Daily use of on-demand video in the workplace by individuals soared as individuals addressed the challenges of the pandemic, according to survey results released by Wainhouse Research.
Key findings of the 2021 Wainhouse Enterprise Video End-User Survey of more than 2,000 individuals are featured in a new white paper – Transforming The Workplace with Smart Video: How and Why Organisations Should Leverage Artificial Intelligence to Enhance the Management of Video in the Enterprise – that was commissioned by AnyClip, The Visual Intelligence Company.
Among its key findings are:
Business video creation has accelerated during the pandemic. 62 % of survey respondents report that they are watching on-demand online video more frequently than before the rise of Covid-19, with 68 % participating in video meetings more often than before the pandemic.
On-demand video is increasingly playing a more important role in corporate America – even more so than live video. Among all respondents surveyed, 65 % say they watch on-demand video via their work PC on a weekly basis, and 61 % watch live video.
Additionally, 85 % of organisations represented in the survey reported they have archived at least some video content in 2021, and the proportion of organizations that are building sizable video archives has grown during the Covid crisis.
Also, 58 % of employees surveyed say they would rather watch an explanatory video than ask a colleague for help.
In turn, the rise in video solutions as key workplace tools is resulting in the need for improved video asset management.
76 % of all respondents agree that “The ability to access instructional videos when needed would help boost my productivity.”
77 % of all respondents agree that “In the next year, I want to use my video meeting solution more frequently as a tool for recording content that my co-workers can view on-demand.”
Yet 61 % say they find it difficult to find information they want when searching video archives.
Artificial intelligence functionality, such as automated speech-to-text, is the Rosetta Stone for unlocking insights that would otherwise be buried in video archives. While 41 % of respondents at organisations with archives of 100+ hours of recorded business video “strongly agree” that “on-demand archives offer a valuable storehouse of institutional knowledge,” there are significant challenges in accessing this value. That said:
45 % of those who watch video daily say that speech-to-text technology that makes it possible to search for and jump to relevant video passages would lead to increased use of video archives, and 62 % say they would pay a premium for these capabilities.
73 % say that facial recognition that allows a video presenter to be accurately identified is valuable.
78 % think the ability to automatically generate “highlight clips” of key themes from longer videos is useful, and 80 % feel the same about recommendation engines.
Companies are increasing video budgets. More than half of organisations surveyed by Wainhouse report that they plan to spend at least $100,000 on business video technologies in 2022, up from the 48 % with six-figure budgets in 2021.
Overall, 63 % of the companies represented in the survey report their spending on video technologies in 2022 will increase over prior-year levels.
Wainhouse Research Senior Analyst Steve Vonder Haar, who authored the whitepaper, commented: “While Covid-driven changes to the workplace have opened numerous corporate eyes concerning the potential role of video, these are still early days. Investments in video technologies will only pay dividends if employees can leverage platforms to create and share information, and hurdles remain that can be overcome by utilising solutions that make video more nimble and searchable. The single best answer to addressing the search challenges that arise as video archives begin to grow is not to throw more manpower at trying to keep tabs on burgeoning sets of video data. The only viable approach to this challenge comes from identifying – and implementing – automated solutions that leverage artificial intelligence to aid in the management of sprawling, inaccessible caches of video content.”
AnyClip President and CEO, Gil Becker, added: “Video is the new language of Business. The businesses that stop treating video as a medium, but rather an essential data type will be the ones that thrive. The need has never been more urgent. We finally have an accessible AI technology capable of unlocking the innate data in video to automate information discovery, collaboration and dissemination across organisations, at scale. This represents a milestone in the evolution of internal communications.”