Meeting rooms, communication platforms, calendar coordination software, videoconferencing equipment – the function-rich, multi-vendor nature of today’s modern hybrid office is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, this apparent Frankenstein monster is an unlikely fusion of the world’s biggest and best enterprise communication brands capable of delivering stellar user experience. After all, for many, what’s not to like about the recent, surprise, and much-vaunted Microsoft/Cisco endpoint certification partnership announcement?
On the other hand, the complex intertwining of many infrastructures’ autonomous and interdependent components burden those tasked with managing them at scale with a new level of complexity that has the potential to undermine any resultant productivity gains.
Of course, whether hardware or software, most vendors’ offerings now come complete with some kind of self-management smarts that enable easy deployment, configuration, and data capture to help maximise efficiency. However, enterprise IT managers must go to several different places and master several different systems if they are to maintain a helicopter view of the whole.
Much better – and infinitely more efficient – is to bring all of that separate management functionality seamlessly together onto one single interface: every back-end nut and bolt of every multi-brand element of the stack right there in the same place.
Do that, and enterprises will be able to really ride the hybrid working wave; delivering the kind of at-scale premium user experience capable of enticing people back to a new kind of office fit for a new purpose.
“The ongoing move towards hybrid working means there is a huge requirement for a great meeting room experience in and out of the office – more and more brands are working together to create superior solutions, and that means an emerging need for a single place to manage, monitor, and optimize it all,” says Tim Jalland, Solution Manager at leading digital workplace management software provider VOSS Solutions, which offers a slick, single point of control for multiple vendor set-ups.
“News of Microsoft partnering with Cisco to approve and certify endpoint devices is a hugely interesting market development. Microsoft Teams is the dominant enterprise communication platform across the world and more and more meeting room vendors’ solutions are now Teams accredited.
Add to that the hybrid working tool set of deskphones, softphones, and videoconferencing endpoints such as cameras, screens, and microphones. It’s a mix of vendors – managing everything via a single point of integration has to be best practice.”
The VOSS solution not only provides that single, overarching view of management information, it also caters for segmented, hierarchical distribution, from senior executives down to technology support staff.
It manages room facility availability, occupancy, and usage; compliance of devices, versions, models, and types; configures standardized, templated, and bespoke system set-ups; performs proactive, synthetic testing and monitoring of platforms and devices; and delivers deep analytics into usage and trend data. For large enterprises with, say, several hundred meeting room facilities globally, the scale of the potential efficiencies on offer is huge.
In addition, increasingly smart and integrated communication tools are also being combined with enterprise organizations’ reconfiguration of physical office space designed to modernize and improve the work environment and encourage returning hybrid workers.
Often, that reconfiguration comes with significant long-term capital investment – making it even more important that it produces the desired result.
“Enterprise organisations are spending a lot of money reorientating real estate into meeting rooms, drop down points, and small areas to make them less expensive to run, greener, and generally more attractive,” says Jalland.
“When people do come back into the office, they need to be able to rely on a meeting room booking they may have made and the communication tools that come with it. They don’t want to find everything offline or difficult to use. They want that optimum user experience.
“Delivering that experience effectively and efficiently is made much easier when an enterprise not only has an all-in-one-place 360-degree sight of all of the components, but also when all of the different configuring and controlling levers are to hand.”
To learn more about how VOSS Solutions can help your and your customers’ businesses power a successful hybrid working strategy, click here.
