Where to start with video conferencing?

Ninety eight per cent of people say that video conferencing helps to build relationships. So if you haven’t done so already, now’s a good time to embrace the future.

Video has a clear advantage over voice-only communication – nuance, body language, facial expressions. It’s the closest thing to face-to-face communication the digital world can offer.

As teams increasingly work remotely, and companies become ever more global, video has become a crucial part of the communication toolkit for every successful business.

Services such as Microsoft Teams allow users to move seamlessly between text chat, phone calls and video conferences – all within the same piece of software and utilising devices from smartphones up to specialist hardware such as video bars and multiple speaker systems.

Until relatively-recently, video conferencing wasn’t an option for smaller businesses. The set-up costs were high, the IT requirements demanding and, frankly, the end result often disappointing.

But that’s all changed in the past few years and creating a video conference solution for your business is simple, quick and less expensive than you might think.

At a basic level, a call using Apple’s FaceTime is the simplest way of keeping in touch via video or – for something cross-platform – a video call on WhatsApp. And between team members, calling one-to-one, that might well be enough for your needs.

But for a larger meeting, or for something client-facing, a more professional image is required.

A remote team of mobile workers could, for example, be armed with a Bluetooth-enabled conference phone and a wide-angled web cam, allowing them to engage with a number of people at once. Using a service such as Teams or Zoom to create a room in which to meet.

Moving up the scale, and a more fixed solution, would see the creation of what’s called a huddle room. No longer does video conferencing require a huge space to be effective. An ad-hoc huddle meeting can easily be created using plug and play devices in a matter of seconds, allowing half a dozen or so people to easily call a similar-sized group elsewhere.

The technology exists now to ensure your camera focuses on whomever is speaking, putting them front and centre when they’re driving the conversation. And cost-effective and high-quality external microphones ensure that every syllable is captured and transmitted to the other party.

For those who demand a larger scale solution for regular, larger scale meetings, existing kit – from, say, a huddle room – can be added to, extra microphones added, additional cameras placed into the mix and specialist software utilised to allow dozens of people to take part in a company wide meeting, where every voice can be heard – and every person seen!

If you want to find out more about video conferencing solutions – get in touch with go2 Convergence today.