5 Age-Old Problems Tech Companies Are Solving With Video Conferencing

Despite the tech world being abuzz with new ideas and products that revolutionize the way people do business, we’re STILL stuck with some of the same problems we’ve been dealing with since the 50’s. Flying people around the world for simple meetings, breakdowns in communication, and plain old employee burnout are issues we’re dealing with that our grandparents would be all too familiar with.

The future is looking bright, though: video conferencing is looking like it’s going to finally put many of these old-fashioned methods of doing business to rest. If your company is looking to step into the 21st century free from the shackles of the 20th, video conferencing is your key. Here’s just a few of the age-old problems video conferencing can help you put in the rearview window: 

1 – Traveling expenses and time

Travel expenses represent a huge cost for companies who do business across countries and the world. Each person sent out to visit clients, partners, and other branches represented thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. These weren’t occasional costs, either - as recently as the early 2010s, many employees needed to travel for as much as 50-75% of their working hours!

This presented a dual-issue for companies:

First, the employee was regularly unavailable during travel days, leading to a large amount of wasted time where they could have been making more sales calls and getting in contact with more customers. 

Secondly, the expenses associated with plane tickets, housing and food added up to a huge expense on the company ledgers at the end of the day.

With video conferencing, the same employee that would be traveling 3-4 days a week for 2-3 days of contact with a client can instead stay on-location and meet virtually for most situations. That means more facetime with clients, increased sales, and a TON of money saved on plane tickets and expensive hotel brunches.

2 – Creative collaboration

Even with email and the internet revolutionizing communications, remote creative collaborations are still tough. Teams have still traditionally been limited by a lack of visual aids that would translate everyone’s vision from one place to another. This made for an endless cycle of submissions and reworking that could turn a fun, exciting project into a miserable slog.

The addition of video conferencing and cool tools like virtual whiteboards has made the creative process actually fun again. The new tech allows remote teams to connect and get ‘in the zone’ much quicker and easier, drawing out exactly what they’re looking for and making instant clarifications to any confusion or questions. The stats from the whitepaper “Flawless Audio for Effective Collaboration in a Hybrid World — 4 Ways to Make it Happen” from Frost and Sullivan (2021) back it up - 76% of those who use video conferencing for collaboration report higher levels of team efficiency.

It also serves to level the playing field by allowing everyone working on the project to become involved in the planning. With everyone participating in the meeting and adding their two cents as the project gets drawn out, ideas that would have been thrown out during the submission/revision process can be added to the mix during the planning stages.

3 – Fewer unproductive days from illness

Nobody likes getting sick, and that goes double for people feeling the crunch with approaching deadlines and major projects. That left them with a big dilemma: do I go in any way to get stuff done and get everyone else sick, or do I keep it safe, stay home and risk missing some critical due dates?

Video conferencing makes the question moot. By allowing them to remotely participate in important meetings and continue to collaborate with peers while still contagious, you can still get your work done while keeping everyone safe and pathogen-free.

4 – Better engagement and communication

It’s OK to admit it: phone calls can get pretty boring. With a purely auditory experience, it’s easy for participants of traditional conference calls to become disengaged, zone out, and get distracted by other activities.

This lack of engagement can lead to some major disasters. If a worker misses that a part needs to be shipped overnight for an installation and they end up sending it via ground, a million-dollar project can be ruined or delayed and destroy a relationship with a client.

Video conferencing adds a visual element to remote communications that makes meetings and conversations more engaging for all involved. Frost and Sullivan (2021) report that a full 87% of workers report that they feel more connected with the person they’re talking to using video during calls. With greater engagement comes less zoning out and reading news articles during calls.

5 – Prevents employee burnout and improves retention

It’s no secret that employee engagement with their work is at an all-time low. Companies are having a difficult time retaining skilled employees, and many of those employees are experiencing drastically reduced levels of job satisfaction.

One of the best things a company can do to reduce burnout and improve retention rates is offer up hybrid or fully remote work to employees. Frost and Sullivan (2021) again tell us that a full 57% of modern workers expect to be working in the office less than 10 days a month in the near future, and the more companies cling to old ways of doing business, the less chance they have of holding on to choice employees.

Video conferencing opens up a ton of options for both companies and employees. Workers can attend important meetings and demonstrations from the comfort of their own home, and visual communications give remote calls a connective edge that mere phone calls couldn’t.

Whatever problems you’re hoping to solve by adopting video conferencing into your business plan, you’ll need a complete audio solution to make the most of the technology. As great as video communications are, without a solid audio system you’re just going to end up with a lot of frustrated employees and clients. The Stem Ecosystem lets you get the full benefits of video conferencing by letting you outfit any space with a fully customizable and scalable audio system that creates an effortless conferencing experience. By letting you mix and match up to 10 audio endpoints, you can outfit any room to become the perfect virtual meeting space and start putting your age-old problems to rest.

Experience the Stem difference and design your room today: https://www.shure.com/en-US/conferencing-meetings/solutions/stem-ecosystem/room-design-tool