Over the past few years, video conferencing has exploded, and large organizations now spend millions of dollars annually on licenses for video conferencing services. A company with 10,000 licenses may spend between $1.5M and $2.5M every year. But are these organizations getting the full value for that investment? If not, what can they do to maximize their ROI?

Here’s the reality. What you spend on video conferencing software such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet is only one piece of the puzzle. You are also investing in meeting rooms, IT management, and new flex meeting spaces:

• Meeting rooms require video hardware: cameras, speakers, mics, and controllers.
• IT admins require the ability to manage video hardware and software with device management tools that provide remote access and reporting.
• Flexible work spaces empower employees to collaborate, focus, and thrive, but also require the right video hardware and software.

Meeting room devices and management apps are critical to the overall quality and experience of video meetings. In this article, we’ll look at ways these tools help you get the most value from your investment in video collaboration. We’ll focus on three key questions.

Are You Optimizing Meeting Room Environments?

Can employees walk into any room and instantly launch a video conferencing meeting with one touch?

A great experience in the meeting room itself will encourage employees to use the video conferencing software and A/V equipment you’ve purchased. Here are four steps you can take to optimize the meeting room experience.

1. Add a touch controller – A wall-mounted or table-mounted meeting room touch controller like Logitech Tap allows employees to simply touch the screen to start or join a meeting. No more scrambling to figure out how to begin the meeting.
2. Support any video conferencing application – Meeting rooms typically have a default video conferencing software. This makes joining meetings faster and easier – except when you need to use a different service. Logitech Swytch solves this problem by allowing anyone to plug in a laptop and join any virtual meeting or webinar.
3. Optimize the sound design – Perhaps you’ve invested in beautiful 4K flat-screen monitors for each of your rooms. But how is the sound? Logitech Sight can be added to longer rooms, especially ones with a “bowling alley” view, to extend microphone and video coverage and provide a front-and-center experience together with Rally Bar. To ensure voices are more clearly captured, Mic Pods can also be added to the room.
4. Add whiteboarding to the meeting – For brainstorming, ideation, and collaboration, whiteboards are the perfect tool – but employees struggle to use them effectively in video meetings. That’s why Logitech created Scribe, an AI-powered whiteboard camera that broadcasts whiteboard content into video meetings with outstanding clarity.

Are You Making IT More Efficient?

Can IT admins easily manage rooms and devices from anywhere?

Time spent by IT admins deploying, managing, and supporting video conferencing and personal collaboration devices is another input that should be included in your ROI calculations.

For example, when employees use off-the-shelf headsets and webcams that are not certified with the video conferencing service your organization standardizes on, the situation can create problems for the employees and headaches for IT. Providing a toolkit of approved and certified devices can reduce helpdesk tickets and simplify support if problems do occur.

Here are three additional steps you can take to optimize IT’s role and minimize the amount of time IT spends on video conferencing:

1. Deploy new video appliances – A new breed of conference cameras called “all-in-one video bars” can attach directly to a room’s monitor and run the cloud video service on a built-in computing appliance. With a camera like Rally Bar, fewer components means a faster installation with minimal cabling.
2. Deploy a management console for remote device management – With thousands of rooms and devices to manage, IT admins need to be as efficient as possible. Logitech Sync makes it easy for IT to support large-scale video deployments while minimizing site visits and trouble tickets – all from a simple browser-based interface.
3. Provide simple instructional videos – It’s surprising how many problems can be prevented by a simple 30-second video distributed to employees.

Are you breathing flexibility into your office space?

Everything from employee headcount to meeting room and desk usage is constantly evolving for organizations. Your office space needs to adapt at the same pace, while still protecting and maximizing your video conferencing options.

With a flexible office, you not only can support the evolving needs of your business but your video investments as well.

Flexible office spaces aren’t just a trend; they’re the foundation of the modern workplace, where adaptability drives success. Here are three final steps you can take to embrace flexible office spaces and protect your video investments.

1. Lean into open spaces – While open spaces have often been knocked for being noisier and more distracting, there is value if they’re leveraged correctly. Part of using them correctly is having the right technology to invest in these spaces. Logitech’s Rally Board 65 offers you a versatile, all-in-one video conferencing solution that you can effortlessly wheel into any one of your open spaces, creating a perfect opportunity for collaboration.
2. Automate the room booking process – A flexible room booking approach enables individuals to assemble more easily by project or meeting type, choosing the location with the capabilities best fit for their needs. With Logitech’s Room Booking software, employees get a clear view into which meeting rooms are available and when. With the flexibility of choice, you create more purpose in your office.
3. Listen to the data – Do you know when people are coming into the office? Do you know where people are flocking to when they get there? The more you know about what’s going on in the office, the more informed decisions you can make about your meeting room investments.

   With your Logitech solutions reporting into Logitech Sync, monitor and track this information and more, including room capacity percentage, environmental information, and room health–this helps protect your investments for the long haul.

In the end, an investment in technology is seldom an isolated event. That’s certainly true with video. Although the video conferencing platform you use may be one of your biggest investments, its success depends on so many other factors, including user adoption, the meeting room experience, and IT’s time. Addressing these areas can help ensure you get the maximum value from that investment.

Explore the full portfolio of Logitech team workspace solutions to identify your ideal options for replacement or upgrade. Brilyant brings the expertise, market insights, and managed services to help you evaluate, deploy, and support the best-fit solutions. Contact us today to maximise your room investments.