Technology: videoconferencing is back in fashion
In recent weeks the Gbtacsaid the potential cost of the coronavirus could be $47 billion a month as companies cancelled or postponed travel, meetings and events.
With such vast sums at stake it is no wonder the corporate travel industry is looking at alternative ways to meet and maintain some sort of continuity as governments get to grips with the spread of the virus.
The use of virtual meeting technology has become more widespread in recent years as technology improves, costs come down, companies keep a watch on spend and sustainability issues enter the spotlight. While few deny the effectiveness and importance of
face-to-face meetings, online communications specialist 8x8 says HD video can offer some of the benefits such as the ability to “pick up facial nuances and other nonverbal cues.”
Fabio Ramos, Senior Director, Product Marketing for 8x8 adds: “Participants from all over the world can effectively read the room and move the conversation along.”
He also says that the “real-time atmosphere” can still be created through tools such as live chats, Q&A sessions and the ongoing collaboration that video tools provide.
It’s interesting to note that many companies and organisers of events that have been cancelled in recent weeks, such as the travel trade event, ITB, Google Cloud Next and the ITM Conference, have already announced digital versions for some of the content.
8x8 believes videoconferencing can help save the conference season. Ramos says: “Business leaders have the tools to minimise disruption and ensure continuity.
Unified communications and videoconferencing can keep employees, customers and others safe while still maintaining productivity.”
Recent data pulled together by App Annie shows the huge surge in downloads of remote working apps demonstrating that companies are already moving to alternative means of communicating.
Taking Italy as a snapshot during the week of February 22, the app analytics company says that 417,000 business apps were downloaded across IOS and Google Play.
The figure represents a 10% increase from the week before and a 30% increase from the average weekly level over the previous year.
In terms of the specific app downloads seen on iphone devices, from March 3, Hangouts Meet by Google ranked first followed by Microsoft Teams and Zoom Cloud Meetings.
Lexi Sydow, Senior Market Insights Manager for App Annie, says: “With the high rate of coronavirus cases in Italy and many businesses in affected areas adopting work from home policies, we see workers turning to mobile apps to communicate, collaborate and teleconference to continue work.
“We saw a similar trend emerge in China. The week of February 2 was the biggest week ever in China in terms of app downloads. As schools close and companies enact work from home policies, we saw business and education apps see the biggest surge in downloads among categories of apps. During the first half of February, business and education apps were downloaded at roughly two times the weekly average in 2019.”
Conversely, the company also recorded significant drops in usage of ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing towards the end of January
2020 as the coronavirus spread.
Sydow adds that App Annie hasn’t yet seen a surge in downloads of business apps in the US, UK, France or Germany, but it expects “markets to follow a similar trend should the virus continue to spread and businesses enact work from home policies to limit potential infection.”
As schools closed and companies enacted work from home policies, we saw business and education apps see the biggest surge in downloads among all app categories”