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The recent 29-page Polycom/ Wainhouse End-User Survey „The Real Benefits of Video“ focuses on the benefits that organizations realize via the use of video conferencing (VC).

The survey is based on the information collected from 4,737 participants who are already frequent video conferencing users.

Here are the key takeaways from the survey:

Video users tend to use video often - The majority of people (64%) who use VC at least every few months tend to use it every day or every week. Based on this, video resellers should focus on getting users to try VC as this is likely to result in weekly (or even daily) usage and increased value for the organization.

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Validation that video has gone beyond the meeting room – Users of video conferencing are no longer forced to go to the conference room, but using VC on their PCs and notebooks, on their video-enabled phones, on their tablets, and on their smartphones. In fact, more users participate in video calls using PCs / laptops / notebooks than in meeting rooms. In short --- if your company or your enterprise customer is only using video in meeting rooms, there’s work to be done!

Video is right at home on tablets – More than two thirds of VC users, who use their tablets for business, also use their tablet to conduct video calls - compared to less than half for smart phones. In other words, screen size matters when it comes to mobile video conferencing.

Build it and they will come – More than two thirds of VC users use more than one device to conduct video calls, and ~ 40% use three or more devices for video calling. Viewed another way ... given the option, users will spread their video usage across numerous devices (group systems, personal systems, and mobile systems).

Opportunities abound – Half of the organizations surveyed have video in 20% or less of their meeting rooms! Given the many benefits that video brings, these organizations and the ever-decreasing price points of video solutions, the time is right to fully video-enable the enterprise!

Multi-vendor deployments are commonplace – The days of a having to use only a single vendor’s VC solutions to avoid issues are long gone. In fact, ~ 60% of the users surveyed use video solutions from 2 or more vendors. So end-users should find the solution(s) that best address their needs, and vendors / resellers should keep pitching – even if the competition already has a foothold.

VC will soon leave the building – While the overall usage of video conferencing is expected to grow significantly over the next year, VC usage "while on the road" is expected to almost double, and VC usage from the home office is expected to almost triple! So not only does video help organizations reduce business travel, it empowers workers during their trips. Besides, video in the home is likely to become an important use case (and revenue driver) for the VC space in the near future.

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Productivity trumps travel savings – Travel reduction no longer reigns as the #1 driver for video conferencing. The ability to improve productivity and the ability to increase the impact of discussions were cited as the most important benefits of video conferencing. This is a wake-up call for enterprise video managers and video vendors alike: video can still be justified by reduced travel, but the real benefits come from the softer side that lead to faster decision making and increased business agility.

Opportunity #1 is “Who can you call?” – Although ease of use is still vital, these users said that the best way to increase their video usage is to video-enable more people. This is a classic case of Metcalf’s law. More users = more people to call = more value and benefits. Desktop and mobile video collaboration will be large contributors to this effect. Let the deployments begin!

The users know they’re not maximizing the value of VC – The typical video-enabled enterprise uses video for many different use cases - e.g. remote training, interviewing and recruiting, bringing remote experts to retail locations. However, the vast majority of these users believe that their company would be assisted by using video in even more ways. It falls to video managers and vendors to help users “see the light” and apply VC across their business.

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Source: www.wainhouse.com