" A virtual meeting will never replace the good old handshake"It's a refrain echoed by all the players in the business travel industry. Here to defend their market share, there for fear of change, elsewhere out of deep-seated conviction... And yet, the time of the 2.0 meeting has well and truly arrived, if we are to believe the videoconferencing specialists who regularly announce the advent of the virtual meeting. Despite this flattering rhetoric, e-mail is still the number 1 means of communication in the workplace. According to a Polycom study, 89% of decision-makers prefer it, ahead of telephone calls (64%) and - therefore - videoconferencing.
A heavyweight in communications solutions, Polycom is predicting that 'visio' will take over by 2016. Whether partisan or not, this prediction is based on a number of arguments. Firstly, videoconferencing encourages non-verbal communication. So there's no escape for those many employees whose minds wander during a telephone conversation. The figures published by Intercall speak for themselves: 82% of employees are said to be working on a case that has nothing to do with the content of a 'conf'call' while it is taking place. But we shouldn't immediately throw the stone at these participants, who at least have the merit of working... The same study indicates that some of those surveyed have already taken the opportunity to play video games (25%), exercise (9%) or, better still, had a friend stand in for them (5%)...
More interactive than email, more involving than the telephone, will videoconferencing gain ground in business travel? "We are all convinced that this is the direction of historyDigital meetings: new opportunities for the travel/meeting buyer", summarised Muriel Hernandez, Head of Purchasing, Meetings and Events at Sanofi, as she introduced a round table organised by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) France on the theme of "Digital meetings: new opportunities for the travel/meeting buyer". "Digital is a solution for the future: we are all looking to reduce travel costs and the cost of receiving participants."she added.
The economic argument obviously weighs in the balance, but it is no longer the only one. The deterioration in travel conditions has also entered the debate. "For a long time, economy was one of the main considerations, says Olivier Bonniec-Fischer, Head of Videoconferencing at Interoute, the unified communications specialist and owner of Europe's largest Cloud services platform. Today, the focus is on productivity: videoconferencing makes it possible to hold virtual meetings in Lille and Marseille on the same day. There's a certain pleasure in travelling for business, but it's not as luxurious as it used to be.". In addition, the use of videoconferencing helps to shape a modern corporate image while reducing the company's carbon footprint.
Disappearing brakes
However, for a long time, all these advantages were offset by the high cost of the solutions, and also by the fact that employees did not really take to them, due to the lack of user-friendliness. "Videoconferencing arrived on the French market very early on without having achieved optimum quality, and on networks that were not very good either, analyses Olivier Bonniec-Fischer. There have been failures and I think a lot of companies have been burned by communication problems, pixelated images... and prohibitive prices. Now the quality is there and prices have come down. There has been a very marked increase in demand in France over the last two years.". Guillaume Mikowski, Managing Director of Brainsonic, made the same observation: "Videoconferencing is developing very fast in companies, but not fast enough in my opinion. I'm surprised that giant screens aren't springing up all over the place, especially as budgets are very low compared with the potential savings."
In addition to price, greater clarity of the offering should be a decisive factor in the deployment of these solutions. The adoption of the common WebRTC standard is part of this simplification drive, breaking down the barriers between suppliers. Until recently, communications between different solutions were not always possible, a bit like an iPhone owner not being able to phone a Samsung owner.
The market is also catching up with connected mobility, offering business travellers the opportunity to attend virtual meetings while on the move. The equipment required to take part in a videoconference is becoming lighter, and today the point-to-point meeting - linking two videoconference rooms - is no longer the norm. The time has come for 'multipoint' meetings, enabling two isolated contacts to join up, whether they have a laptop or even a simple telephone. The above-mentioned Polycom study also reveals that laptops and desktops are the devices most used by the French for professional videoconferencing (73%), ahead of conference rooms (41%) and mobile terminals (36%). The latter could even reach a usage rate of 55% by 2016.
Star Trek-style meetings
What will videoconferencing look like in the future? Relying on a crystal ball is highly uncertain in a world of technology where today's benchmark is not necessarily tomorrow's benchmark. However, certain solutions are emerging. A player like Interoute is exploiting the resources of the cloud and offering 'video as a service' to reduce infrastructure costs. At the same time, other specialists are mobilising to meet specific needs. Many business centres, such as those run by Regus, are integrating the latest equipment into their key addresses. The Birdoffice platform, which has emerged from collaborative consumption in the same way as Airbnb for accommodation, puts companies in touch with each other to hire out their meeting spaces, which are often equipped with videoconferencing facilities.
For their part, most of the major hotel chains have taken the virtual meeting route, with varying degrees of success. Some of them have not hesitated to position themselves at the cutting edge of the market, offering their customers futuristic facilities. Inaugurated in Madrid last October, the NH Collection Eurobuilding is the archetypal hyperconnected hotel, the first to feature the new meeting concept from Spanish group High Tech Made Easy. In addition to the virtual meeting solutions developed around Microsoft Lync tools, the hotel is experimenting with a revolutionary service. Its holographic telepresence solution takes videoconferencing into the third dimension. Distant interlocutors can appear larger than life to chat with participants, in an atmosphere worthy of Star Trek. This could well be tomorrow's standard... Until teleportation arrives?
Virtual meetings: deciphering...
From consumer solutions such as Skype to 3D holographic telepresence, the range of virtual meetings is very wide. Videoconferencing is part of unified communication, a broader concept that brings together the different media used in the workplace on a daily basis: telephony, email, chat, etc. Often confused with videoconferencing, telepresence is a more advanced form of communication and requires a dedicated room. The system involves several cameras and screens enabling all the participants to be reproduced in real size. Alongside these videoconferences, other types of corporate communication are emerging, targeting a much wider audience. Broadcast live or pre-recorded, virtual events and digitised meetings can involve several thousand people to get your message across on a large scale, both internally and to partners or customers. Filmed like a television programme, the event requires the services of event and audiovisual specialists. By combining a physical meeting with virtual broadcasting, this new type of hybrid event optimises the delivery of the message, while promoting the interactivity of the meeting and its return on investment.
