Looking for the best video streaming platform for your organization? Easier said than done. After all, investing in a platform for managing all your enterprise videos is a big decision. To help you decide, we’ve compiled a list of the top 8 features that every online video platform should have so you know what to look for when exploring the market.
What a Video Streaming Platform Should Offer?
Video platforms come with an array of features and functionalities to help organizations reach their goals. Here’s a list of the ones we found the most important.
Live Video Streaming
Live streaming has become an indispensable requirement for any modern organization. There are many ways organizations use live video streaming, such as for training multiple branches & departments in real-time, broadcasting organization-wide all-hands meetings and conducting product demos. In the past, most video platforms only provided support for on-demand video (VOD) streaming & management. With the advent and popularity of live streaming, many video platforms have added live video to their arsenal. A reliable modern video platform should have the ability to schedule or launch impromptu live video with just a few clicks, provide low latency streaming, and allow to record the stream for on-demand use.
While there are independent live streaming solutions, most enterprise needs and use cases have evolved beyond what they can offer. For example, they don’t offer much functionality for managing on-demand videos, including live stream recordings, which can limit your organization from taking full advantage of your live streams. Additionally, most organizations have at least some need for managing and utilizing on-demand videos. As such, it’s better to invest in a complete video streaming platform for a more consolidated solution and greater return on investment for your video assets.
Additionally, many video platforms now also provide a great deal of interactivity for live video streaming; in addition to live chat, look for a platform that offers social media integration, Q&A, quizzes and surveys, and sharing for digital files and documents within live stream.
Easy to Use
Organizations use technology to simplify tasks, assist their operations and improve efficiency. For any business or enterprise, the purpose of technology is to improve performance by generating greater output with lower input.
For a video platform, this means enabling users to quickly upload multiple videos in bulk, navigate across the platform with ease, and use tools for managing content without significant difficulties. The platform should be designed for even the newest or most casual user to be able to adapt without too much of a struggle. Moreover, you should be able to easily repurpose them, such as adding them to your website or blog, compiling them into a playlist to share or edit them to remove irrelevant content before use or sharing.
Video Streaming Analytics
Did you know 85% of businesses use video for their marketing strategy? Studies show a person retains more information by watching a video rather than by reading text. Video has become an important part of the marketing strategy for most modern enterprises. But it’s difficult to measure the return on investment (ROI) from videos.
One of the staple (and vital) features of a robust video streaming platform is detailed video analytics. Video analytics help analyze how your videos are impacting the business. It’s important to know in detail how your viewers are engaging with your videos. By knowing what videos your viewers watch the most, which parts of the video are the most popular with your viewers, what kind of device they prefer to watch your videos (such as a mobile phone or a desktop) and how many times they watch a video completely till the end help better understand what your audience likes and expects, identify opportunities, make business decisions and create more successful strategies.
Free Trial
Like we said before, investing in technology like a video streaming platform for securely storing and managing all of your enterprise videos is no small decision to make. In order to ensure you get what you want without the risk of making a wrong investment, try to look for a platform that offers a free trial that lets you explore the solution before you buy.
Enterprise-Level Security
Security is one of (if not THE) most important concerns for any enterprise. Keeping your internal meetings private from external guests, restricting access for certain domains, controlling playback for videos embedded on external sites and allowing a shared video to be played only for a limited time are some of the security measures that should be taken into consideration when looking at a video platform for your enterprise. Role-based access control is a great way to control not only what guests can view and access on your platform, but also control permissions for internal users to control privacy internally as well.
Interactive Experiences
Interactive videos not only make for a more engaging experience for viewers, but also help gain valuable feedback and streamline the flow of information. A few examples include inserting quizzes in training videos for knowledge checks, surveys to obtain feedback for a product from customers, or handouts such as workbooks and presentations for students to download. Clickable & searchable transcripts enable viewers to quickly find the information they're looking for without having to watch the entire video to find what they’re looking for, and notes inside videos help highlight information at a specific point in a video.
These examples also show how interactive videos can create a quicker, more accessible and more efficient flow of information through video. With the rise of video in enterprise operations, Interactive videos have become a staple requirement for most modern organizations and a feature much demanded of video streaming platforms.
Integrations with CRMs, Maps, and LMS
Efficiency is of utmost importance for any organization. Storing video and content in silos on disparate systems makes it longer and more difficult to find, access, manage and utilize them. For greater efficiency, organizations should be able to easily use and work with all their assets from a centralized location.
Look for a platform that is capable of integrating with the other platforms and systems in your organization, content management systems (CMS), learning management systems (LMS), customer relationship management systems (CRM) and video conferencing systems.
Features Beyond YouTube
There’s a reason why most businesses are purchasing a private video streaming platform for their organization instead of uploading and managing their videos on free platforms like YouTube. Free or public video platforms come with certain limitations and a lack of functions that make them incomplete or unreliable for fulfilling the needs of the organization.
Some of these reasons include lack of customizable branding, insufficient privacy & security, 3rd party advertisements tarnishing your videos and loss of content rights. To learn more about why organizations are investing in a video streaming platform are not relying on YouTube for their enterprise video needs, click here.
Conclusion
There are many video streaming platforms out there to choose from. These features are just some of the most important features from a long list of what an enterprise video platform can and should offer.
As mentioned before, we recommend you look for platforms with a free trial and explore your options to see whether they provide these essential features for generating the greatest possible ROI from your video assets and gaining the most benefit for your organization. Naturally, we recommend VIDIZMO.
You can get started right away by taking a 30-day free trial for VIDIZMO to explore all our features and functionalities. Apply for a free trial now or contact us.