In this guest blog post, Polina Davydova, Content & Communication Manager at Hive Streaming, explains how subpar video communication holds back enterprises, and how focusing on IT infrastructure, video experience, and overall messaging impact with help from Hive Streaming on Microsoft Azure drives employee attend and facilitates cross-organizational alignment.

The growth of the global video conferencing market is poised to be explosive over the next decade. By 2032, the market is expected to reach $95 billion, a massive leap from $10.6 billion in 2022.

Despite the tremendous investments organizations are making in their video communication infrastructure, a key issue many face is the gap between having the right video technology and achieving a stable, high-quality video experience that drives employee attendance and facilitates cross-organizational alignment. The consequences can be far-reaching: disengaged employees, ineffective leadership messages, and missed business opportunities that may prove devasting to the bottom line.

In this blog post, we will explore how subpar video communication quality holds back enterprises – and, more importantly, how to change that by focusing on three critical areas: IT infrastructure, video experience, and the overall messaging impact.

Network instability poses financial and strategic risks 

The foundation of any successful video strategy is infrastructure. If your company’s network is not equipped to handle the bandwidth demands of high-quality video streaming, it will inevitably result in buffering, interruptions, and even system crashes during critical moments. Despite significant technical breakthroughs, the vast majority of businesses still experience some form of network degradation during live video events (according to one report, the number of network and application outages rose significantly in 2023).

Outages often occur because of the complex dependencies between network infrastructures, which can lead to severe disruptions during live video events, and, as a result, to financial and reputational losses. Accounting for both, the cost of a failed internal communications can be astronomical.

And this isn’t just about technical hiccups – viewer experience directly impacts how the audience perceives the message. In an internal communications context, when employees are subjected to stream interruptions or poor-quality video, their focus shifts away from the content and onto the technical problems. This leads to lower engagement, missed key messages, and a perception that the company lacks the resources to handle modern communication tools effectively.

Testing and network optimization key to failure prevention

But there is good news: Using the right video communications technology can help bolster existing network infrastructure and eliminate the need for costly and inefficient upgrades to bandwidth allowance. An Enterprise Content Delivery Network (or eCDN) can help optimize video delivery using the bandwidth resources you already have by leveraging technologies such as peer-to-peer distribution. This reduces the amount of external bandwidth needed because the content is shared between users within the organization without repeatedly pulling data from the internet.

Investing in scalable solutions like Hive eCDN and Premium Video Optimization ensures large-scale video events don’t overwhelm your network. For added security, there is also the option to run the actual video event on user machines ahead of time and identify any issues that would otherwise arise during the live stream in advance, with ample time left to understand their root cause and remediate.

Internal video communications quality is central to business success

Once the infrastructure is stable, video experience is the second-biggest factor in how a message is received. Poor video quality – grainy visuals, lagging audio, and long buffering times – quickly undermines the effectiveness of any communication. There is plenty of research that illustrates how bitrate and buffering events play key roles in viewer engagement, some suggesting that even a 1 percent increase in buffering ratio can significantly reduce user engagement with live video content – making it dramatically less likely the message being communicated will inspire the desired action.

The significance of video quality extends beyond engagement alone. A subpar experience reflects poorly on the value a company assigns to employee experience, a critical parameter often cited as one that directly affects every single facet of business operations: from productivity and innovation to customer retention – and, by extension, revenue and profitability.

How to secure stable and reliable video experience

Control the Event by Hive Streaming empowers IT managers to effectively manage viewer experience in real time and take immediate action to prevent stream disruptions.

Control the Event works behind the scenes to detect issues based on multiple KPIs, including the number of viewers, location, and buffering severity. When an issue is identified, event managers are instantly alerted and presented with a set of recommendations they can execute on the spot – in some cases, with just a single click of a button. The result is a smooth, immersive video experience that keeps viewers focused on the content.

Maximizing communication impact with Hive VX for Teams Town Hall

Many businesses fail to track the effectiveness of their video communication, missing opportunities to refine their strategy. Even the most stable, high-quality video won’t be effective unless it achieves its intended goals – whether that’s increasing engagement, improving employee alignment, or inspiring action to drive business transformation. Without insight into viewer engagement, attendance, and message retention, it’s difficult to gauge success or identify areas for improvement.

Building on decades of industry expertise, Hive Streaming has developed the video experience (VX) technology and advisory necessary to succeed with internal video communications using Microsoft Teams Town Hall and most other major video communication platforms.

Hive Advisory Services were carefully designed to help our customers prevent the adverse effects of subpar video experience and offer personalized support at every stage of their video communication journey:

Learning how to plan, run and optimize video events – and how to measure success
Testing IT infrastructure to identify and remediate weak links
Detecting and resolving video experience issues in real time
Refining communication strategy with in-depth trend analysis

To create successful video communications, companies must address all three areas: infrastructure, video experience, and overall impact. These elements are interconnected; a stable infrastructure enables high-quality video, which in turn drives greater attendance and ensures communications resonate with viewers to facilitate cross-organizational alignment.

Hive’s next-generation VX products and Advisory Services are designed to address the entire video communication lifecycle, from planning and technical enablement to evaluation and improvement strategies.

If you would like to learn more about the impact these can create for your organization, reach out to us for a consultation today.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More