What’s The Benefit Of Using Streaming Video For Meetings?
 Meetings are best done face to face. In face-to-face meetings, emotion, information and non-verbal signals can be communicated – and questions can be answered – in real time. But with global communications and remote workers, face-to-face meetings are neither possible nor, given spiraling travel costs and increased operation-expense scrutiny, necessarily desirable.
Nevertheless, decisions must be made. Communications must occur in business-speed in order for companies to stay competitive and maintain high customer service. In other cases, multinational companies require multi-team and multi-site integration for complex large scale project management.
Video conferencing helps solve some challenges of communication between regional offices. For the people who have access to advanced video conference equipment, this is an ideal solution.
So where does Streaming Video fit in?
Streaming Video is a complement to face-to-face and video conference meetings. It is proven to help viewers grasp the information and messages more clearly via the ability to rewind, listen and acknowledge important points.
Streaming Video solves four video conferencing challenges:
- Size – when meetings involve more than 15 – 20 people video conferences can quickly become unwieldy and expensive, especially using outside conferencing services.
- Access – streaming video offers full access without having to rely on cumbersome video conference equipment and the associated very high bandwidth connectivity.
- Distance – with more and more people telecommuting and working in different regions/time zones, streaming video allows people to view, use and respond to information when they are available, wherever they may be.
- Project management - large scale project decisions can be communicated on an hourly basis; teams can be segmented and decisions made for projects to be completed on time and within budget. And specific, relevant information can be communicated to, and highlighted for, specific audiences.
How Successful Companies Leverage Video Webcast Meetings
- Virtual Workshops
Virtual Workshops use the power and convenience of the Internet to train and educate, and have been proven to be more effective than conventional education programs. Virtual Workshops allow staff members to continue their education and receive updates about technology, standards, and even safety regulations. Video sessions combine training with testing and examples to provide 24/7 access for participants to complete courses that they can work on at their own pace.
- Virtual Town Hall Meetings
These are corporate events involving 100 people or more. Examples include Leadership Forums, Conferences (Engineering, Product Development, Sales), and Town Halls (talk-to-staff) for communication of annual and quarterly results, M&A activities and other topics of interest to the whole enterprise community.
- Virtual Conferences
Using Qumu Streaming Video capabilities, video conferences can be instantly extended to tens, hundreds, or thousands of participants who have a PC on their desk or a mobile device. The conference serves as the origination of the content which Qumu can stream live across a person’s desktop while simultaneously saving it for later playback.
- Product Launches
Major product launches represent an important use of Streaming Video, as it is the only way to involve all parts of the organization: sales, customer service, engineering – and communicate the essential positioning and strategy around a big new product release.
- Project Management
Large projects involving thousands of people are a real challenge when major schedule or engineering changes need to be communicated. Streaming Video provides a convenient method for teams and consultants to work on projects, discuss updates and information, and build real-time strategies based on market-based information.
Streaming Video creates a fast and simple way for managers to quickly create a live event (and a saved version for on-demand) of the new plan.
The Benefits
Using streaming video has a wide range of benefits for almost any size organization:
- Accelerate product development cycles and shorten time-to-market
- Reduce travel expenses - see our "GoGreen" solution page to calcuate your carbon emmissions!
- Leverage existing video conference equipment
- Increase cost-effective use of billable employee time
- Improve work/life balance and higher employee retention
- Expand services to a wider customer base
- Improve communication and interaction with telecommuters, customers, partners and suppliers
- Save time and money: bring the studio to the people, not the people to the studio
- Become more “Green” — reduce carbon emissions and fuel/power consumption by communicating with people in remote locations.
Data shows that replacing one meeting of 300 participants with a Streaming Video event can save as much as $500,000 to $750,000 in hard costs and lost productivity. |
