5 Ways Video Chat Impacts Enterprise Productivity

Author- Sunil Uttam

Communication plays a central role in the daily running of a business. With the evolution of technology, video conferencing is rapidly gaining acceptance across all sectors and sizes of businesses.

With a rapidly changing business environment opening up many new opportunities for start-ups and small businesses in India, use of digital technology to improve the speed and scale of operations is fast becoming a necessity.

For the nearly 48.8 million small and medium-size businesses in India, video telephony offers a great cost effective opportunity to improve operational efficiencies.

Since it’s introduction in 1982, video conferencing technology has advanced significantly driven by innovation and changing user needs. It has now become available on a variety of devices, from room-based systems to hand-held devices. Turning it into a very powerful aid for business discussions or presentations.

Whether you need to do a brainstorming session with your team, discuss and modify a presentation or woo a prospective client, video conferencing offers a very effective platform. Here are some of the benefits it has to offer -

1. Reduces Costs

Business travels eat significantly into a company’s productive work hours and budget. For example, American companies spent roughly $225 billion during 2012 on the business trips of their employees. These trips have been an inevitable part of the work routine of sales and training teams. The former used to foster relationships with clients and the latter, for building employee competency and engagement. Both these purposes can be now be substantially accomplished with video conferencing without anyone having to move from their office or home. This not only checks the cost of business trips but also the amount of time spent in travelling. Moreover, the cost of video conferencing has decreased by several folds. However, travel costs (and time spent on it) have been moving upwards.

3. Improves Relationships

For a company which has to run a geographically distributed operation or a marketing campaign, video conferencing would be the best way to connect, report and strategize. Video conferencing allows teams to deliver faster responses, include more people in the decision-making process. The technology can be used to maintain client relationships or to remain connected with off-site employees. Also in comparison to a telephone or email conversation, a video call, makes the body-language and surroundings of both the parties evident, contributing to better judgements and decisions.

4. Improves Work-Life Balance

With the concept of work-from-home gaining popularity in India, video conferencing gives flexibility to both, employers and employees. What if the company has to discuss an important decision with a key employee who is away on vacation or unable to make it to the office on a particular day? A simple video call will allow the company to share live information and explain the matter with adequate visual assistance to help take a quick and effective decisions. It is a great time saver! Moreover, frequent travelling can be stressful for employees and can lower their potential. Something, small businesses and start-ups can least afford. Video conferencing can help here in reducing or even eliminating the need for travel altogether.

In summary, video conferencing brings in tangible benefits for every enterprise, big or small, by way of reduce costs, increase productivity, improved relationships, better work-life balance and enhance business competitiveness.

Mithi SkyConnect – Enabling to do More in Less Time

You can access all the benefits of a video conferencing system for your enterprise through Mithi SkyConnect, the SaaS offering for email and collaboration. The service offered to businesses provides an advanced video conferencing tool accessible from within a web browser, without the need of the special hardware or software.

Users can make one to one video calls, add people to a live meeting, schedule live group meetings and share screens or text messages in these sessions. Users can invite people from both within the enterprise and outside (such as partners, customers etc.) to video conference.