A New Approach to Video Conferencing Adoption And

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Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 2

Past Hurdles in Adoption ...... 2

Traditional Adoption Programs ...... 3

A New Approach to Adoption ...... 5

Solution Snapshot ...... 6

Conclusion ...... 7

About the Author ...... 8

About Let’s Do Video ...... 8

About Zoom ...... 8

The potential return on investment (ROI) your organization can achieve by adopting business video is hard to ignore. It can provide stronger relationships between your employees.1 It can increase the engagement and interactivity of your remote meetings.2 It can improve quality of life for your team.3 Most importantly, it can help your bottom line in two major ways. First, just by allowing your team to work remotely, productivity can increase 13%.4 Secondly, upgrading from phone to video improves meeting efficiency by allowing team members to truly connect, engage, and collaborate.

Unfortunately, a return on investment like this hasn’t always come easily. It’s completely contingent upon the success of your video conferencing adoption program. Unlike some technologies, video conferencing hasn’t traditionally been self-adopting. Despite all the massive and well-documented benefits of business video, it takes more than a “build it and they will come” approach. In fact, we currently have countless video systems installed throughout the business world that are collecting dust, for reasons that we’ll explore below.

As a result, smart businesses have implemented various adoption programs. These programs encourage team members to use video, so they can realize its vast benefits. Just as many of us push ourselves to go to the gym to enjoy the health benefits of exercise; these organizations push their teams to utilize video so they can enjoy its inherent benefits. It’s often a struggle, but the results are worth it.

Today, there may be an easier way to get your working teams to upgrade from phone to video. What if business video was self-adopting? What if it became a “build it and they will come” technology? If you put a new espresso/cappuccino machine in the break room next to the old coffee pot, no adoption program is required. Your team will use that new technology without any prompting. Is it possible to make video that appealing?

In this paper, we’ll examine some of the previous problems with adoption. We’ll look at traditional video adoption programs to see the efforts to realize video ROI. Finally, we’ll look at today’s current generation of business video solutions to see if self-adoption can become a reality.

Past Hurdles in Adoption

In a perfect world, video conferencing deployment and usage would be a breeze. Desktop phones would be replaced with video options and meeting room audio conferencing systems would be upgraded to include video. We would make calls the way we always did, with no change to our workflow. Everyone’s existing phone number would become their new video number. We wouldn’t have to ask our teams to do anything differently, but they would be instantly experiencing the benefits of video. Productivity would soar, quality of life would improve, and everyone would be happy.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with that scenario. Traditional business phones can’t easily be upgraded to include video. Along with being a completely different technology, phone lines can’t support the massive amount of data needed to host video. That means video needed to be created as a completely separate technology. At first, it ran on its own separate (ISDN) network until we discovered how to run it over IP. It was completely siloed from existing workplace communications. It wasn’t integrated into our environments. It ran alongside our environments.

1 https://remote.co/10-stats-about-remote-work/ 2 http://www.hrzone.com/perform/people/23-minutes-on-a-conference-call-thats-your-limit 3 http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2016/05/04/u-s-states-with-the-most-telecommuting-jobs/ 4 https://hbr.org/2015/01/a-working-from-home-experiment-shows-high-performers-like-it-better

© 2017 Let’s Do Video 2 Meanwhile, we showed a readiness to shift from the telephone to PC based communications as web conferencing meetings started to replace traditional PSTN conference calls. Upgrading audio-only meetings to include content share allowed remote teams to truly collaborate in real time. Based on the quick adoption and massive growth of web conferencing services, it seems clear that working teams appreciate richer communications. Therefore, we expected natural adoption of video once the systems were installed in meeting rooms. Unfortunately, this was not always the case.

The new video systems were shiny and enticing in some ways, but they could also be somewhat off-putting. In the first place, early video systems were expensive, only to be found in higher-end meeting rooms. As a result, teams never got in the habit of using video for meetings, as it was only available in a small percentage of rooms. They stayed in the habit of using the old speakerphone.

Also, video systems were somewhat intimidating. They were complicated and hard to use. If it took 15 minutes to start a meeting because the video system was too complicated, those users defaulted back to the phone for their next meeting. Our working teams often had a choice of asking AV/IT support to make the calls for them in every meeting or dialing the phone as they had their entire lives.

In addition, traditional adoption efforts suffered from poor experiences on older systems that weren’t quite ready for prime time. When a video call dropped in the middle of an important meeting, users gave up and reconnected using the phone. If the call quality was so low (pixilation, screen freezing, etc.), that it distracted from the content of the meeting, users wouldn’t want to use video for their next meeting.

Unfortunately for the video industry, users have a low tolerance for failure and a long memory when it comes to communications technology. While today’s business video solutions have addressed these quality/experience issues, they still have to make up for lost ground and confidence.

Finally, video suffered from the fact that its benefits were somewhat hidden. The phone seemed to be doing the job just fine. Not everyone understood the need to upgrade to video. Productivity benefits that would be apparent at the end of the year were often unseen on day one.

Previous traditional business video adoption efforts hit a myriad of obstacles, from partial deployments of expensive, complicated, and intimidating new technology to hidden benefits. For some reason, we expected our teams to choose this new technology over a comfortable and easy solution that had served them well for over a century. When viewing it from that perspective, it isn’t too difficult to understand why we had adoption issues.

Traditional Adoption Programs

While it’s unfortunate that adoption programs were required, they’ve been proven to be worth the effort. The massive ROI that could be obtained largely justified the costs and efforts of deploying video with a proper adoption program.

© 2017 Let’s Do Video 3 Video adoption programs have traditionally been a top-down effort. In other words, usage was mandated from above. However, a mere directive to “start using video” is not effective. In depth, comprehensive programs have proven more successful. A big component of these programs is explaining the reason behind mandating video usage. By educating team members how the use of business video aligns with your company’s goals and objectives, you can help motivate them to increase their usage.

After establishing the rational for video adoption, the next step is generally to provide tracking and metrics around usage. In order to judge whether your adoption methods are effective, you need to understand your usage as your program develops. These metrics need to include hard data (percentage of meetings over video, number of video minutes per month, number of users on video, etc.), as well as soft data (surveys of users regarding their meeting experiences, etc.).

Once we understand the experiences and behaviors of users, we can work to remedy any adoption barriers. For example, if teams report it’s taking too long to get video meetings started, you can address that by having video calls automatically initiate at a set time or by implementing video systems with easier call initiation procedures. If users are complaining about bad lighting or awkward camera angles, these can be addressed as well. In other words, by understanding why our users are unhappy with business video, we can work to fix the issues and make it a more satisfying experience.

In addition to metrics, training is often a big part of adoption programs. Video is competing against the phone, a familiar tool for all users. As long as video systems are perceived as new, complicated, and unfamiliar, they’ll have a hard time achieving adoption. Training programs are a great way to get users familiar and comfortable with these solutions.

Some organizations will go as far as to implement an internal marketing campaign around the usage of business video. Logically, if you want your team to change their behavior, you might have to “sell” the idea to them.

These campaigns can keep your team informed and make them feel included as part of the video deployment program. If video systems simply show up one day, your team won’t understand why. Users also won’t understand when or how they’re expected to use these systems. An informational campaign will put everyone on the same page. Working teams will better understand the logistics of these new systems and why it’s so important for them to start using video. In addition to mandating the use of video, these campaigns can motivate teams to use video as a way of achieving ROI. This can be a powerful motive in meeting their organization’s goals of improved communications and productivity.

Adoption programs often leverage the power of internal champions. Every organization has its trendsetters and leaders. If these internal champions start insisting on video for all of their meetings, it will influence the rest of the team. The champions can go beyond leading by example and actively evangelize the use of video by sharing their experiences. If influential people in your organization are working to explain how they’re achieving ROI and greater productivity through business video, that can be a persuasive argument for the entire company.

© 2017 Let’s Do Video 4 Finally, while it may seem obvious, a crucial element of any adoption program is ensuring a quality experience in every meeting. As discussed above, users have a long memory when it comes to failed meetings. Room design, network readiness, maintenance, support, and all other aspects must be well thought out and in place before the very first video call.

A New Approach to Adoption

In recent years, things have drastically changed with the introduction of inherently adoptable video conferencing tools. In fact, some of the most successful business tools in the last few years grew entirely through grassroots adoption. For example, the biggest story in business chat applications is Slack, which owes almost all of its success to user-driven growth.5 Their foothold in the workplace didn’t come from the standard channel-driven sales approach, but from users finding it themselves and sharing it with their teams.

There are several elements required for a solution to be inherently adoptable. The five main ones are:

1. Easy to Use If we’re expecting users to adopt a solution, it has to be intuitive from start to finish. If the slightest bit of training or coaching is required, use won’t spread on its own. This includes scheduling a call, inviting guests, starting/joining a meeting, controlling all in-meeting elements, and everything in between. No one should have to tell a new user how to share their screen, adjust their audio settings, control their layout, etc.

2. Fun to Use The solution must provide an enjoyable experience. Ideally, users will love the solution. If they’re truly excited about it, they’ll use it themselves and share it with others. Adoption and growth are really two sides of the “quality experience” coin. In the past, this was often overlooked by our industry. Since we sold video conferencing based on ROI, people were expected to use it whether they liked it or not. Meeting quality and call workflow were certainly considerations. However, they were still at a business-tool level, whereas a truly self-adopting technology needs to feel like a consumer tool.

3. Reliable Users who have experienced a successful collaboration deployment tend to report the same thing. When asked what they liked and made them want to keep using it, they often said, “It just worked”. In terms of video conferencing, if calls are dropped or suffer from quality issues to the point where it affects the meeting, people will simply go back to using the phone. Even with a top-down adoption program, reliability is essential. If you’re hoping for grassroots adoption, it’s even more crucial.

4. Shareable If we want grassroots users to spread a new tool throughout our workforce, they need a means to do so. As deployments grow, you may have accounts being created by IT and handed out to employees. However, when talking about a truly self-adopting tool, it should be able to grow within your workforce from the beginning. Most tools that have enjoyed the success of viral growth have placed an importance on making freemium, trial, and/or guest accounts available. You don’t want to make your guests create an account (even a free one) just to join a call. If anyone can join your meetings without having to log in, you wind up with more people trying the service and potentially converting to regular users themselves.

5 https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/01/rocketship-emoji/

© 2017 Let’s Do Video 5 5. Ready to Grow If you’re introducing a new tool into your workforce, it needs to be enterprise-ready regardless of how it’s adopted. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where your team selected a tool that doesn’t meet your IT requirements and insists you support it. You want a tool that can start with grassroots adoption, but is manageable and supportable by your IT team when it hits a critical mass. This means choosing a tool to introduce to your team with enterprise-ready features, such as a management dashboard, account management control, provisioning, etc. In addition, it must have enterprise-level security as an inherent element of its infrastructure, client applications, and meeting controls.

Solution Snapshot

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. was founded in 2011. Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, group messaging, and a software-defined conference room solution into one easy-to-use platform. The Zoom Meetings offering is a freemium service with free, pro, business, and enterprise plans. Zoom Meetings is both a high quality video conferencing service, as well as a full featured web conferencing service.

Zoom has always focused on quick growth and adoption following the approach described above. A look at their user count over the last few years demonstrates the success of this approach. In the last year, the number of total daily meeting participants has grown 250%.

It specifically meets the elements listed above for a self-adopting solution, including:

1. Easy to Use Zoom boasts an exceptionally intuitive user interface (UI). No training is required for users to start immediately using its features.

2. Fun to Use The Zoom service supports a leading experience in terms of audio and video quality. It offers unique features, such as the ability to co-annotate from different devices, the ability to show a video clip with audio during the meeting, virtual backgrounds, and mobile screen share. For different end users, integrations make Zoom a great choice.

3. Reliable Zoom users report that they find it simply works. When they send someone an invite, they know the person will be able to click and connect. Zoom is architected and built with adaptive codec and compression technology that can operate well in an environment with up to 45% packet loss while providing 99.99% uptime. (Service status available on https://status.zoom.us)

4. Sharable Zoom guests aren’t required to create an account to join a meeting. This allows new users and guests to try Zoom easily for the first time.

5. Ready to Grow Zoom accounts offer a number of features designed to support larger expansions and enterprise deployments. For example, Zoom’s administrator portal includes a “Dashboard” view with usage metrics and other helpful data.

© 2017 Let’s Do Video 6 Zoom offers a number of enterprise services that are designed to bring the ease of use and virality of Zoom Meetings to the enterprise. For example, the typical enterprise must support more than desktop and mobile users. They need high quality meeting room solutions as well. These users can leverage the Zoom Room software service for physical meeting room setups using easy to source hardware peripherals. The Zoom Room software has the same ease of use and workflow as Zoom Meetings. However, it also includes crucial meeting room manageability features to provide a high quality meeting room experience.

Another enterprise focused Zoom offering is the H.323/SIP Room Connector service. Many enterprises have existing traditional meeting room video systems in place. This service connects these systems to the Zoom cloud, allowing them to join and participate in Zoom Meetings.

Zoom rounds out its enterprise offerings with its Zoom Video Webinar service. By leveraging the same leading UI and workflow as Zoom Meetings, they created a truly user-friendly webinar platform. This allows presenters to manage their own webinars without expensive white-glove IT assistance. Zoom Video Webinars support up to 100 video presenters and 10,000 live viewers.

The common thread throughout the Zoom Meeting suite of offerings is the highly adoptable experience. By providing a consistent experience from desktop/mobile to room, all modes of Zoom use can grow unhindered by traditional video adoption hurdles. The result has been truly grassroots and viral growth at the typical Zoom installation.

I have worked with Zoom to introduce this service to over 18,000 users at our company. As a cloud service, it delivers fast and reliable conferencing services. The computer-based audio works well even in remote areas. The administrative console provides excellent dashboards and reporting capabilities about usage. Most of all, I recommend it because all my users love it. - IT Vice President of a Global 500 Technology Company

Conclusion

Some technologies provide “set it and forget it” ROI. If you invest in more efficient lights, you’ll lower your electric bills without changing your behavior. On the other hand, collaboration tools tend to be almost completely dependent on new adoption to achieve ROI. As a result, enterprise organizations have gone to enormous lengths to create adoption programs that encourage usage of video conferencing deployments.

Fortunately, there’s a better way. By introducing inherently adoptable tools to your workforce, you can simply seed the growth of your next generation collaboration environment. After the new tool achieves critical mass, your IT team can then manage and support it as any other business tool. This is the win-win achieved by enterprise-ready solutions with consumer level experiences.

These tools give us the benefit of finding the ideal solution to fit your users and their workflow. A large organization can seed multiple solutions and see which ones flourish. This is a great way to listen to your users, so you can provide and support the ideal set of applications to maximize their productivity.

At the end of the day, if your organization fails to adopt video conferencing, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage against competitors using video. You need your working teams collaborating in real time with full interactivity and engagement. To truly enjoy these benefits, adoption should come to users completely naturally. Ideally, you want them to actually enjoy the experience and actively share with their colleagues. Fortunately, with today’s self-adopting video offerings, this can be realized.

David Maldow is the Founder and CEO of Let's Do Video (LDV) and has been covering the visual collaboration industry, and related technologies, for over a decade. His background includes 5 years at Wainhouse Research, where he managed the Video Test Lab and evaluated many of the leading solutions at the time. David has authored hundreds of articles and thought pieces both at Telepresence Options, where he was managing partner for several years, as well as at Let's Do Video. David often speaks at industry events and webinars as well as hosting the LDV Video Podcast.

About Let’s Do Video

Let's Do Video is a news website covering business video technologies, related collaboration tools, and team productivity. LDV's mission is to provide third-party, informative, educational content and news to the visual collaboration community. Follow us at LetsDoVideo.com or on Twitter @LetsDoVideo.

About Zoom

Zoom makes video and web conferencing frictionless. Founded in 2011, Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with a secure, easy platform for video and audio conferencing, messaging, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Zoom helps over 700,000 businesses and organizations bring their teams together to get more done. Zoom is publicly traded on Nasdaq (ticker: ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California.