Is it better than Skype and Discord or is it just used because of corporate convention?
The corps I've been with use GTM and WebEx for online meetings. It's convenient for sharing your screen with others, especially for a training or tutorial session.
Discord and Skype is more catered for social media; DM, voice chats, video chat, but I don't think it supports screen sharing. Some companies use skype internally to communicate with each other, but when it's a conference call with third-parties, I mainly see GTM or WebEx being used.
(They both support screen sharing)
Seems like these are apps specifically designed for corporate use and I assume they're easy enough to use for the average user to approach. I imagine that this is tied to dedicated IT services and other corporate support that makes them attractive. I'd have to test them to see if they're better. Skype was particularly heavy. I've seen easier, faster and more effective screen-sharing software. I haven't tried Discord's but I read somewhere that it does have this functionality.
Huh, did not know that about the screen sharing. Never used skype and discord for anything else other than social media.
It is more for corporate use because it does cost to use them. I believe licenses have to be purchase for use. I've only used them at work. Oh, maybe webex a few times back in college for projects, but the privileges were given by the school then too.
Way back in the days when it cost money for long distance calls --the clients I worked with liked having the toll free number to dial-in. I think it's just corporate norm to use one of these now. It's reliable. Clients are not always the most patient bunch.
Exactly! That has been my experience with corporate software, too. I used free versions and all at first until I started being a tiiiny bit late for a few deadlines and not quite being able to do some things.
It would have been alright for me as a normal user but clients don't change their minds. They don't want to install new things or be flexible. They just want things done quickly in what they believe is the best way. So I just had to adapt and use the corporate licensed software and it always worked right for me and I delivered the best for the clients.
(I'm talking about MemoQ and professional translations.)
edit: Though, sometimes, there can be better software. In our case, MemoQ was particularly great, but it was an old-timer. The industry standard was another one, I can't recall its name, but our clients were already accustomed and it was absolutely impossible to change the software we used.
Same goes for messaging. Slack would have been better but we used Skype because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. When people are accustomed to things, and it gives you money, you just do exactly that and earn your monthly allocation of goodies.