Importance of Video Conferencing in Business Communication

If you're like many business owners, you've been considering the uses of video conferencinguses of video conferencing recently. The pandemic may have thrust your company into the world of remote operations, or yours could be one of the many businesses for which a transition to remote work had already begun. The common element in both these scenarios is the inevitable use of video conferencing technology in business.

With distributed teams becoming the norm, new collaboration challenges are emerging. Companies are facing the difficulty that comes with supporting multiple communication channels on separate platforms and struggling with the complexities of secure document sharing. In seeking solutions, many companies are weighing the pros and cons of video conferencing.

In this article, we'll look at how tech companies and the rest of the world are reacting to the dawn of a new era of video conferencing in business communications. We'll examine the benefits of video conferencing, look at 5 common applications of video conferencing in business management and marketing, and get into the huge role Zoom's new SDK will play in the future of business-grade video conferencing solutions.

Introducing of Video Conferencing: A Permanent Fixture in the Future of Business Communications

Remote work, with its reliance on optimized communication and secure, collaboration-focused document management solutions, is here to stay, and some big business players are making major moves to support this unstoppable video conferencing trend.

For example, Dropbox took steps to acquire DocSend, a secure document sharing platform, for $165 million. Discord, a booming VoIP, instant messaging, and digital distribution platform, is on the market for more than $10 billion. Skype introduced their Meet Now feature to compete with the market leader, Zoom, who has just introduced a new SDK that will help companies create high-performance, scalable video-based applications based on the company's industry-leading video communications platform. The global video conferencing market in 2019 was valued at $3.85 billion and strong growth is projected.

So, we know that technology corporations are jumping at the chance to provide the tools and infrastructure to support the new world of remote work, but how are business people, in general, feeling about it. It turns out, they're psyched. Some interesting stats came out of a survey done by Forbes Insights.

• 68% of respondents prefer video conferencing over audio conferencing because of the benefits of virtual face-to-face communication
• 78% said videoconferencing improves their sense of connectedness, resulting in more effective working relationships
• 74% feel that video conferencing increases engagement and effectiveness of remote workers
• 72% said that video conferencing builds an ongoing sense of trust among team members
• 71% believe video conferencing improves team performance
• 70% indicated that videoconferencing enables individual employees to be more productive

Let's dig a little deeper into the business advantages of customized video conferencing solutions in business communication.

The Benefits of an Enterprise-class Video Conferencing Solution

Video conferencing solutions that are created for business communication are highly customizable systems that can be tightly integrated with a company's existing infrastructure and workflow tools. They save companies money and maximize communication and collaboration, keeping productivity high. The chart below shows what surveyed business owners see as the main benefits of video conferencing in business.

Let's drill down on those top four benefits of video conferencing in business communication:

• Video Conferencing Reduces Travel — Businesses that use video conferencing technology save time and money on travel. Employees and colleagues who would otherwise be sidelined for days because of off-site conferences, training sessions, and business meetings can, instead, take part in those things remotely.
• Video Conferencing Saves Time — The use of video conferencing in business communication improves the efficiency of communication in countless scenarios, bringing about intended results much faster than when only audio is used. People process visual information faster and more accurately when communicating using just text and audio.
• Video Conferencing Reduces Cost — By eliminating commute time, remote work with video conferencing technology saves businesses money. When travel is required for a face-to-face client or partner meeting, checking in with suppliers, or visiting a remote office, it burns a lot of hours and keeps people from more productive activities. The productivity boost that comes from shorter, more efficient meetings is just one way that video conferencing improves business revenue.
• Video Conferencing Improves Collaboration — While conducting audio conferences can lead to distracted attendees who veer off into other tasks instead of taking part in the meeting, video conferences engage attendees. They provide meeting runners the opportunities to connect with attendees more directly, and people in a video conference are more likely to ask questions or make comments. Open communication like that is crucial for effective collaboration, and video conferencing is integral in achieving it.

Read more: How to Create a Video-based e‑Learning Platform like Udemy

Practically any business with more than one employee can recognize the importance of implementing a customized video conferencing solution. Let's examine some characteristics of companies in need of video conferencing technology.

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Does Your Business Need to Integrate Video Conferencing?

Large companies trying to lower travel costs were among the first to recognize the benefits of video conferencing for business communication, and smaller companies have followed suit. The factors that determine if your company would benefit from video conferencing are simple—if any one of the following is true, your business needs video conferencing.

• You have work-from-home employees — If your business has people who work from their house, a reliable video conferencing system will be your most effective way to manage and communicate with those people.
• Your workers travel — Road warriors need to regularly connect with other traveling colleagues and check in with their manager back at headquarters. An easy-to-use corporate video conferencing system will improve communication and ensure real-time coordination with the home office.
• You have multiple locations — Businesses with satellite offices must function as a cohesive unit, and video conferencing enables the efficient communication that makes that possible.
• Your business has remote clients — Although connecting with clients in another city can be accomplished over the phone, a video meeting is superior due to the increased level of engagement it provides.
• Team meetings are an integral part of your operations — For many businesses, all-hand meetings, break-out chats among executives, and impromptu brainstorming sessions are where important decisions get made. If your business runs on the collective genius of your team members, you can optimize meeting output by holding engaging video conferences instead of audio-only meetings.

At least one of these factors, and in most cases, several, apply to small and large companies in every niche imaginable. Your company should seize the opportunity to improve operations and communication through the use of video conferencing technology.

Next, let's look at five common applications for video conferencing in business.

5 Applications of Video Conferencing in Business Communications

A business owner analyzing the uses and limitations of video conferencing will find many uses and very few limitations. The technology can improve how a company's people communicate with each other, partners, clients, and prospective employees. Productivity and collaboration go through the roof when video conferencing technology is used. In the sections below, we'll explore five effective uses for video conferencing in business communications.

Customer communication

Banks and insurance companies get complaints that they have to visit premises too often. We live in a century when you can connect with anyone on the other side of the globe. However, you cannot contact your bank manager because of security standards. Video conferencing solutions such as Zoom, Facebook, or even Hangouts may leak sensitive data.

Security is the reason why banks and insurance companies tend to conduct offline meetings. Thankfully, things are changing, and financial & insurance companies have started embracing video conferencing and text chats for external client communication.

Modern custom video conferencing software development meets security requirements. Usually, developers provide DTLS, SRTP, SOC2, and GDPR compliant solutions. The staff contacts clients with P2P connections. Moreover, both sides can enable two-factor authentication (OAUTH) for advanced verification.

The data shared between two people won’t be stored or shared with any third parties. Customers will get better client service; employees could close more deals.

Internal Video Calls

Some companies face inconvenience with internal communication as well. This one might resonate with companies working with private and protected data. Skype or Slack are not the most secure applications. They have to use internal phones or complicated corporate solutions, causing bureaucracy and disrupting the working process. Businesses can integrate custom software with the existing internal solutions.

As in external communication, companies can use custom solutions that meet local security standards. Employees could contact anybody quickly in their business messengers, hold video calls, and exchange documents easily.

Video-empowered collaboration

The IT industry is not only providing innovative products, solutions, and services. It brings modern B2C approaches into the business industry. It is especially related to collaboration.

Today companies have multiple tools that distract employees’ workflow. They need to check numerous tools, authenticate in protected CRM’s, and systems. Various actions are required to hold a call, send a document, and use a whiteboard, especially when a company has branches.

All these needs can be solved with custom business communication software. Let’s imagine you can hold a conference with a modern, note your ideas on the whiteboard, transform speech into text, and vote. Modern technologies allow the implementation of all these features in one application.

Videoconferencing for business communication can be powered by modern WebRTC or our custom VidRTC engine; translation by Microsoft Azure; security by TLS for text, DTLS for audio, and XSalsa20 audio over desktop applications.

Event Management

If your company carries out public activities or requires holding a huge internal event, you might need a corresponding solution. Using a VidRTC engine, you can organize events and conferences with a maximum of 100 people and 1000 viewers.

Custom software allows you to build a platform with virtual booths. You’ll get both seamless connectivity and audience engagement. Now the attendees experience events the same way as a personalized, offline event. They will enjoy networking in private video rooms, the rest could attend the general meeting, and managers can control all the rooms simultaneously.

Cost efficiency

Companies are required to upgrade their legacy audio or web conferencing providers for business communication. Third-party solutions like Zoom or Mirrorfly charge fees for each user, which might be expensive for small and medium businesses. They also require licensing and cannot provide a high level of security. Once you need an additional feature, you have to pick up a different vendor.

This is the reason why companies switch to a custom solution. It reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) as you’re not obliged to be billed by every vendor. Custom solutions are also easier to support. When you have multiple vendors, IT specialists have to keep an eye on all documentation and follow the complicated logic. All these expenses might cost you several custom applications.

The New Zoom SDK: A Powerful Toolset for Creating Custom Video Conferencing Solutions

Zoom is a provider of state-of-the-art enterprise video communication solutions. It has reached market-leader status because of its easy-to-use, reliable cloud platform for video conferencing. Recently, the company unexpectedly introduced a new Zoom Software Development Kit called Video SDK.

A system developed by implementing the Zoom Video SDK will leverage the power of the popular platform and enable developers to build fully customizable video-based applications with no roadblocks.

Video SDK is a separate SDK that is not compatible with existing Zoom solutions. The SDK uses the technology of classic Zoom meetings solutions, with no interface and watermark. The goal of the new kit is to integrate video conferencing into a website or app in business. This option works for companies who want to set up their own video conferencing solution with reduced operation cost.

Zoom is well known for its high performance, scalability, and reliability. Now it can all be molded into your organization’s infrastructure. It will result in a seamless union between your video conferencing and your existing communications infrastructure.

Zoom Video SDK-based solutions might be an excellent idea for small businesses. You deploy a customizable solution in a couple of months and pay only for the session.

Consider that Zoom is well known for its data breach. If your business is built around data privacy, you should look into developing a custom video conferencing solution. Video SDK might not work for companies that scale. As your business grows, you have to purchase more and more sessions, apply additional integrations, and connect other vendors.

Hiring developers require higher costs and months of development. However, you might get a fully protected solution with more capabilities. Implementing your solution instead of relying on an outside vendor to run a critical part of your service is something to boast about, especially at scale.

Video Conferencing Solutions from a Trusted Development Company

Softermii is ahead of the curve in creating solutions for business video conferencing, with in-house knowledge of the required tech stacks, expertise in niche-specific architecture analysis, and years of experience with the advanced programming techniques involved.

Our broad talent for UI/UX design is equal to our back-end development expertise. Some of the features we consider must-haves in a video conferencing app for business communication include one-to-one and team-based audio and video calling, screen and desktop sharing, comprehensive security services with end-to-end encryption, presentation features that include multimedia capabilities, and functionality to address the compliance terms that apply in some industries.

Our recent software development collaboration Events10x turned out into a cutting edge video conferencing tool. Events10x is a hybrid event organizer. They blend online and offline experience into one solution. Attendees can enjoy panel discussions and at the same time switch to private virtual booths. The tool can host up to 15,000 online visitors, using media servers.

We’ve also developed an application for Parta Social, a video chat social network. The network itself combines the best on the market features like news feed, AI-powered recommendations, and video chats. The app was launched in December 2020 and already was praised by its first users. Find out how we aced the Parta app development story in our webinar.

Another case of video communication tool is HIPAA Video solution.It is a telemedicine web-based communications and video conferencing application. It connects patients seeking medical advice with physicians. We’ve combined the technologies of WebRTC, VidRTC engine, and applied telemedicine security standards. Then we adapted them for both PC browsers and mobile devices.

Softermii creates custom video conferencing solutions that fully integrate with each clients' business communications infrastructure, synchronize with cloud services, handle backups automatically, and include features like instant voice or video messaging, an integrated video viewer, and push notification functionality. All this can be accomplished when we implement the Zoom video SDK or custom VidRTC engine. Our development team therefore can create solutions based on another platform.

Read also: How to Develop an App like Clubhouse

Your custom video conferencing development project presents great opportunities to add features that will serve the needs of your company—functionality that's specifically designed to match how your business operates. Softermii creates custom solutions like that, and we can do it for your business.

Embrace a New World of Business Communications with Video Conferencing

In this article, we looked at how some large tech companies are responding to a growing need for advanced video conferencing solutions. We also discussed the eager adoption of video conferencing technology by the business world in general.

We're all living through a fundamental shift in how business communications occur, and we hope this article helps make sense of that shift, as we discussed the benefits of video conferencing in business communication and explored common applications of video conferencing in business.

The transition from traditional business communications to a video-based approach is happening fast and forward-thinking companies are ready. We have great ideas about your custom video conferencing solution, and undoubtedly, you do too. Check out the video conferencing and business communication software opportunities you might benefit from. Let us know you need any consultation or assistance, we are here to help.