Many businesses these days have video; some
have thousands, if not tens of thousands of video systems and units throughout
their organisation’s. However, most simply call within their own businesses,
with no B2B and B2C calling capability.
Whilst this delivers good ROI for a lot of
companies, it could deliver far more. The question is, once you have good video
and your users have adopted it, what’s next? How do you sweat the video assets
more, exploit the money spent and really drive usage and time and cost
efficiency.
I think the answer lies within a platform that
helps join all of these video islands out there together, and provides a
platform for businesses to communicate B2B and B2C, effortlessly, using their
existing video estates.
I’m not saying that B2B and B2C video
communications doesn’t already exist, there certainly are companies out there
that state they have Global Business Exchanges for video, and you can do B2B
through them. But those solutions are very expensive and you have to pay to join
and then use it each month, even if it’s not being used. Why? The internet is a
great communications platform for video, if your business has a good internet
connection, you can have pixel perfect, unwavering and secure video calls. All
you need to know is who you can contact to, who you need or want to speak to on
video and have a face-to-face conversation with.
People need to communicate outside their own
business, this happens every day, and to communicate with these people, you
look up a business on the web to find contact numbers and you simply pick up
the phone. With video this is not so easy, in fact, it’s extremely hard in most
cases, but it should be no different to finding and calling voice numbers.
What the world needs to solve this problem is
an open global video directory. One you opt into, is free, and you benefit from
along with everyone else.
So how could or should this work? It should
join up standalone video islands, it should help businesses connect to
partners, suppliers, customers and anyone new they need to speak to. It should
not matter what video technology you or they have, as long as it’s standards
based and complaint with current and legacy video standards, then there should
be nothing stopping you from connecting.
Having worked in the industry for some years
now, many people ask me who else they can call on video, apart from their own
people and teams. This global video directory should create a ‘go to’ platform
for people to be able to connect to any person or business that is video
enabled. You might need a manufacturing business to talk about supply, you may
need to find a creative agency to talk to about some graphic design for a
product or logo, you may need a lawyer, an accountant, the list is endless.
This type of first contact is much more powerful that just audio calls, and it
can be easy.
Someone just needs to build this platform. Who
will try and do this first? Will they make it inclusive and vendor agnostic?
Will it be about the users and the platform, and not about the technology? If
it is, I think this could change video communications forever, and be the
evolution we’ve (including the customer of course!) all been waiting for.
