Enterprise video needs a strategy from the CIO

This is not about how much video we consume at home ⎼ whether to get things done or to learn or to get entertained. It is about the impact of today’s IT reality ⎼ if it’s changing at home, it’s got to change at work ⎼ playing itself out. So, it’s about handling this consumerization of the enterprise ⎼ this time in relation to videos at work.

According to a survey by Cisco, 87 percent of young executives prefer to work for a video-enabled organization over a company that has not invested in video.

The rapidly growing demand for videos is forcing CIOs to seek out and adopt a long-term and robust roadmap of video-enabling all possible functions.

What happens if there is no video strategy?

And what will happen if this is not done early enough? The silos of video content that will rapidly come up all over the organization will prove expensive, kill efficiency, and prevent cross-functional insights into people’s behavior. The first two are critical but mundane. The last one will decide the winners.

Those who have been around the block for a bit are sure to remember. If there is no central approach to handling video in the enterprise, that company is looking at a repeat of the nightmares of yesteryears caused by fragmented databases, multiple file services, islands of heterogeneous networks, and many such repeats.

And let no one lose sight of the most critical aspects of life in the enterprise ⎼ content security. A lot of care needs to be taken to eliminate risks arising from weak security or from poor content and brand protection or because of risky employee actions of sharing simply because a well-known secure place to keep all videos is not available.

Checklist to decide if you need a video strategy NOW

Here’s a test to determine where your organization stands.

Is there a well-known secure place on the company network where the unique know-how of the organization is archived? Are videos of web meeting and video conference recordings accessible in an easy to consume form? Does Marketing have the required clickstream data for their public campaign videos? Is the Learning and Development team enabled for building up own war chest of internal learning videos (not purchased repositories)? Do your Digital Transformation teams have a policy guidance about how to video-enable their apps? Can HR measure the engagement for the CXO town halls?

The list can be much longer, and if you want a list made for your organization, give us a shout!

If any of your answers is a “no”, there is work to be done. If any three of the functions point to independent repositories, video content fragmentation is setting in.

The 3 most important steps in creating a video strategy

As the CIO, your first step is to recognize that the time has come to take control of videofying the organization centrally, and not let various functions do what they like!

The second step is to classify all your video needs into three buckets ⎼ internally facing video, externally facing video, and digital video (the kind that is embedded in apps). Once you “divide”, you can “conquer” easily!

The third step is to list down absolute “must have” requirements for each bucket. And then look for a secure, scalable, and customizable video platform built for the enterprise.

What follows will help you out with what the platform must provide for each bucket.

Internal video

It’s easy to list functions that deal with internal video and so we will not list them here.

The “must do” items for the platform to serve your internal video needs are:

​Integrate with the existing IT infrastructure for the force-multiplier effect of a central repository of videos. Support live streaming, cloud creation, and UC integration so videos flow ​in ​from every interaction in the company. Provide caching so you do not get a fat bill from the ISP. Support in-video search and video curation for higher “consumption productivity”. Provide analytics mash-up​s​ with org-wide data to generate cross-functional business insights​.​

External video

Brand promotion videos, leadgen campaigns, CSR promotion, product launches, and customer education videos are examples of external video.

The CMO, brand managers, customer experience, support and service, and recruitment are some of the functions served by external video, which is different from internal video in that the viewers’ identity may not be known.

The “must do” items for the platform to serve your external video needs are:

Maximizing viewer engagement through interactivity in the video player. In-video calls to action (without having to leave the player) for engagement and generating hard clickstream data. Easy integration with CRM or Marketing Automation Platforms for lead collection. Flexible embedding in web properties, controlling the viewers’ playback options, and video SEO for the brand lift. Insightful and granular analytics for video performance and viewer behaviour for data-driven go-to-market strategies.

Digital video

The most important guidance needed by the “digital” teams is: should they “build” a video stack (say, on top of video IaaS from a cloud provider) or “buy” (using abstractions from a video PaaS provider)? Today, the case for “buy” is stronger than that for “build”.

The “must do” items for the platform to serve your digital video needs are:

Enabling you to develop to the abstractions of videos, channels, and users​ instead of media formats, fragments, and timed tokens, Taking care of ​grungy details of scalable, secure video delivery, Sufficient depth in the platform and the team behind it to future-proof your ​app from the rapidly​ evolving video tech landscape, Auto-scale to meet your growth needs when the growth happens, and Providing an integrated customizable player with ready clickstream data for engagement analytics.

kPoint is ready and baked for your enterprise videofication!



If you find all of this logical, we are not surprised. It represents what’s got baked into our platform because of the success our customers have achieved with it. Our customers, most of whom are early adopters of new technology, have matured all aspects of it. In the last 12 months, they have scaled up the load on the kPoint video cloud by seven times!

Start a conversation. We will wait to hear from you. Till then, here’s the summary.