Item: Adobe Connect
Rating: 10
Author: Christopher Power

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe Connect is used at our organization to help streamline multiple processes. It addresses the common problem of communication in a large school or organization like ours. The ability to have virtual meetings and share virtual documents is crucial for our success to help speed up communication, lessons, training, as well as increase efficiency in the building. The application is used throughout the entire organization, over 200 people, over 1,000 students for educators that use it in class and for educational lessons. The problem it addresses is workflow and performance. In order to get educators and students to work harder, you must provide them with more digital content to allow them to work independently without needing to attend face to face meetings or use paper handouts.

Pros and Cons

The interface is extremely easy to use. It allows people to come on board and learn it very easily, reducing the learning curve. Specifically, the navigation screen on the interface after logging in has a very simple drop-down menu for you to access and able to choose how you want to use Adobe Connect.
Adobe Connect DOES NOT drop in terms of internet connection. We have never had situations where the platform glitched or stopped working. For us to keep a simple and easy workflow, it was crucial to find a platform that did not have technical flaws.
Webinars... there are a lot of webinar software available, however, staying within the Adobe family is important. Adobe makes it easier to use content developed in their other platforms and linking and working with PDFs. Many platforms avoid certain file types of the file sizes make it difficult to navigate and use the tutorials and training documents. With Adobe they have made it easy to accommodate and seemingly keep the file sizes small enough to make it easy to browse and interact with online.
The Meetings obviously make it easy because one login for ADOBE satisfied the needs of all their platforms, reducing the need to have multiple accounts.

Room for improvement would be with video. I wish I could cut and combine videos for the presentations. Being able to cut multiple videos together into one clip would be very easy for us. I have not figured out how to do that yet. It seems to be missing that ability.
A missing function is being able to live poll! I understand they have polling features, but creating live polls that allow us to have meetings and then take a poll during the presentation and allow us to see the results in real-time would be really exciting.
The mobile app is a large file size to download and does take up a lot of space on mobile phones. It is not as bad on an iPad where you use it more often and do not have as many apps as a personal phone, but the file size is still a bit large and would be the first app to remove if I need storage space.

Return on Investment

Positive ROI of course! Overall, the platform reduces the need for human resources meetings when hiring new people. Reducing time to train new employees through Adobe Connect allows you to use your human capital more efficiently.
Another positive ROI is that it is bundled into our Adobe Suite. Being able to use the same company for the licenses reduces the overhead cost associated with the platform.
One financial benefit that impacts us the most is the large number of personnel that use the platforms. With hundreds of computers hooked up to the network with varying licenses and log-ins, the cost is cheaper.

Alternatives Considered

GoToMeeting, Zoom and Skype

GoToMeeting, Zoom & Skype stack up very well against Adobe Connect. The key perk about Adobe Connect is how easy it is to integrate and include with all the additional Adobe software.

Skype is a free platform that offers meeting options but very little in terms of the ability to integrate presentations or webinars for training. Zoom & GoToMeeting offer similar platforms to Skype in terms of great video conferencing and messaging options. The benefit of these is some of the services are free and cheaper than Adobe packages. But, when looking into Zoom, there again is no option to include live polling or training platforms within a meeting. Yes, recorded meetings work, but there is very little in terms of just playing back videos that can help to create a real training atmosphere for employees. In my opinion, Adobe Connect provides a stronger return on investment.

Other Software Used

Google Classroom, Moodle, Stock Tracker, Apple ARKit, Apple iCloud, Facebook Pages Manager, Workplace by Facebook, Slack

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Connect is well suited for real business and school applications. When you have a large staff and corporate or school structure, you need to offer training and meetings for all employees to avoid the stress of sending emails and worrying who will or won't show up to in-face meetings with strict schedules.

It is perfectly structured for new employees, tech savvy or not, to learn the software so they can easily participate in virtual meetings, trainings or reviewing documents needed. It could be less useful in small businesses with 20 or fewer employees where face to face interaction and the need for more hands-on meetings and discussions are important. However, even with small businesses, I doubt you want employees wasting time, so using Adobe Connect, especially if you already use other Adobe products, would help.

Adobe Connect for All New Employees

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Connect