Humanizing Your Digital Communications

Video conferencing has been around for a long time. The equipment is usually kept in a special room filled with expensive equipment that’s always booked by executives because of the high value they derive from using it to enhance their communications and collaborations.

Visual communications on the other hand, is very different by my definition. Visual communications can take place using your laptop, your tablet, your smartphone and even your watch, the software is free and the quality of the video today is quite good.

Skype and Apple’s FaceTime are good examples of this and they both offer services that are now reliable enough that companies have begun using them as a primary means of communication. They are rapidly becoming simpler and better in quality to the more traditional video conferencing systems I referred to earlier., They also offer relatively good security assurance.

In fact, Microsoft recently announced that it would be replacing its own communications and web conferencing service, Lync, with Skype for Business in Office 365. This move has a lot of implications for businesses, which I will get to in a moment.

Yet again, digitization is disrupting our everyday business activities. But this isn’t exactly a surprise; as I’ve said and continue to say, digital disruption comes in waves, and every single industry, from agribusiness to IT security, will be disrupted. If your industry hasn’t yet been digitally disrupted, it will soon be; if it’s been disrupted, expect wave after wave of new disruptions and well as opportunities.

Back to the realm of communication: While Skype offers companies the possibility of integrating their desk phones with the Skype network, this is merely a transitional service. In fact, Skype offers more opportunities than traditional methods of communication could — and savvy companies recognize this.

In an increasingly globalized work environment, it is not always possible to meet clients face to face… or at least, that was the case for the last several decades. Companies relied on telephones as a means of connecting with far-away clients if they didn’t have access to a video conferencing system. But now, with visual communications, we’ve come full circle. Ironically and pleasantly enough, digitization hasn’t taken us to an even more abstract, conceptualized means of communication; it’s actually given communications a human face.

I’ve talked before about what I call the Both/And Principle. The new doesn’t replace the old. In fact, recognizing the interplay between the new and old is an incredibly useful first step in developing an entrepreneurial mindset. With Skype, we see both online and in-person interactions mixing together.

But beyond this, Skype also offers a more flexible network than traditional communications could. Through Skype, you can be linked to both clients within your network and anyone within the wider Skype user community.

This reflects and incorporates the more dynamic interactions companies have in today’s business environment. It allows for on-the-fly additions to conferences and opens up businesses to new interactions in a safer and secure space.

Audio and visual quality are now at a higher level, making online conferences more efficient. This, of course, is only one aspect, albeit a major one. There are still more possibilities to discover in the field of visual communications.

Developers are still testing the ways in which visual communications can be pushed further. The recording of all communications over these platforms, their easy accessibility for analysis and troubleshooting are one area to continue tweaking. Undoubtedly, digitization opens up visual communications to the benefits of big data. Digitization also provides businesses with easy-access to support systems. Tech support can easily access a company’s network to fix any issues. This streamlines a process that once involved sitting on hold for hours with an external customer service center.

One thing is certain, that the exponential advances in processing power, digital storage and bandwidth, what I have called the Three Digital Accelerators, will continue to provide new and powerful functionality to all forms of visual communications as this highly personal method of dialogue and discourse becomes an even more dominant, prevalent means of communication with businesses around the globe.

©2015 Burrus Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.