Essential video conference tools to have in your company's arsenal

The ability to launch a high-quality video conference tool is absolutely one of the most valuable and cost-efficient tools you can have in a large enterprise.

Whether it’s to communicate between departments, cut short the time and resources needed to have a productive meeting, or turn client conversations over email or the phone into fully-fledged project briefings with the potential to get more done, a video conferencing solution does not just save you time and money in travel expenses or allow you to go the green path for the environment.

What a top-of-the-line business solution allows you to do is guarantee something much, much better: true efficiency and productivity, even over travel benefits according to TechTarget. However, the benefits of video conferencing are entirely lost when you begin to run into the technical problems that come with being ill-equipped for a proper call. While anyone can join a video conferencing call with so much as a smartphone nowadays, there are varying degrees of quality attributed to today’s conference solutions.

Businesses can easily intercommunicate through laptops, tablets and other portable mobile devices – but for dedicated client conversations or other important meetings, you may want a higher focus on achieving HD quality in both video and audio. And that involves getting the right tools.

A High-Quality Camera

For video calling, a high-quality camera is an absolute must. Whether it’s a better webcam for your workstation set up or a dedicated video conferencing camera from a number of different conferencing hardware providers, a better camera can make a drastic difference in the possibilities you can achieve through business conferencing solutions.

Instead of simply utilizing your group meeting software for intercompany meetings, a better camera expands your options into allowing clients to meet with you face-to-face under formal and qualitative circumstances, without the hassle of getting a proper venue, making the trip and getting back to work afterwards. Depending on the quality of your video conference tools, you can get the most out of your call if you pair a good camera with a reputable product like BlueJeans.

If you’re meeting in a room with others to talk to another group across the world, then you may be looking into a little more than a webcam. There are web call-specific cameras available on the market that allow you to stream high quality 1080p video with a wide-angle shot, so you can include not just yourself but everyone else in the meeting as well. Through such a camera, your level of professionalism can drastically improve.

A Proper Headset or Microphone

Some might purport that in a technology that explicitly has the term “video” in it, conference calling is mostly about the quality of the picture that your client sees – ensuring that it is well-lit, sharp and not grainy, and most importantly, responsive and timely without ceaseless lagging or worse.

But the truth is that the most important aspect of a conference call is still the call part – the audio. While video is a doubtless benefit and a huge perk allowing you to further communicate with others through body language and more, the fact of the matter is that it’s still your voice doing most of the talking.

You can’t expect your clients to be lip readers, which is why a great microphone with more than solid audio performance is essential to the quality of this particular platform. Microphones for solid calling performance come in typically two distinctly different types. On one hand, you can have a single microphone that allows you to huddle together with others and make your call – or alternatively, it’ll be conveniently situated between you and the camera, so you can speak without being obstructed visually by the addition of a headset.

Alternatively, you can just get a headset. It’s a question of budget (do you need enough headsets to justify simply getting a group microphone) and of sound quality. A headset eliminates the problem that physical meetings face – people having to rely on their own volume rather than technology to help get a point across the room.

A Lamp

This is a serious answer. A lamp is a rather important tool in the toolset of a conference call, and for simple reasons – calls are often too dark, unlit, or improperly lit. Bad lighting is the bane of any potentially successful video call, if only for the fact that it completely renders the quality of a camera as irrelevant. As per FastCompany, a lamp, however, can help you change that. You can’t always control when a call needs to be made – especially when it just so happens that you have to get in front of the camera while the sun’s on the other side of the world. When that happens, you need a lamp behind your camera and monitor to ensure that you’re properly illuminated, without forcing the light directly onto your face, which would probably simply result in you squinting for the entirety of the call.

A Top-of-the-Line Business Conferencing Platform

The final and most important ingredient to a great call is the right calling platform. While free solutions do exist, they are very much lacking in quality and versatility. A premium platform, on the other hand, will allow you to up your game with half a dozen better features, letting you take your business to the next level.