Video collaboration in the customer engagement center (or contact center) makes sense for many of the same reasons the technology makes sense in other settings: When customers can see a human being on the other end of their conversations, they feel a human connection. When customer service representatives or sales staffers can see the people…

At a meeting I attended recently, someone asked two new members of the sales team (both in their mid-20s) how they felt about email. They both said that they would use it if they had to, but that they preferred to communicate via text message. Now, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of email’s death…

Last month, I had the luxury of spending three days discussing the state of collaboration in the marketplace by participating in CDW’s Collaboration Roadshow. These Collaboration Roadshow sessions are an opportunity for customers or potential customers to join some of CDW’s best and brightest at one of our local offices and discuss their organization’s collaboration…

For many organizations, Skype for Business (formerly Lync, and before that, Communications Server) has been a staple communication and collaboration platform. This type of application — one that provides the ability to communicate quickly and effectively through instant messaging, check someone’s availability via presence status, place a phone call and spin up an ad hoc…

Sometimes, when I’m speaking with IT managers about how to build out video collaboration systems for their organizations, they want to start the conversation by talking about a particular high-end Logitech camera, or a specific, slick Samsung video panel. Often, these technology pros have a mandate from on high: A leader within the company has…

Almost all of my closest colleagues are remote. On my team, I work directly with people who are based in Wisconsin, Texas, Pennsylvania and even India. But judging from our easy rapport — not to mention how much we accomplish together — an outside observer would probably assume that we all sit next to each…