In our survey, IT Managers and Solution Architects from 180 enterprise companies have provided fresh insights around measuring (or not measuring) user adoption of video conferencing (VC). We’ve analyzed their challenges, collected some tactics they’re to improve and have placed them into a single report to help you boost use adoption of video conferencing.
Here are a few, key finding from our survey:
[bctt tweet=”25% #videoconferencing admins manually pull data from the infrastructure & produce their own metrics” username=”vyopta”]
[bctt tweet=”35% #videoconferencing admins use technology vendor analytics and monitoring tools.” username=”vyopta”]
[bctt tweet=”27% #IT admins don’t track #videoconferencing adoption” username=”vyopta”]
[bctt tweet=”12% #IT admins use 3rd party tools like @vyopta to track #videoconferencing” username=”vyopta”]
The Complexities of Single vs. Multi-Vendor VC Environments
Over 35% respondents who track video technology usage directly through their vendor feel like they’re are only getting a piece of the picture. Built-in analytics tools are great for providing visibility into usage and user adoption for that tool. However, it’s common to find larger businesses cannot sustain themselves on a “single-vendor” solution across their organization. Most enterprises need multiple VC tools to meet all business needs.
“Multi-vendor” simply indicates a company is using multiple tools for multiple aspects of collaboration. The back-end infrastructure could support video calling from one vendor; while using chat, messaging and desktop video clients from other vendors. By having multiple VC tools that serve specific business functions, IT Managers and Solution Architects are finding themselves supporting a growing, yet fragmented ecosystem.
Here is an example. You may be using Polycom for your virtual meeting rooms (VMRs) but your customer success teams are supporting clients via WebEx. Sound familiar? This type of situation risks creating several issues for measuring real adoption. The largest issue is only being able to report on usage from one technology vendor at a time. Again, most large businesses use multiple tools to serve each area of their business. To add to this, the use of video conferencing is trending up, and new collaborative technologies are being added every day. VC environments will only continue to grow more complicated and challenging to understand and support effectively.
Zero Visibility into Video Usage
You can’t improve if you don’t measure. According to our survey, 80% of total respondents felt goal setting was important, and 66% felt user adoption was mission critical. When digging deeper, we found 27% are not even measuring user adoption! This means they have little to no idea whether or not their VC investment is having a postive or negative impact ont their business. Larger companies spend millions of dollars on video collaboration technologies each year, the impact of not fully using that technology could be huge on their bottom line.
Pro Tip: In this day and age, making data-driven decisions is essential in any facet of the business where large budgetary spends are poured into solutions. Video conferencing is just one really big one (and often overlooked).
Multiple Data Pulls to Measure Video Usage
Time is your most valuable asset. Often, the IT department’s top priorities include deploying unified communications technologies to streamline and improve productivity. Yet, each video technology deployment often requires manual data pulls which must be pumped into a series of spreadsheets to produce a report. This is overwhelming, time-consuming and just generally a pain in the butt. This process can be especially painful for enterprise businesses who have to pull reporting from multiple tools, reconcile that data via an Excel spreadsheet, turn that data into visualizations to search for trends and actionables, etc.
Let’s face it, we also know that creating manual reports increases the risk for human error. You have to balance formatting, build custom formulas, work from several worksheets or data points at once to provide insights, etc. It can be brutal. Again, 25% of our survey respondents shared that they generate manual reporting for video conferencing. That’s 1 out of every 4 enterprises surveyed.
Ouch!
Video Conferencing Analytics Matter
Wait a second, 27% + 25% = 52%. So, 52% of enterprises feel they do not have the appropriate tools to track user adoption of video collaboration. This means they cannot realize the full benefits of their video conferencing technology overall.
Ouch 2x!
Making decisions on how much the organization should spend on video collaboration systems and what types of systems to invest in, should be backed up with solid data points. Analytics are the answer. Only 12% of respondents indicated they a third-party monitoring and analytics tool to track user adoption, performance, etc. That’s a pretty small number when compared to the investment companies are making into their collaborative technologies each year. I foresee this 12% increasing as the VC market skyrockets and more technologies appear. Soon, more enterprises will see the light and adopt 3rd party tools that can provide a comprehensive picture of their entire organization’s use of their video conferencing solutions as a whole, down to the most granular of levels.
