Leaders were more focused on bandwidth prioritization and a formal technology roadmap than SMB Followers.


What DIDN’T Work?

By the same token, Leaders were a third less likely to have a proactive reduction of corporate travel budget after purchasing videoconferencing. Leaders let travel reduction occur in an organic and business-driven way.

Leaders were also less likely to have a standard deployment for desktop and PC video collaboration. In the SMB, each employee is a special snowflake when it comes to using video.


People Power

Although executive champions and initial training courses on video usage were important, Leaders were more likely to be concerned about the ongoing support structure as well.


What Leaders Were NOT Tracking

Amazingly, Leaders were significantly LESS likely to track QoS and to have a specific trouble-ticketing system for video problems.

Although these are quite important at the enterprise level, SMBs lack the time and resources to commit to this level of granular monitoring. Instead, their focus was on finding technologies that worked consistently within their IT environment.


SMBs take the Ron Popeil Approach to Video

SMBs focus on finding and installing technologies that worked consistently within their IT environment.

Leaders were also over four times more likely to have formal SLAs for video services!


Quality and Standards Matter as Well

Because video is likely to be used in high-leverage situations in Leader environments, a majority of Leaders had high definition and standards-based video conferencing.

This made video more realistic from the end-user’s perspective and provided more B2B communications opportunities for contacting partners, suppliers, and sales opportunities.


Data Sharing, Ease of Use, and B2B: Three Key Traits for Videoconferencing Value

SMB Leaders

SMB Followers

Desktop sharing within video collaboration 74% 54%Ability to switch screens from video to data 68% 48%Video dialing based on IP address or device 68% 30%Business-to-business (B2B) video collaboration capabilities 48% 30%

Video conferencing through soft client 46% 16%


Recommendations for SMB Video Users

Focus on the business tasks where video can accelerate revenue.

Let business lead the way in terms of technology and policy.

Mobility and the proliferation of form factors are a given. Travel reduction should follow business use cases

Training and ongoing support are important So are managed services and SLAs Treat Video as the new phone for best results

IVCi – Platinum Certified Polycom Partner Video Conferencing Cloud Video Services Audio/Visual Integration

Polycom Leader in unified collaboration Room, Desktop,

Mobile, Social

IVCi & Polycom

© AberdeenGroup 2011

Thank You for Your Time!

Phone: 617.854.5385Fax: 617.723.7897

[email protected]

Hyoun Park

Research Analyst, Collaboration and Integrated

Communications

Video Conferencing for Business Success

Business

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