The Hidden Cost of Storing Enterprise Video in Traditional Content Management Systems
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Using video content isn’t a novel concept for today’s businesses — digital video has been a key type of collateral for over two decades now. However, recent years have seen an increase in the amount of video being produced and the central role that content plays in companies’ strategies.
This change of circumstance raises an important question: Is your company ready to manage all that video content effectively? If you’re still relying on a legacy enterprise content management (ECM) system, the answer may be “no.”
Some companies may already be feeling the strain of inadequate digital infrastructure for their video storage and access needs. Others may feel more secure but not realize that there’s a better way to organize their videos. In any case, ever-increasing content volumes are a factor across industries.
It’s best to review your options as soon as possible — the faster you replace your legacy content management solution with a specialized offering, the better prepared you’ll be to smoothly adapt to your modern video needs.
A Tidal Wave of Video Content Is Approaching
Video’s popularity is constantly increasing. Short-form video content on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts has driven a further expansion of digital video into everyday life. This effect has spread to the workplace.
Your organization may not have the infrastructure to handle the data, and may also lack provisions for the intelligent use of video in its overall business strategy. Companies have previously considered video to be a niche concern, difficult to produce well and with a limited role. With video consumption on the rise, however, this is changing.
Video is a compelling resource for internal purposes like training, as well as external use cases, including marketing and building brand recognition. Since users have become so accustomed to viewing videos in their downtime, it’s natural that they’ll look to this content when they want to engage with brands.
When your company begins to capitalize on the strategic value of producing video content for internal and external audiences, it will need to update its digital infrastructure accordingly. Solutions that have sufficed in the past have not been optimized for video files, and the strain can quickly become apparent.
Traditional Content Management Systems at a Breaking Point
Organizations using legacy ECM solutions may quickly find that these technology tools aren’t built for video. This is an understandable shortcoming, considering that enterprises have traditionally exchanged data via written documents.
Documents are significantly smaller files than videos, and they’re easier to search by conventional means. Text-based searches can find information within documents, allowing users to pull up the exact information they need in a hurry. Those same ECM platforms, however, are not optimized to handle a wholesale switch to video to suit users’ content preferences.
This mismatch between technology and content takes a few specific forms. Legacy ECM tools may be able to store large video files, but not open them in-app. This is due to a lack of transcoding and forces users to leave the platform and open a separate piece of software before they can interact with video content.
The database infrastructure that underlies traditional ECM solutions was designed solely for text, images, and other simple, small documents. Searching for specific video files within these tools is also challenging. When finding content within video files isn’t possible, users have to resort to complex file naming conventions and manually applied tags to make the content discoverable.
While these inconveniences may have been acceptable when video was a niche file type, the costs are now inescapable. The time and effort expended managing videos in systems that weren’t designed for them put a strain on companies’ teams and budgets. The need for change is clear.
The Value of Specialized Enterprise Video Management
The most direct way to claw back those hidden productivity costs is to revamp the organization’s approach to managing video content. There’s a caveat, though: Not just any video platform will suffice. Organizations that make short-term tactical purchases of non-managed video repositories lacking security features may not make a significant improvement.
The right enterprise video management platform for a company’s needs should be modern, specialized, and cloud-based to provide a positive experience in the face of ever-increasing video content volumes.
What defines a sufficient enterprise video management platform? A company’s chosen solution should be able to:
- Manage video alongside other content rather than in a silo.
- Contain AI-based features for search, tagging, and more.
- Support short-form and micro-video content.
- Boost the efficiency of everyday video operations.
- Provide advanced security, governance, and compliance.
- Support video creation and management functions, including:
- Live streaming.
- Video editing.
- Embedding and integration.
- Video analytics.
This type of platform allows users to access, search for, and safeguard their video content within a purpose-built interface. Without the functionality challenges that affect legacy ECM tools, the technology supports modern, ambitious video use cases.
Industries With Strong Enterprise Video Use Cases
Enterprise video content is popular across industries, with users at companies of all kinds accustomed to gleaning information from videos in their personal lives. With that said, some sectors have particularly strong use cases for advanced video content, and therefore for dedicated, cloud-based enterprise video management platforms.
These include:
- Energy: Power generation companies can depend on video to distribute important training materials, including just-in-time safety updates. Energy plants may also rely on video to monitor and manage infrastructure, and to share messages with stakeholders.
- Financial services: Finance organizations, comprising banks, insurers, and brokerages, can rely on video for training and customer-facing communications. Due to tough regulations, these companies need highly secure storage platforms.
- Manufacturing: Manufacturers’ video use cases include field support, customer service, quality control, and employee training. Like energy organizations, manufacturing companies can also monitor their infrastructure via constant video feeds that need to be archived carefully.
- Healthcare: Healthcare providers are increasingly turning to video for telehealth consultations and training. As with finance, there are strict regulations determining how healthcare organizations can store and access this content, raising the need for a specialized platform.
- Retail: Retail businesses need to compete by engaging their customers. Today, this can mean delivering a steady stream of product explainer videos, tutorials, and buying guides, all of which need a reliable storage solution.
Get Started With Enterprise Video Management
With demand for enterprise video content already high and steadily rising, organizations need to prepare themselves to manage that content effectively. The consequences of staying with an inadequate legacy system can include surprising costs due to inefficiencies and excessive manual processes.
The best enterprise video management platforms won’t just get companies in line with the present, but also help them cope with future needs through cloud-based flexibility and ever-expanding AI-powered feature sets.
Read Aragon Research and Vbrick’s latest whitepaper, Preparing Your Enterprise for the Video Tsunami, for much more on the state of video management, or contact us to learn about our platform.
