The traditional workplace has endured a substantial transformation over the past ten years as a result of advancements in collaboration technology. As we head into a new decade where remote, freelance, and contracted employees become even more prevalent, and where society has become even more attached to their personal technology devices, driving the need for collaboration technology that operates the same way, we can only expect that this trend will continue to evolve throughout 2020 and beyond.
There has been a shift toward hiring more remote and freelance employees as companies are considering the value of putting their best and brightest team members together on projects or to solve problems, regardless of location. As a result, business executives are realising they must reform their company cultures in order to meet the needs of an evolving workforce.
A crucial component and a key goal for company-wide success is frictionless internal and external collaboration. This highlights a need for meeting and collaboration technology that is as easy and intuitive as our smartphones, laptops, and tablets, and that works with the technology teams are already using. In today’s corporate world, it is imperative that collaboration technology, both on the hardware and software side, work together seamlessly so teams can solve problems and communicate more efficiently.
In response to this demand for frictionless communication, conference room and meeting space set-up has evolved dramatically over the past ten years. Until recently, many company meeting rooms lacked variety in technology equipment, relying solely on four walls filled with standard conference speaker phones, whiteboards, and projectors. Business professionals were often forced to fly across the country, or the globe, for face-to-face meetings. But now with the evolving power and capability of collaboration technology, we’re seeing a major shift in the way businesses meet and operate. This time and money-saving transformation will only continue to advance in the years to come.
Collaboration technology today comes in many forms, to suit the various ways that modern workplaces operate. Today’s collaboration technology has come a long way and we are now seeing offices equipped with large-format interactive touch displays with videoconferencing solutions. Just as offices are advancing, so are the actual collaboration technologies within them, which have become more accessible, conventional, easier to use, and resemble the personal technology devices we rely on every day. Modern office technologies, such as large-format interactive touch displays with videoconferencing solutions, are starting to incorporate other functions for real-time collaboration between remote parties, including cloud-based file-sharing and two-way annotation and edge-to-cloud data about the meeting room itself. These advancements help the building and facility managers, and IT planners, better understand whether or not the room is being used to its full capacity, how many meetings occur in the room each day and at what times, how long the average meeting lasts, the rise and fall of temperature, etc.
These collaboration devices are built to be easy-to-use and streamline team communication, with the ability to share presentations and real-time annotation with all members of a conference call — which is why the most successful companies are replacing audio calls with video. With this technology, video team meetings encourage interactivity, positive decision-making, improved communication, and even reduce the amount of meetings necessary, in turn bolstering productivity and reducing gaps in communication.
Frictionless collaboration technology is a key contributor to company-wide success and studies show that efficient communication, or lack thereof, has a major impact on a company’s bottom line. When provided the best technology tools for working together, team members can build upon one another’s strengths in order to enhance the value of the work they produce for the company. This is why teamwork and collaboration play a critical role in the success of any-sized business and in today’s modern workplace, the driving force in teamwork communication is frictionless collaboration technology.
Guest Blog by Dana Corey, SVP and GM, Avocor
