By Rahul Sharma, MD-India, LogMeIn
Using technology has become like second nature to human beings today. So ingrained is it in the day-to-day behavior that we do not typically pay heed to how it is enabling us to do more, be more than we would otherwise. This was reflected most prominently during the COVID-19 outbreak. As the entire world went into a lockdown, businesses and individuals shifted to a different way of operating to all their people to work remotely.
And all of it was enabled by digital technology.
Video conference platforms: The driving force behind remote working
Digital collaborative and communication tools gained significant traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as ‘work from home’ mandates became widely enforced within the enterprise ecosystem. Video calls and conferences replaced physical meetings while communications – both interoffice and with external stakeholders – took place through a variety of tools, across all formats.
Video conferencing solutions emerged as the ultimate survival kit for organizations during this time. By enabling seamless communication within the enterprise value chain, these innovative solutions helped organizations across sectors to overcome the pandemic-induced physical restrictions and maintain business continuity.
The introduction of video conferencing solutions also improved collaboration across the board. Armed with cutting-edge features such as screen and document sharing, video recording, motion stabilization, and in-built chat features, new-age video conferencing solutions not only enabled users to connect with each other through a virtual medium but also made everyday tasks more convenient, productive, and efficient. Enterprise users collaborated to achieve mutual objectives, regardless of their physical location. Other crucial processes that rely largely on visual interaction, such as recruitment and employee training, continued smoothly despite the lockdown.
The customizability and ease of usage of these solutions also drove their adoption in unconventional domains such as education, healthcare, business, etc. For instance, more than 32 crore students – from the K12 segment to higher education – found their learning journeys impacted by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns in India alone. Online learning platforms, complemented by video conferencing solutions, stepped into the void created by the suspension of classroom-based learning to ease this challenge for educators. More importantly, these solutions customized their approach to solve local bottlenecks – such as low internet bandwidth, latency issues, and lack of digital connectivity – and ensure that learning continued relatively unaffected by the viral outbreak.
The coming year brings hope, the promise of a vaccine, and a return to something resembling normalcy of a kind that we knew before the pandemic. But the changes wrought in 2020, especially in the enterprise sector, are here to stay. Remote working is the new normal for enterprises of all sizes and will remain the go-to model for business operations. It has unlocked unimagined operational efficiencies and has proven itself to be a more sustainable – whether environmentally or cost-wise – approach to working.
Video conferencing and collaboration solutions have provided the foundation for this digital migration and will continue to support it with more features and better functionality. Pandemic or no pandemic, as businesses become increasingly familiar and at ease with the culture of working remotely, the adoption rate of these solutions will increase in the future. It isn’t a question of if – only when.
