This year could see data analytics being used to help organisations better predict their communications needs as far as meeting rooms are concerned.
Speaking exclusively to UC Today, Amanda Etheridge, Senior Product Manager at Lifesize (pictured, above), said that when companies purchase video conferencing or collaboration suites, they want to know how it is being used across the organisation.
“The first step is just understanding if the room I’ve invested money in is being used and how it is being consumed,” she said.
“Are people using that room to make video calls or sharing presentations”
She said that organisations need to know if people are booking rooms and not using them or booking a room for three people that would normally fit 20. Analysing data can help in understanding the ROI of investments in collaboration tools.
“I think that when you look at the next 12 months and where those basic metrics are going, what [companies] really want to gain out of that is more on the predictive analytic side of things,” said Etheridge. “So this is about being able to understand how their business is going to scale and grow as they either add more people or understand where they may be short in certain areas that are preventing productivity across the organisation.”
Increased data analytics tools needed
She added that organisations will increasingly want tools that tell them if they if they don’t have enough meeting rooms or that they are spending too much money on large boardrooms that aren’t getting utilised as much as smaller rooms. She said,
“If you expect to have 15 or 100 more employees over the next couple of months, you are going to need X amount more huddle spaces for them to collaborate”
Data analytics can be deployed to help those organisations with forecasting and managing scale and growth.
Etheridge said that these capabilities have been requested by customers and is something Lifesize is working towards. “We have all the data about utilisation, it’s just a case of putting in a format so we can predict for them, so that they can plan accordingly.”
