4 Ways to Unleash the Power of Captured Video

[Cara Daly (cara_daly)]

With a dispersed workforce in an increasingly competitive landscape, valuable data needs to be shared faster and knowledge sharing can no longer be contained to four walls. Experts need to be able to defy distance and address teams of employees that may not all be sitting in the same place. They need asynchronous communications. Some may be in cubicles or conference rooms, others in their homes or cars. It doesn't matter where they are, they need to connect.

It’s no longer about one-to-one communication but rather one-to-many and many-to-many, enabling social business through user-generated content, and creating a collaborative environment that connects people, information and ideas. People are more likely to engage with and remember knowledge-based content over video than virtually any other format. Comscore found that every day more than 1.6 billion online videos are consumed in the US alone. Video provides a critical tool for teaching and sharing information, whether through expert-led trainings, executive webcasts or employee-created clips.

Video content management (VCM) solutions let you use existing video conferencing investments in new ways to create and manage great video assets, like training and corporate communications. They let you record, tag, index and share content with ease — benefiting business operations across the board. Here are some of their most valuable uses we’ve uncovered:

1. Corporate Communications

Top-down communications are fast and frequent with things like live webcasting. Companies can extend the reach of leadership to everyone, everywhere by securely streaming large-scale executive webcasts in real time. This is ideal for the enterprise, where it can be difficult to ensure every single employee is on the same page. Video tools can also enhance corporate culture for large businesses. Using “town hall” style meetings can foster a more connected and informed organization from the bottom-up. Finally, businesses can make important company wide announcements, like benefits information, stock purchase plans and policy changes in a timely manner.

2. Learning, Training, Development

Businesses need to create programs that retain and develop top talent, without disrupting day-to-day workloads. With video, businesses can extend training reach, minimize time constraints and reduce training costs. For instance, managers can expand access to training course inventory to help employees discover relevant training resources. Video-based training also allows employees to train and test from their preferred device at their preferred time.

3. Knowledge Management

Knowledge transfer helps to make organizations more agile and informed. Recording, archiving and media indexing (which makes searching for a video as easy as searching for a word in a document) makes this easier. Knowledge workers can share best practices by creating and publishing desktop video recordings relating to their expertise. Project teams can boost post-meeting productivity by transcribing and indexing videoconference meetings, making it easy to review important discussion points. Teams can overcome scheduling and time zone challenges by recording and publishing multipoint videoconference meetings for colleagues who couldn't attend. And when employees can find exactly what video content they need when they need it with effective key word searches, it increases efficiency.

4. Marketing Communications

The best branding comes from the inside out. Every internal brand experience should be consistent and positive. By creating a “corporate YouTube” environment, building a unified brand becomes easier. Marketers can publish and syndicate videos ranging from polished campaigns to grass-roots employee generated content. Marketing teams can also push out and prioritize key communications to make mission-critical content play automatically for employees, or they can highlight featured content. When preparing for a launch date or big corporate announcement, marketers can control viewer access, by restricting or granting access based on employee role.

These are just a few of the ways that businesses are using and extracting value from VCM tools today. As our changing workforce continues to demand tools that allow them to be as effective and efficient as possible — it will be no surprise when video collaboration tools become ubiquitous in the workplace.

 

For more information on the business case for for an Enterprise Video Library, read this article by David Maldow of Let's do Video.