What’s Holding Back Video Conferencing?

I recently had a fantastic experience in a video conference. The video was sharp, there was no lag, and everyone could understand one another. It was as if I was in the same room with colleagues hundreds of miles away.

I left my meeting excited, thinking that I wanted to do more remote conversations through video conferencing. I like the fact that you can get visual cues – those little grins or furrowed brows – that tell you how remote participants are feeling about the direction of a meeting. And I like that when I get an idea that’s best expressed visually, I can quickly draw it on a sheet of paper or a whiteboard and everyone can see it.

Slow Adoption

So it was a little surprising to see recent data from Wainhouse Research showing that the use of video conferencing is flat or up only marginally. Given how good a video conference can be, what’s holding the technology back?

In recent years, video image quality has improved as bandwidth has gotten faster and the hardware has gotten better. But problems remain. The hardware is often quite expensive – too expensive to be used throughout a company. And setting up a system can be needlessly complicated.

What’s Missing? Great Sound

To my mind, there’s a more fundamental problem that many video conferencing companies overlook: sound quality. Many companies have been focused on improving the video quality of their systems, but they haven’t put enough effort into improving their sound. They pay lip service to the idea of providing great audio for meetings, marketing the benefits of “HD Audio” or other buzzwords. But too often they don’t understand what delivering great audio to support a business meeting really means.

That can be a fatal flaw. As great as video conferences are for allowing you to see your colleagues and collaborate visually, it’s still true that the majority of information is being transmitted through sound. If you can’t hear and understand your colleagues, your meeting is time wasted.

No matter how good the video is, it won’t help a conference with muddy, incomprehensible sound. In fact, it may just make it more frustrating – you can see that your boss is talking, but you can’t make out what she’s saying. It’s maddening.

Tenveo is a true innovator in meeting room collaboration. Their combination of hardware and smart cloud software make setting up video conferencing so easy you can do it without IT’s help. And the system is affordable enough for every conference room, not just the boardroom.

Every video conference should be a great experience. I believe we’re moving to the day when they all will be.

See more at:http://www.tenveo-video-conference.com/