I recently had a call with Ken Davison, the CMO of Magor, a relatively new entrant in the video space. As Ken talked about how their product was different from the 30 or so other video conferencing products in the market today, he hit on a subject that seems to be revolutionary: The ability to integrate visual streams through a conversation.
This is different from video conferencing, where people come together to interact amongst themselves using videos of themselves, and then collaborate on relatively static documents. Instead, it is the ability of someone to receive a stream, and then engage others about what is going on. The stream and how it is forwarded and interacted with becomes the conversation.
An example Ken used is a video steam of some event being sent to a 911 center. The concept is that the stream could be forwarded from the center to the responding officers and others, assuring they have current information along the way.
As I listened, it occurred to me that this is defining a new paradigm, the Visual Enabled Business Process or VEBP. Just as CEBP enables processes with communications, this enables a business process to include real-time streaming video and other visual information.
It seems to me that this could be an exciting new area in business processes and interaction. Visual enablement could have major impacts on a wide variety of processes.
For example, a camera located in a mine or on an oil rig is focused on an area where an alarm occurs. The first person notified uses that video to engage others and bring them into a VEBP dialogue about the issue, and adds additional video and other visual information into the discussion and reaction. As the process moves forward, the visual information flows with the process and is used by the respective users in the process steps.
In this case it is not about me seeing the other participants, but the other visual information that is in the process. Another example could be using visual information with a smart device in retail to help identify customers needing assistance, and to manage shrinkage through theft and other losses. The potential use cases for VEBP seem to be endless.
With the number of cameras doubling every 2 years, according to some sources, using those cameras in interactive real-time scenarios through VEBP is an obvious solution. As all of those scenarios are business processes, Visually Enabling them through a structured process seems a logical way to focus on this potential.
What makes this especially interesting is that it may be a huge market. Typically, video conferencing is used by either Knowledge Workers in collaboration or as an adjunct to selling and customer relations by a very small group of Information Workers (video contact centers for example). In terms of volumes, these use cases pale in comparison to the information and service workers who could use VEBP as they do their jobs. With only 10-25% of the work force being Knowledge Workers, capturing just 10% of the rest using VEBP could be a larger market than Video Conferencing.
