Frost and Sullivan, one of the most renowned analytics companies in the market, recently released a whitepaper discussing the future of work. The report, entitled “7 tips to improve meetings in the new era of work”, introduces teams to the factors that appear to be essential in the new digital landscape.
The report supports some of the recent findings of Shure, a market leader in audio technology, which also published a report on the future of conferencing recently.
Frost and Sullivan noted that the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside things like civil unrest and extreme weather conditions, has formed a disruptive environment. The way that we work today is a world away from the traditional workplace we knew in 2019. Remote working is rolling out on a global scale, and companies are constantly searching for ways to make interactions between team members more successful in this new environment.
Frost and Sullivan’s research suggests that connectivity between employees is essential for future business gains. So, how do companies ensure successful collaboration?
Improving Meetings in the New Era of Work
Frost and Sullivan list a selection of crucial factors for successful collaboration in its latest report, including:
- Prioritising cloud conferencing services
- Upgrading the meeting room to support the new era of work
- Improving collaboration with excellent audio
- Instilling confidence and boosting productivity with seamless audio
- Driving more effective meeting rooms with excellent audio
- Adopting ecosystem approaches to communication
- Focusing on experience, ownership, interoperability, and standardisation
Two of these “crucial factors” directly refer to the importance of amazing audio in the meeting room. This supports the findings that Shure unveiled in the “Future of Conferencing” survey, which indicates the importance of investing in audio solutions.
The survey reveals that business leaders and IT managers are working hard to future-proof organisations with technologies constantly being replaced due to:
- Lack of features: 25%
- Limited interoperability: 26%
- Security issues: 34%
- Quality and reliability problems: 35%
The World of Work is Changing
The world is overwhelmingly shifting towards new, cloud-based, and flexible solutions for technology, with a huge range of communication tools to choose from. However, Shure notes that without the foundation of audio, no meeting can truly thrive – a fact that Frost and Sullivan confirms.
Despite this, around 95% of meeting rooms have minimal technology, and 87% of professionals say that they’re frustrated by the technology failures in these rooms. Companies need to start rethinking their meeting rooms, particularly now that 82% of managers expect flexible work policies to continue following the pandemic.
The research suggests that the top reason for investing in new technology right now is to improve teamwork among distributed employees (35%). However, companies are also turning to new technology for other reasons too, such as improved information management (32%) and improved customer experiences (31%). Improving operational cost (29%), marketing effectiveness (29%), creativity (28%), and decision making (26%) were also factors.
Meeting the Demand for Audio
VP of Global Integrated Systems Sales for Shure, Jim Schanz, said that being able to communicate in a virtual environment is now more crucial to companies than ever before. No meeting can thrive without the right quality of audio. This means that investing in a scalable infrastructure for audio will help to position any business to be more competitive in the years ahead.
Shure’s findings about the importance of audio in meetings come after the company recently acquired Stem Audio to further expand the portfolio of conferencing and audio solutions that the company has to offer. Working together, the two companies believe they can drive better outcomes from meetings through audio.
