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Recommendations for Effective Conferencing: Work in the Time of Corona

In the first three blogs of this series on conferencing, Amalgam Insights discussed top conferencing vendors and their Coronavirus-specific free offerings to support remote work, top functional considerations for purchasing conferencing solutions, and evaluating conferencing solutions. In this final blog, Amalgam Insights provides recommendations for using conferencing solutions effectively.

This four-part blog series on Conferencing Solutions includes the following topics:
Part I: Introduction to Conferencing Solutions
Part II: Defining and Purchasing Conferencing Solutions
Part III: Evaluating Conferencing Solutions
Part IV: Recommendations for Effective Conferencing

Key Stakeholders: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Information Officer, Network Services Directors and Managers, Telecom Directors and Managers, IT Directors and Managers

Why It Matters: In the Time of Corona, Amalgam Insights estimates that the United States workforce working from home has increased from 5% at the end of 2019 to over 30% as of the end of March 2020. In light of this fundamental shift, companies must choose, deploy, and administer conferencing solutions effectively to support remote workers and maintain collaboration-based productivity.

Top Takeaway: Conferencing is a core capability to support teamwork, collaboration, and face-to-face interaction in remote work settings. By understanding the features, pricing, and best practices associated with supporting conferencing solutions at scale, companies can evaluate and implement conferencing solutions at scale to support business continuity and remote teams in the Time of Corona.

Recommendations for Conferencing in the Time of Corona

In considering conferencing solutions in a remote work era, Amalgam Insights provides the following recommendations.

First, figure out what solutions you have in hand. It is not uncommon to see unmanaged enterprises using five, ten, or even twenty different conferencing solutions across text, voice, and video. Because these conferencing solutions are relatively inexpensive and can easily hide in a P-card, expense report, or project, employees have chosen their own conferencing tools. However, to make a good corporate choice and to take full advantage of corporate buying power, IT should start by simply polling employees on whether they are using the corporate conferencing tool or another tool that fits their workflows better.

Second, focus on ease of use. Before committing to a single vendor, look at the ease of use and users’ propensity to adopt the technology for themselves. Any product that consistently requires 5-10 minutes for a user to enter the platform should be a non-starter. Ideally, employees will find a platform that they already prefer, so that enterprise IT can focus on best practices in administering and securing conversations rather than spending countless hours teaching users how to simply hold a conference.

Third, don’t take conferencing functionality for granted. Even if the idea of a conference call is well understood, employees still need a resource to learn basics, such as muting the call when not speaking, using video as a remote employee to be taken more seriously, administering all calls that you initiate to lock down messaging and muting, and optimizing conferencing usage based on corporate best practices for running meetings.

Fourth, internal users and employees need to be equipped to take full advantage of their conferencing solutions. This means that they need hardware that is up to date in taking advantage of captioning, virtual backgrounds, and other modern conferencing capabilities. This may mean investing in microphones or cameras for employees that regularly need to support larger meetings. But the cost of hardware is typically miniscule compared to the value gained from having more comprehensible and engaging meetings, especially at a time when businesses are going to struggle with human contact, eye contact, and missing real-life cues that show the true intent of speakers and presenters.

Fifth, focus on optimizing plans and discounts based on the vendor, number of users, and functionality needed. Conferencing plans, discounts, and “zombie” accounts often provide an optimization opportunity of between 10-50% of the total spend, depending on the company’s ability to consolidate accounts, negotiate contracts, right-size plans, and eliminate unused services. At a time when cash flow is an imperative for most businesses, do your part to maximize cash on hand.

Conclusion

Choosing the best conferencing platform for your organization need not be a difficult endeavor. Following the recommendations we’ve provided should speed up your time to deployment. Almost every organization can benefit from having a conferencing solution in place. Finding new ways to bring employees together during unprecedented times is crucial.

Note that conferencing is not the only helpful communications tool to consider to support a remote work environment. Future installments in this series will cover messaging platforms, key vendors, and top considerations for selecting the right platform both for now and in a post-Corona future.

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Evaluating Conferencing Solutions: Work in the Time of Corona

In the first two blogs of this series on conferencing, Amalgam Insights discussed top conferencing vendors and their Coronavirus-specific free offerings to support remote work as well as top functional considerations for purchasing conferencing solutions. In this third of four blogs on conferencing solutions, Amalgam Insights describes important features to consider in evaluating competing technologies. This blog is a continuation of our work on remote work in the Time of Corona.

This four-part blog series on Conferencing Solutions includes the following topics:
Part I: Introduction to Conferencing Solutions
Part II: Defining and Purchasing Conferencing Solutions
Part III: Evaluating Conferencing Solutions
Part IV: Recommendations for Effective Conferencing

Key Stakeholders: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Information Officer, Network Services Directors and Managers, Telecom Directors and Managers, IT Directors and Managers

Why It Matters: In the Time of Corona, Amalgam Insights estimates that the United States workforce working from home has increased from 5% at the end of 2019 to over 30% as of the end of March 2020. In light of this fundamental shift, companies must choose, deploy, and administer conferencing solutions effectively to support remote workers and maintain collaboration-based productivity.

Top Takeaway: Conferencing is a core capability to support teamwork, collaboration, and face-to-face interaction in remote work settings. By understanding the features, pricing, and best practices associated with supporting conferencing solutions at scale, companies can evaluate and implement conferencing solutions at scale to support business continuity and remote teams in the Time of Corona.

Cloud-Based Conferencing is the Norm

Today, vendors focused on supporting end-user productivity provision conferencing platforms in the cloud and all hardware resides in the conferencing provider’s data centers. In other words, the customer only needs to have phones, laptops, desktop computers and/or tablets with internet access. In most cases, a single brand of equipment is not necessary. Cloud-based conferencing is ideal for distributed workforces. Over the past decade, the trend towards conferencing solutions supported by commodity end-user hardware has become the norm. Vendors that traditionally have sold “walled garden” technology understand this trend and have shifted from dedicated room-based systems to conferencing solutions.

What Features Should I Look For?

First, be careful as vendors may charge more for certain value-added features or reduce access to features at specific tiers of usage or product. Above all, look for a conferencing tool that will help the enterprise and its users to collaborate more efficiently based on the typical size of internal or customer-facing groups, need for personalization, frequency of meetings, ease of use, and available IT support. Framing the search from that perspective will help narrow the hunt more quickly, especially because most products have similar basic functions and similarly named capabilities. With conferencing, the key trait is not typically based on the number of features and functionalities available, but how quickly and easily the solution can be used and how reliable the conferencing solution is in a variety of bandwidth settings. This is especially important in home settings where network performance is often variable, employees rarely purchase business-class symmetrical upload and download speeds, and bandwidth can be affected by everything from a child’s constant use of YouTube to a bevy of next-door neighbors catching up on the latest Netflix hit.

After companies have settled on the core capabilities that are most important to their employees, the noise sets in. By “noise,” we mean all the extras that few people will actually use, but that vendors like to highlight because they sound cool and flashy, whether this may include analytics, natural language processing and captioning, advanced search, geospatial support, employee engagement, or productivity capabilities. It may be necessary to ask vendor reps to describe and demonstrate their platforms in plain language and to step away from hyperbole or standards. This is a time when enterprises need basic and straightforward information that leads to rapid purchases while racing against financial losses, trying to keep staff employed, and keeping operations intact. With these salient business pressures in mind, we have compiled a list of conferencing features that will meet the needs of most organizations suddenly supporting a disparate workforce.

Necessary Conferencing Features for Remote Work

Reservationless scheduling. The ability for coworkers to meet any time and on the fly is critical. Extra points for platforms that simply distribute a link to join and do not require an applications download or any other obstacles.

Centralized Muting and Access Control. Background noise from participants who do not mute their lines causes immense disruption. The conference organizer must be able to mute everyone’s lines and to selectively choose which participants are able to speak, rather than allowing employees to unwitting wreak havoc or, even worse, for strangers to come in and “hack” the conference with unwanted content and comments.

Change presenters. Not all conference calls are or should be a one-way source of information. Allowing different people to present from wherever they are located increases conversation value.

Security protocols. Much of what the organization talks about needs to remain within its confines. Choose a platform that contains stringent and proven safeguards and allows administrators to kick off users that have either inadvertently joined the wrong conference or are purposefully trying to enter a conference for malicious reasons. And make sure that all outputs from a conference, including slides, transcripts, and other shared documents and content are all secured, stored in compliant areas, and encrypted as necessary.

Announcement Administration. Almost nothing interrupts a meeting’s productivity and flow more than the announcement that someone new has joined the meeting, particularly after it has started. A platform that facilitates silent entry while notifying the organizer goes a long way toward reducing everyone’s frustration.

Recording and playback. These capabilities are vital for audio and video calls, and are an overall plus if they also apply to chat. Organizations may need transcripts for regulatory or internal reasons, or to share with colleagues who could not join the conference. Strong solutions in this area will provide the capability to automate transcripts and provide captioning for the hearing impaired.

Screen sharing. Visualization is a core capability to support remote collaboration and contributions. As Amalgam Insights writes in our training practice, the brain has multiple learning processes. While the “cognitive” portion of the brain logically processes information in a structured and academic fashion, the “behavioral” portion of the brain reacts to visual and other stimuli within the first half second of presentation and makes decisions on whether the content is relevant or not. To support that behavioral portion of the brain, screen sharing is an important visual aid that paves the way for more impactful discussions. (Pro Tip: This same behavioral part of the brain is an important reason to show your face in video conferencing, when possible, because people both process and consider your facial expressions and body language in considering your perspective.)

Additional Conferencing Features to Consider

Digital whiteboard. This feature enables brainstorming sessions. Remote teams need the ability to flesh out ideas as if they were all gathered in a room together. This includes the ability to share content, write documents, and collaborate on creating content.

Polling. This can be useful for taking a temperature check on a specific matter if the conference call has a large number of people and organizers do not want to interrupt or delay proceedings. Embedded polling tends to be most important for training purposes, such as continuing education courses that require some amount of in-presentation polling or questioning. However, there are stand-alone polling products that enterprises can just as easily use that may be more relevant from an employee engagement or brainstorming perspective.

Breakout rooms. These can be useful in situations where multiple teams need to meet at once, then gather individually and then come back together. An organization will want to weigh whether it would use breakout rooms often enough to justify the cost, if it is an extra expense. Breakout rooms are helpful to facilitate the in-office collaboration and separate conversations that can be hard to otherwise support.

In general, aim to keep the platform as simple as possible from a usability perspective. This will ensure that people use the licenses for which the business is paying, and they will make the most of the platform. There is little or no point in paying for features that do not enhance outcomes because they are either too cumbersome to use or too difficult to find. Conferencing is a market where ease-of-use, breadth of adoption, and well-managed administration are key capabilities.

In our next blog in this series, Part IV: Recommendations for Effective Conferencing, Amalgam Insights will discuss best practices and guidance for utilizing conferencing solutions to help employees be more productive.

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Defining and Purchasing Conferencing Solutions: Work in the Time of Corona

In the first blog on this series on conferencing, Amalgam Insights discussed top conferencing vendors and their Coronavirus-specific free offerings to support remote work. In this second of four blogs focused on conferencing solutions, Amalgam Insights describes top considerations for enterprises as they formalize their conferencing investments in the Time of Corona.

This four-part blog series on Conferencing Solutions includes the following topics:
Part I: Introduction to Conferencing Solutions
Part II: Defining and Purchasing Conferencing Solutions
Part III: Evaluating Conferencing Solutions
Part IV: Recommendations for Effective Conferencing

Key Stakeholders: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Information Officer, Network Services Directors and Managers, Telecom Directors and Managers, IT Directors and Managers

Why It Matters: In the Time of Corona, Amalgam Insights estimates that the United States workforce working from home has increased from 5% at the end of 2019 to over 30% as of the end of March 2020. In light of this fundamental shift, companies must choose, deploy, and administer conferencing solutions effectively to support remote workers and maintain collaboration-based productivity.

Top Takeaway: Conferencing is a core capability to support teamwork, collaboration, and face-to-face interaction in remote work settings. By understanding the features, pricing, and best practices associated with supporting conferencing solutions at scale, companies can evaluate and implement conferencing solutions at scale to support business continuity and remote teams in the Time of Corona.

Defining the Enterprise-Grade Conferencing Platform

A complete enterprise-grade conferencing platform enables aural, visual and text-based collaboration among groups and individuals through phone lines, the internet and/or camera-enabled devices. That way, employees can meet virtually from wherever they work, including mobile devices, computers, and media-enabled monitors or rooms. Employees can stay connected through their choice of smartphone, tablet, modern laptop or desktop, custom home office or work office, and a high-quality broadband connection.

Note that almost all modern solutions targeting businesses feature audio, video and chat and/or instant messaging. Any conferencing solutions considered that lack all three modes of communication should either be high-end specialist solutions or have some additional vertical or functional specialization above and beyond what is typically provided by conferencing solutions, such as sales enablement, sourcing and contract management, or governed and compliant functionality for government and other high-security use cases. In the age of COVID-19 and future disasters, audio, video and text all are essential to fostering a cohesive team environment.

A final note here: When sifting through the dozens of available solutions, it may be helpful to consider what conferencing is not – and that is fairly straightforward. To that point, enterprise-grade conferencing is not:

• Messaging-only
• File sharing (although conferencing may include this capability)
• Client/community management (à la Salesforce Community Cloud)
• Social media (although conferencing may support channels that resemble social media feeds such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter)
• Learning management systems (e.g., Skillsoft, CrossKnowledge, Area9)
• Virtual events (which have additional event management, contact management, presentation, and audience participation capabilities)
• Webinars (which focus mainly on mass one-way communications with limited two-way interaction through Question and Answer panels or promoting individual users to presenters)

How Do I Buy Conferencing?

In many cases, enterprises purchase conferencing platforms on a standalone basis – separately, not as part of other applications. It is quite common for employees decide to purchase conferencing solutions either for personal use or as a minor line item expense hidden in a project or discretionary spend, resulting in a panoply of solutions within any one organization. Employees launch the platform from a web link or mobile application when needed. Over the past 20+ years that conferencing has been part of the corporate tool kit, a constant challenge has been the inability to start meetings on time or to support the types of meetings that employees would like to have. As a result, employees place a premium on conferencing solutions that work rather than simply using the conferencing solutions mandated within a corporate environment.

By that same token, of course, conferencing can be embedded within other products. Those larger solutions fall outside the scope of this research but, for now, it is sufficient to understand that conferencing acts as one facet of a multi-pronged approach to remote communications.

Licensing Concerns

Enterprises purchase rights to a certain number of conferencing seats, usually for a specific contract length. For this reason alone, it is imperative to select a platform that staff will actually adopt before investing in a product at scale. If the conferencing product is confusing or overloaded with features, people will resort to other methods to meet. The organization then will pay for something it’s not using – and that is a luxury enterprises can ill afford amid COVID-19.

Most cloud-based conferencing vendors will enable clients to add and remove licenses as staffing fluctuates. Depending on the provider, there may be a fee for this convenience. If the conferencing solution is premise-based, the client (or its technology partner) will have to install or uninstall programs manually, device by device. This may not be feasible, depending on the employee’s geographic location. Companies choosing solutions that are difficult to remove or solutions that make it difficult to track usage and define which employee is responsible for an account find themselves at risk of managing “zombie” accounts that maintain their monthly cost, but are assigned to employees that have left the company or projects that are no longer being held.

What Differentiates Conferencing Platforms from a Purchasing Perspective?

Voice plan charges. Who knew minutes still cost money? Well, they do, especially for toll-free numbers. Analyze each vendor’s fine print when it comes to the audio side of the conferencing platform for toll and toll-free minutes and to see which countries are supported with phone numbers. (Pro Tip: In the IP age of communications, computer-based calls can often be both cheaper and higher quality than using a phone.)

Number of users/time supported. Free platforms usually accommodate the fewest seats and minutes per conference. This may pose no challenge for a very small business, but medium and larger organizations require more extensive capabilities. (Pro Tip: Sometimes less is more. Freemium limits may provide an opportunity to reduce meeting attendees to the most relevant stakeholders and to limit meeting times.)

Devices/brand names supported. Despite the popularity of open-source technology, not all platforms and features may work on specific mobile devices or operating systems, whether it be Android, iOS, AppleOS, Windows, Linux, or other options. Doublecheck interoperability and minimum computing requirements for key features during the procurement phase.

Pricing. Depending on the premium nature of the vendor’s brand, as well as number of users, features, level of support, and other considerations, platform pricing varies, even within the provider’s product portfolio. Check whether there are annual discounts, bulk user discounts, minimum annual revenue commitments, pricing changes for transferring licenses across users, and other standard technology pricing concerns when buying in bulk. (Pro Tip: Amalgam Insights provides consulting services for companies seeking to conduct due pricing diligence.)

In our next blog, Part III: Evaluating Conferencing Solutions, we will cover functional considerations in comparing conferencing solutions in the Time of Corona.

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Conferencing Solutions: Work in the Time of Corona

This blog is a continuation of our research on remote work in the Time of Corona. Over the next several weeks, Amalgam Insights will provide guidance on platforms, necessary functionality, and top vendors across a variety of remote work technologies needed to maintain employee productivity.

This four-part blog series on Conferencing Solutions includes the following topics:
Part I: Introduction to Conferencing Solutions
Part II: Defining and Purchasing Conferencing Solutions
Part III: Evaluating Conferencing Solutions
Part IV: Recommendations for Effective Conferencing

Key Stakeholders: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Information Officer, Network Services Directors and Managers, Telecom Directors and Managers, IT Directors and Managers

Why It Matters: In the Time of Corona, Amalgam Insights estimates that the United States workforce working from home has increased from 5% at the end of 2019 to over 30% as of the end of March 2020. In light of this fundamental shift, companies must choose, deploy, and administer conferencing solutions effectively to support remote workers and maintain collaboration-based productivity.

Top Takeaway: Conferencing is a core capability to support teamwork, collaboration, and face-to-face interaction in remote work settings. By understanding the features, pricing, and best practices associated with supporting conferencing solutions at scale, companies can evaluate and implement conferencing solutions at scale to support business continuity and remote teams in the Time of Corona.

The Value of Conferencing Solutions Has Increased in the Time of Corona

The COVID-19 outbreak is spurring businesses across the globe to implement, support, and even promote, remote work. Companies that had previously held out against telecommuting now have little choice but to take the leap as jurisdictions force shutdowns of non-essential businesses and regulate travel and aggregations of people.

There is no guarantee COVID-19 will subside in the next few weeks and global trends indicate that anti-COVID-19 social dispersion tactics require two+ months to be fully effective. As a result, every enterprise that does not require a large on-site contingent must maintain employee productivity as they work from home to keep the global economy afloat. And in all honesty, companies need to have contingency plans for remote work based on the ongoing threat of when the next virus, natural disaster or terrorist attack will come. This novel coronavirus is both a test of current policies and an opportunity to improve remote work responses when the next regional or global emergency occurs. Enterprises are quickly learning the consequences of being late adopters in developing a remote work policy.

Communications technology has evolved quickly over the past decade as features such as text chat, video conferencing, recording, and well-governed centralized administration have become standard capabilities. Organizations undergoing due diligence for products that will optimize work environments will want to start by evaluating and administering these solutions. This first report in a series dedicated to remote work tools explores conferencing, a vital capability that brings colleagues together virtually.

Key Vendors for Enterprise Conferencing

Key Vendors that Amalgam Insights recommends in the Conferencing market include BlueJeans, Cisco WebEx, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, Zoho Meeting and Zoom. Each of these vendors meets Amalgam Insights’ minimum expectations for business-grade administration, governance, breadth of capabilities, and business support to organizations that deploy at scale.

To support work in the time of Corona, each vendor recommended by Amalgam Insights for enterprise conferencing usage has provided resources or enterprise-grade functions to their users as a free or reduced-price offering. These offerings include:

BlueJeans: Free Access for First Responders and NGOs

Cisco WebEx: Upgraded Free Accounts to support 100 users with toll calls and no time restrictions and 90-day business trials

Google Hangouts: Premium GSuite features until July 1, including conferencing to 250 users and recording meetings to Google Drive

GoToMeeting: Emergency Remote Work Kits with 3 months access to GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, remote access, & remote support products

Microsoft Teams: 6 month trials for premium version of Microsoft Teams & free version for all educational institutions

RingCentral: 90 day trial for educators, health-care providers, and non-profits

Zoho Meeting: Zoho is providing its entire Remotely Suite free until July 1, which includes Meeting, documents, webinar, project management, and remote support tools

Zoom: lifted 40-minute limit on free accounts in multiple countries, lifted time limits for schools using free accounts

We hope that these offerings from the top vendors that Amalgam Insights recommends in the conferencing space will be helpful as companies seek solutions to support their remote employees. In the next blog in this series, Part II: Defining and Purchasing Conferencing Solutions, Amalgam Insights will discuss functional capabilities that companies should consider as they start to commit to a conferencing solution and consolidate vendors.

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Work in the Time of Corona: An Alert for the Amalgam Community

Summary: This piece provides guidance on:
Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has wreaked havoc on the tech workplace in the early part of 2020. And, like the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel “Love in the Time of Cholera,” we all face legitimate challenges in deciding how rational and detached or how personal and connected to be at a specific time in history.

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