Screen Sharing Software

As you adapt to the rising remote work trend, collaboration across teams and with other departments in the organization can be challenging. You need software to replace in-person meetings or gather-around-a-desk sessions and that goes beyond calling and hearing each other. Often your teams need to work on the same projects, use the same software, or even reach out to IT experts in other locations to solve their system issues. For this, you need a software tool for effective communication and collaboration that helps your colleagues increase their productivity and produce high quality output, even when they are geographically separated.

This is when screen sharing, where one person shares their computer desktop/screen or application with other people, is essential. Screen sharing software makes it easy to remotely collaborate with other employees, clients, or vendors via desktop sharing for presentations, accessing applications, product demonstrations, and onboarding new customers.

As such tools are either available as standalone software or as a built-in feature in most of the collaboration tools available in the market, it is important to understand your needs and choose the right software for your business. For this reason, we have created a buyers guide to explain the features and benefits of screen sharing software as well as the market trends you should keep in mind when purchasing the software.

Here’s what we'll cover:

• What is screen sharing software?
• Common features of screen sharing software
• What type of buyer are you?
• Benefits of screen sharing software
• Key consideration
• Market trends to understand

What is screen sharing software?

Screen sharing software is a tool that allows users to share their desktop or mobile screens with other people online for presentations, sales calls, software demonstrations, and other collaborative meetings in real-time to produce a final piece of work. 

Screen sharing software can make online meetings much simpler with clients and colleagues located remotely. A Screen sharing tool can be standalone or as part of a more comprehensive solution such as video conferencing software, online meeting software, webinar software, and presentation software.

Common features of screen sharing software

Software features vary by product or vendor depending on your use, but most screen sharing tools have the following features:

What type of buyer are you?

Before purchasing a screen sharing app, you should assess which buyer category you belong to. The majority of buyers fall into the following:

• For educators: With digital classrooms gaining popularity, teachers and educators need to reach out to students who are located in different locations. They need software that can help provide their students with a live classroom environment including, modeling how to solve a problem, explaining how to complete a task, or even sharing new resources. Such buyers should look for a tool that allows them to remotely control the lesson from anywhere, annotate in real-time, share with students, and track student engagement. Software with features such as presenter control management that allow students to share their screens to show their work to class, annotations, digital whiteboard, and screen recording should be beneficial for such buyers. The screen sharing app they opt for should be compatible with the device they use (whether it is Windows, Mac, iOS or Android). Such buyers can also opt for free screen sharing tools that offer the basic functionalities that would suffice their needs.
• For business professionals: Organizations, whether small or large, use collaboration platforms such as online meeting or video conferencing software to set up meetings with their clients and collaborate with team members. They need a screen sharing software or a collaboration software with a screen share feature that offers functionalities such as personal meeting rooms, presenter switching, joint annotation, co-browsing, and collaborative document editing. These features will allow marketers to showcase new products; sales professionals to host quick demos; and HR teams to present training sessions. A screen sharing app or a collaboration tool with screen sharing capabilities will also help remote working employees to share their screens with IT staff to resolve system issues. Whether business professionals choose a free or commercial tool, it should provide reasonable time limits, and participants for meetings. The software should also be accessible across different devices such as tablets, laptops, desktops, and smartphones, so that users can collaborate with others from any location and at any time.

Benefits of screen sharing software

Listed below are some benefits you can expect from using a screen sharing software:

• Reduced costs: Screen sharing applications let businesses host meetings with clients and vendors virtually by presenting or demonstrating services and products. This helps you cut costs in terms of travelling to a physical location for your meetings. Such tools also help your employees avoid travel between company offices as it provides real-time communication and collaboration with remote co-workers.
• Increase productivity: Features such as on-screen annotations and remote software access allow real time collaboration with your teammates and colleagues, improving productivity. As you share your screen, you are able to save time explaining projects and concepts because attendees can see your live screen. This also helps you and your remote teammates come together for collaborative document editing, design changes, software review, and co-browsing, which increases communication and efficiency.

Key Consideration:

Here’s something to keep in mind when purchasing a screen sharing tool:

• Business needs: Screen sharing platforms can be standalone applications or can be part of a more comprehensive tool such as video conferencing software, or meeting software. If your organization or institution already leverages such collaboration tools, then you may be able to access the screen share features. However, standalone screen sharing applications provide more robust and dedicated features including, remote support, sales demonstration, team collaboration and remote access, whereas a comprehensive tool with a built-in screen sharing feature would not provide.
• If your organization uses visual collaboration with teammates for internal use, then collaboration tools with screen share functionality would fit in well for you. You can also go for free screen sharing software which provides the basic functionalities.
• But, if you are looking to share your screen with external stakeholders or clients and want supporting features such as notification blocker, ability to allow meeting participants to interact with your screen, annotation tools, and screen mirroring, then buying a standalone application may be beneficial.

Market trends to understand

• Integrating Augmented reality (AR) with screen sharing apps for remote support. With remote working gaining popularity, advancements in technology have made it possible for teams and co-workers from multiple locations to collaborate with one another. Augmented reality is one technology that has disrupted the way organizations communicate within teams and also with their clients. The technology overlays digital content and information onto the physical world, as if they're actually there with you. Integrating AR with screen sharing capabilities will allow various teams to collaborate even more easily when they share the same screen to see the work in progress or provide remote support. Presenters can draw digital annotations on a mobile screen or desktop that accurately stick to 3D physical objects in the real world, allowing them to guide attendees through a process, step-by-step.

Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.