The commercial environment in which global businesses now operate has never been more complex or challenging. As a result, for organizations typically trading across multiple countries, time zones and cultures, effective communication methods have become critical as they seek new ways to gain a competitive advantage.

Any new technology, no matter how financially attractive, will ultimately fail to deliver the full business benefits available if it is not easy to deploy and easy to use.

For many years, audioconferencing has played an essential role in the pursuit of this goal, yet its ability to provide an effective alternative to physical communication has proved increasingly restrictive. By contrast, in bringing together voice, video and the Web, the latest multimedia collaboration technologies provide the opportunity to communicate more effectively–by providing the means to share documents and make presentations, for example, in real time and with simple point-and-click commands.

Such solutions, however, are not designed to fully replace face-to-face meetings but, rather, to complement these by enabling staff to work more efficiently between physical meetings. As such, a critical part of the corporate toolkit is maintaining effective dialogue both internally and up and down the value chain.

Historically, businesses have understood the economic benefits of collaboration services in terms of operational improvement. More recently, however, the broader value of such virtual communication tools has been increasingly recognized in providing organization-wide access to invaluable knowledge resources.

Today’s enterprise comprises people, knowledge, technical experience and best practices, which are typically dispersed globally across the business. The key to success in bringing these talents together and exploiting them effectively depends on getting beyond traditional geographical and technological barriers.

The challenge now for both end-users and the technologies that support them is two-fold. Firstly, online communication tools should be both easy to deploy and easy to use. Equally important, they should offer universal access if they are to deliver the full benefits of virtual meetings, both internally and between companies.

The impact of conferencing

Multimedia conferencing technologies can have a significant impact on the way a business operates. At one level, solutions that enable remote collaboration replace the need for much of the travel undertaken to attend meetings with colleagues, partners and clients. For individual employees, this can have a dramatic impact on productivity, as well as improve their work/life balance.

Yet, collaboration services can have a more fundamental operational impact on the business, streamlining processes by removing historic departmental barriers and replacing the traditional “silo” mentality with improved communication between teams. By embedding such tools within the business in this way, companies can accelerate decision making and information flow, and reduce internal processing costs.

So, if a multimedia collaboration solution can help an organization improve its cost base, increase staff productivity and create new avenues in which to be competitive, the next step is to examine what tools are best able to deliver such benefits. There are a number of criteria decision makers should address in selecting the most appropriate online communication tool. The first is to ensure that the benefits outweigh the total cost of ownership throughout the life of the chosen solution.

In assessing the wide range of options available, most solutions will include the upfront cost of hardware, software and application acquisition, as well as ongoing licensing and maintenance charges.

At first glance, an on-premise solution offers the advantage of greater control, yet a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution has a number of benefits, which, for many businesses, are likely to prove decisive. In a market subject to rapid technological changes, partnering with a collaboration services provider offers protection against system obsolescence–the investment and the risk fall to the service provider.

Further, the service partner can more easily provide the supporting skill sets that would be expensive to hire and maintain in-house. With a single supplier and single user interface to meet the organization’s full multimedia requirements, the result can be greater simplicity and consistency, leading to faster deployment and reduced training costs. This SaaS solution has no upfront costs or charges; the business only pays for what it uses.

Any new technology, no matter how financially attractive, will ultimately fail to deliver the full business benefits available if it is not easy to deploy and easy to use. According to a recent report, however, by industry analyst Frost & Sullivan: “A major issue with a number of Web conferencing services is the demand placed on both the host and all participants to download software in order to run and attend a conference. This … can delay the start of a meeting; there may be software installation issues caused by ‘locked-down’ PCs in secure office environments; and the corporate firewall may itself prevent the download in the first place.”

In selecting a suitable solution, therefore, the decision maker should compare how simple accessing a meeting is for both the host and participants.

Standards-based solutions

Many of today’s collaboration services require the presence of a Java virtual machine (JVM) or a download on the user’s PC to participate in a conference call. Other solutions use standards-based Ajax and XHTML technologies, removing one of the biggest hurdles preventing adoption of collaborative solutions.

The result is ease of deployment and the ability to build further on the new platform. With no plug-ins, JVM or downloads for participants required, deployment of a robust and comprehensive multimedia solution can reduce the workload for IT departments, as it can be deployed overnight across the entire enterprise.

By integrating with enterprise applications, users have direct access via desktop tools such as Outlook and Lotus Notes Calendar for scheduling meetings, Exchange and Lotus Notes address books for selecting invitees, and Instant Messenger for real-time invitations.

One-click access enables the full multimedia experience. A customizable meeting interface allows users to toggle between a simplified interface and one that offers a more advanced feature set, which enables the configuration of the meeting interface to their precise needs. Finally, the intuitive nature of the interface eliminates the need for training to realize the benefits of this extensive function set.

Such “click-to-join,” no-dial functionality makes it equally easy for participants to use, both inside and beyond the firewall, via any combination of desktop voice over IP (VoIP), PSTN or audio streaming, and from any browser, with no additional software or plug-ins required.

The inclusion of desktop VoIP is important, as it enables people working from home or traveling to take part in the audio portion of collaboration, without incurring high mobile phone charges or hotel telephone bills.

Businesses may favor an on-premise solution so online meetings can be protected by the company’s firewall and policed by its access policies. Yet, the problem of security regarding interactions with potentially unauthorized or unmonitored solutions remains a concern.

To address this problem, conferencing and collaboration service providers should address key security issues, such as the design of the conference access process, the physical security of the data center and the vetting of employees that support the service.

For more information from Genesys Conferencing (click here)