1. There’s a lot of talk in the industry around how important voice will be in 2022. Is video as important now as it was in 2020? Why?
Sof Socratous, Vice President, Sales, Northern Europe at Poly:
“Voice has and will always be key to collaboration, but how we use it is changing. For example, we’re seeing a trend in users using voice over Microsoft Teams, rather than traditional telephony. This has been especially evident during the shift to hybrid working.”
“However, video will remain just as important as visual elements play a key role in making hybrid working a success and keeping workers connected. Face-to-face interaction is more engaging, and so meeting participants with their camera on is a simple but powerful step towards better collaboration. It also improves the quality of interpersonal interactions, enabling participants to pick up on facial expressions, body language, and discourages them from multitasking.”
“The prevalence of video calls in our hybrid working reality has a significant impact on overall work culture. In 2022, business leaders must realise that both voice and video are equally important and pairing the two will be the key to a successful hybrid future.”
Mark Needham, EMEAR Hybrid Work Leader at Cisco:
“Enterprise-grade voice experiences have always been fundamental to organisations, and the cloud migration is accelerating, but the explosion of video is continuing unabated. Hybrid work is becoming the norm and making a success of Hybrid Work means breaking down the barriers between locations, time zones, languages, environments, and personal preferences. This dynamism needs an exceptional video experience to ensure that everyone can contribute equally, from anywhere, and video is core to that.”
“By 2024 Gartner estimates that only 25% of enterprise meetings will take place in person (1). The ability to read, in high-definition, body language and reactions provides the clarity of understanding required in this more dispersed mode. It is critical to organisational success In a Hybrid World. If you look to the world of academia, it has been shown that 93% of all communication is nonverbal (2).”
“That’s a lot of risk to communication and collaboration if the video experience is not the best possible. From an employee’s perspective 58% say that access to high quality audio and video is the most important factor for work from home success (Dimensional Research, 2021).”
Lauren Simmen, Director of Commercial Product Marketing at Crestron:
“They are equally important. While it’s true that if a video signal drops, audio will allow you to continue that hybrid meeting with all the attendees, there’s now an expectation that participants should be on-camera (unless they’ve given a specific reason to shut off the video image). If you’re remote, video is really how you prove you are present in that meeting.”
“Beyond that, it’s an issue of “meeting equity” — having sound and vision work in parallel to ensure that no matter whether a participant is remote or in person, the audio and video are working together for everyone so that every person can be heard equally and every person can be seen equally.”
Bryce Page, Senior Product Marketing Manager at GoTo:
“Digital transformation and contact centre are driving much of the importance behind voice this year. Video is a cornerstone of collaboration but the shifts in workplace and hybrid have SMB customers rethinking their strategies long-term."
"Some 66% of SMB customers are considering a move to the cloud, driven by both on-premise limitations for flexible work and the impact it has on rapidly-accelerated contact centre plans. So while video is and remains important, many customers are more concerned with their voice & contact center plans this year.”
2. What challenges do businesses face when it comes to optimising video in hybrid working environments?
Sof Socratous, Vice President, Sales, Northern Europe at Poly:
“A challenge businesses face when it comes to optimising video is ensuring that all employees have an equal experience, no matter where they are located.”
“To overcome this, it’s important to take a people-first approach. This involves considering employee personas and how spaces will be used to ensure they adopt the right video technology.”
“Organisations need to understand what the office will be used for and how to integrate remote workers, and therein invest in video bars and webcams that fit the right spaces. Doing so will allow for video to be optimised, while offering an equal experience for all.”
Mark Needham, EMEAR Hybrid Work Leader at Cisco:
“For many they have been reliant on laptop-based video for the first time in their careers during the pandemic, an experience which leads to poor health, fatigue, and disengagement. Companies need to move to the provision of dedicated video devices for employees whose roles carry a higher level of collaboration intensity on hot desks and in home offices (alongside the more traditional meeting rooms).”
“Additionally, employees are jumping from one meeting platform to the next, so a device with is native to only one platform is an inhibitor to fueling successful hybrid work. Successful Hybrid work is about the ability to excel at all aspects of your role from any location, both with people internally and externally hence the need for a high-quality consistent experience across the 4 largest platforms (Webex, Microsoft, Zoom and Google) via the single click of a button on a UI.”
“Thirdly, 47% of meeting attendees are not speaking when attending meetings (1), without leveraging video these attendees’ sentiments and views are not being represented, the meeting is not fully inclusive, and you will not achieve the best possible outcome. Meeting analytics will help visualise these trends so the meeting can be optimised.”
Lauren Simmen, Director of Commercial Product Marketing at Crestron:
“That is a great question — and there's a lot of them. The biggest challenge is optimizing the room experience for the right video needs or capabilities.”
“The cameras and the technologies that are best for a training facility are going to be vastly different than in a board room, and different in a huddle space.”
