That late start for your videoconference is costing you a fortune, apparently

videoconference
Credit: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com

ITEM: If you’ve ever attended a videoconference that’s starting late because the conference manager is having trouble connecting everyone, and you sat there wondering how much money the company is blowing waiting for the damn thing to start, Forrester Research will tell you now.

videoconference delay is costing you money

According to this blog post from Nick Barber, an analyst with Forrester’s Application Development & Delivery Professionals section, web- and videoconferencing is growing more and more popular for enterprises, but many companies experience technical difficulties either because they use multiple videoconferencing vendors, or they don’t deploy it universally. And the resulting delays translate to millions of dollars in lost productivity.

Forrester has issued a brief titled Start Your Videoconferences On Time, which reviews best practices and even provided an interactive calculator so that readers can see how much productivity their own company loses when the videoconference starts late.

It may seem like an odd notion in this age of mobility that employees would be stuck doing nothing while the IT people figure out the videoconference system – after all, that’s why we have laptops, smartphones and Wi-Fi. But as enterprises are run and staffed by humans, there’s often a gap between what technology can enable in the workplace and what employees actually do with it.

In any case, Forrester offers a few teaser recommendations to ensure videoconferences start when they’re supposed to, from cheat sheets in the conference room and better room utilization to adopting the concept of virtual meeting rooms (VMRs): 

All employees can have their own VMR to invite internal employees or external collaborators to join. Set up a standard naming scheme and use security settings to keep the meetings secure. VMRs encourage ad hoc meetings among employees and ultimately reduce friction.

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