The video software approval timeline is 30 days plus one person's PTO
Quick Answer
A video software approval timeline is the elapsed time between choosing a video tool and being allowed to use it. It covers security and vendor review, which runs about 30 days at companies that vet anyone with access to information, plus stakeholder availability, which has no fixed length at all.
What is actually on a video software approval timeline?
Two clocks, running at different speeds, and only one of them is written down anywhere.
| Security and vendor vetting | Stakeholder availability | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The review that anyone with access to company information goes through | Getting the people who decide into the same conversation |
| How long | About 30 days | Unknown until it happens. Two weeks of PTO is one version of it |
| What it waits on | A queue and a checklist | A calendar |
| Can you compress it | No, it is the same for every vendor | Yes, by starting it before you need the answer |
| Who owns the delay | The vendor process | You |
Buyers plan around the first column because it has a number. The second column is where the schedule usually goes.
Why does security review take about 30 days?
Because the trigger is information access, and a video tool touches information. A commercial and marketing operations leader at a telecom company described the rule:
"anything that anybody that's going to have any kind of information or access to information in our company has to go through that. It's about a 30 day process to get approval."
a commercial and marketing operations leader at a telecom company
The rule keys on access rather than on spend or headcount. A video tool holds product footage, customer names, unreleased launch material, and employee faces, so it qualifies immediately, and the small pilot purchase enters the same queue as the enterprise rollout.
Thirty days is at least a stable number, so you can plan against it. The broader shape of that process, and who else joins it, sits in how enterprise video procurement works.
What does one stakeholder's PTO do to a video software approval timeline?
It adds an unbudgeted delay, and it usually arrives after everyone has agreed on the plan. A marketing lead at a global talent and consulting firm wrote this to us:
"One of my key stakeholders has been on PTO for ~ 2 weeks, and we've not yet had an opportunity to discuss."
a marketing lead at a global talent and consulting firm
The stakeholder is key, so the conversation cannot happen without them, and the discussion has not started, so the approval clock has not started either. Those two weeks are pure elapsed time, spent before the process everyone was planning for begins.
There is no policy to fix this. Nobody schedules a vacation around a software evaluation, and nobody should. The failure is in the plan, which assumed a specific human would be reachable in a specific week.
How do you run the two software approval clocks at the same time?
Start the fixed one first and stop treating it as the last step. Security review is a process with a queue, and queues do not care whether your internal debate has concluded. Most companies will begin vendor vetting on a tool that has not been formally selected, which turns 30 sequential days into 30 parallel ones.
Do the arithmetic on a real target. Say you want a video tool in your team's hands on the first day of the quarter. Working backwards, the security review alone consumes the previous month. Start it 30 days out and you land on the day itself, with zero room for the stakeholder who is away for two weeks in the middle. Open the stakeholder conversation on the same day you start the security review, and the two weeks of PTO cost you nothing, because they run inside a window you were spending anyway.
Two constraints make this harder to schedule than it looks. Budget windows open and close on their own calendar, which is the subject of where a purchase lands in the annual planning cycle. And some quarters have no vendor process running at all, which is a different problem covered in buying during a vendor freeze.
What should you tell your vendor about your video software approval timeline?
The 30 days, the names of the people who have to agree, and when any of them are away. A vendor who knows about the two week gap will plan around it. A vendor who finds out afterward spends those two weeks emailing you.
Be equally direct about what the tool is for. A video system a whole team will use invites more reviewers than a single license for one editor, and more reviewers means more calendars. Say that at the start and the timeline you agree on will be the one that happens.
FAQ
How long does it take to get software approved at a large company? Security and vendor vetting runs about 30 days at companies that review anyone with access to information. Stakeholder discussion adds an amount nobody can predict, usually the larger number.
Why does a video tool need a security review? The review is triggered by access to information rather than by price. Video tools hold product footage, customer material, and employee faces, so they qualify like any other system.
Can vendor security review and internal approval happen at the same time? Usually yes. Most companies will start vetting a tool before it has been formally selected, which turns two sequential waits into one.
How do I keep a software evaluation moving when a stakeholder is on PTO? Start the fixed parts while they are away and tell the vendor the date they return. The queue based steps do not need that person present.