A Comprehensive Guide To Video Conferencing & Why should you Use for Business

The last two years have seen an outgrowth of the remote workforce all over the world, due to pandemic. This has been made possible with web video conferences that have become the most important team communication tool for businesses during these times. The number of people who work from home has increased by 140% since 2005. Pandemic took this upward turn sharper, letting the world’s largest remote work experiment to trials. These statistics illustrate why today’s companies must invest in video conferencing solutions. Leveraging the right web conferencing software helps internal and external communications and creates hybrid work environments. With this blog, we will try to cover why this technology is so much in demand and how bankable it is from a business perspective.

How Video Conferencing Technology Is Helping Businesses?

For today’s growing business to expand and globalize, working on building quality relationships with partners, vendors, employees, investors, and consumers is important. Making use of an integrated video conferencing API solution enables you to communicate your ideas and resolutions flawlessly and exactly like in an in-person meeting. Apart from saving you some major travel expenses, online video conferences allow enhanced one-to-one meetings for productive collaborations.

What Makes Video Conferencing so Popular in Businesses

Business benefits of video conferencing are far-reaching. From increased efficiency and productivity, impactful discussions to fast decision-making, the use of video conferencing adds a lot of value to business. Many organizational tasks such as recruitments, training, project management, partnerships, customer handling, and sales presentations are now much easier to use and are less expensive too, making video meetings popular.

Beneficial Features and Abilities of Video Apps for the Development of Your Business

Here we will discuss a few video conferencing features that are imperative in today’s scenario for an optimal video infrastructure.

• Virtual background option in online video conferencing apps keeps your personal space private with custom backgrounds and helps users to avoid the distraction of remote location. This is to have a more professional video conferencing feel.
• Screen Sharing along with sounds from devices like the mobile, desktop is important for productivity. Users looking for fast, responsive, and best screen sharing features to make it easy for participants to explain the content in a better way. Some even have the ability to share their background so that it feels like a face-to-face meeting.
• For a collective video conferencing experience, there is a ‘together mode’ feature. This lets all participants appear on one screen like an audience.
• Having gateways make it convenient for users to launch and toggle among programs, devices, and software. It is like an interface for incompatible devices.
• Having a language interpreter service in meetings allows the chosen interpreters to work from any location. The participants can enjoy real-time interpretations in their chosen language. So the attendees can communicate in multiple languages with real-time transitions.
• Meeting transcription services convert speech to text. This helps the attendees to receive transcripts of the meeting to quickly scan and retrieve information.

Presently, video technology is also collaborating to leverage the advantage of Artificial intelligence and provide some intellectual features to support video meetings. The AI-powered capabilities have turned virtual conferencing to be a more sophisticated one. The automated transcription, facial and voice recognition for meetings, virtual assistants, analyzing meeting rooms, etc., are a few new features that can control meetings. 

The use of AI can soon start addressing the issues of hybrid work environments. And fortunately, this is the reason why the video API industry is further expected to expand with the applications of AI. Here are a few stunning benefits that the incorporation of AI can bring to this industry:

AI can help to the frame active participants and improve the picture quality of the meeting

• The noise cancellation through the use of acoustic fencing keeps video conversations away from inessential noises and interruptions. This improves voice clarity by automatically reducing background noises. Only the actual speaker’s voice will be audible to the participants.
• Real-time translation further provides a level playing field for users irrespective of their language or geography. AI provides a seamless collaboration for hybrid and intelligent experience.
• Use of facial recognition features through AI to verify the identity of speakers for security badges or to offer more information about someone in real-time to participants is also getting popular.
• Installing chatbots so that the next meetings can be scheduled and marked in calendars etc., are a few other functions that are performed through AI.
• As AI lets businesses understand more about employees and customers, it is proving its value as an indispensable tool for efficiency and a better digital experience. It helps to adjust the strategies based on efficiencies it captured.

Main Challenges Faced In Virtual Collaborations

• We have come a long way discussing the benefits of this technology but now we will look at a few challenges related to its adoption.  
• The look and feel of such meetings should be easy to use and should be very similar to the real meetings as much as possible for better user participation.
• The users access the meetings from different locations and everyone may not have high-speed connections and networks. Bandwidth issues if not addressed leads to latency and lag.
• Handling video conferencing at the office is one more challenge. The users now look for a range of plug-and-play systems that are more mobile unlike fixed in-room systems and still have the advantages of shared experiences.
• Storage and management of files generated during the conference is also a challenge. There are many industry-led compliances to be met in some cases for preserving chats, video, and audio files
• Only a very few leading video conferencing API providers like CONTUS MirrorFly are able to embed audio-video communications overcoming the challenges. Its power-packed video solutions consume very little bandwidth but offer zero latency along with all other important feature advantages. It is a 100% customizable white label chat solution with 150+ futuristic features and scales.

How to Ensure Security in Your Video Conferences

Depending upon the industry where the technology is to be used, the level and standards of security measures to adhere are decided. Some industries like telehealth have strict privacy regulations to be followed. The regulations dictate how the platforms can be used and what features are mandatory. The video conferencing platform in such cases needs to be properly provisioned and secured. The monitoring tools must be in place to take into account any number of irregularities.

Here we are listing 11 video conferencing security best practices:

• Implement Initiation rights for meetings
• Facilitate waiting rooms and validate attendees
• Once the required numbers are reached, allow lock meeting 
• Caution in chat rooms
• Do not use the same meeting IDs again
• Incorporate meeting passwords
• Use Virtual backgrounds
• Reminders in case the meetings are recorded
• Updated Softwares
• Use of encryption
• Disabling all the non-required features

Conclusion

Video meetings are gaining more momentum after the pandemic. They have transformed the way businesses are done. Technology is still in a transitioning stage and striving to be more perfect for every kind of business.  Yet the way it has broken the barriers of distance, increasing engagement, productivity, and profitability, and work-life balance all at the same time, is commendable.