Global IT spending is growing at two times the rate of GDP growth in 2025 as companies invest heavily in AI-powered tools, unified communications platforms, and workflow automation to drive new efficiencies. Yet while budgets surge for these transformative technologies, spending on the collaboration infrastructure needed to support them continues to lag.
This misalignment is creating a costly paradox. AI tools such as Copilot promise to revolutionize how teams work, but they rely on clear audio to transcribe accurately, interpret tone, and extract meaningful insights. As Nathan Budd, consulting director at IDC, explains, “Although AV is not at the center of AI, delivering ROI on this investment is much harder without it.”
The solution, however, is not about choosing one investment over another. Aligning AV with broader technology initiatives transforms what appear to be competing priorities into a mutually reinforcing strategy that unlocks the full value of both.
The Hidden Money Wasters
To understand why neglected collaboration environments limit returns, IDC, based on their most recent research in collaboration with Shure, identified seven key “money wasters” scenarios that demonstrate how inadequate technology prevents organizations from fully utilizing other investments.
One common example is connectivity and setup delays. Companies may invest in large displays for boardrooms to support presentations with prospective clients. However, if employees cannot easily connect their devices, valuable meeting time is lost to troubleshooting. These delays carry real costs, but as Mick Heys, Vice President at IDC, points out, most companies underestimate “the true cost of inadequate AV infrastructure” because they lack a framework for measuring it.
Even when systems eventually connect, problems rarely end there. When collaboration platforms fail to integrate smoothly with existing tools, employees resort to workarounds, manually launching meeting software or checking spreadsheets to track room bookings.
These inefficiencies significantly increase IT help desk requests. Technical teams that should focus on strategic initiatives are instead pulled into resolving basic setup issues. When support is unavailable, employees default to makeshift solutions they can manage themselves, often crowding around a single laptop. Meetings conducted this way reduce productivity through poor visibility and limit the performance of AI tools such as transcription, undermining the value of investments in platforms.
The impact of this extends beyond the physical meeting room to remote participants. Poor audio quality poses difficulties for those joining virtually, making discussions harder to follow and resulting in garbled transcripts after the meeting. When this experience is repeated, meetings become more effortful and less engaging for remote attendees.
Each of these problems feeds into the next, quietly eroding productivity and ROI. Understanding these hidden costs is, therefore, critical. IDC’s research outlines how organizations can eliminate them and unlock returns from broader technology investments through improved collaboration environments.
Unlocking ROI Through Strategic AV Investment
While every organization’s environment is different, the solution for solving these money-wasters is consistent: modern collaboration technology. Investing in fit-for-purpose AV and meeting tools addresses these challenges by integrating seamlessly with existing digital investments and maximizing their impact.
For instance, by using integrated solutions such as Microsoft Teams Rooms, this eliminates the authentication, connectivity, and setup delays that plague outdated systems. Users are automatically recognized through existing credentials, removing manual logins, workarounds, and complex instructions that often lead to late starts. As a result, IT teams spend less time troubleshooting, and meeting participants no longer need to cluster around a single laptop to stay connected.
High-quality audio is especially critical for AI-powered tools. By having good collaboration technology, meetings can deliver clear, intelligible sound that enables accurate transcription and allows AI to interpret tone and intent. As Budd notes, “Quality audio lets AI understand not just what people are saying, but how they’re saying it.” Over time, this creates a stronger AI foundation, making AI assistants more reliable and valuable.
With improved audio and video, AI-generated transcripts and summaries become significantly more accurate. This means remote employees spend less time correcting errors or referencing recordings, allowing them to focus on decisions and next steps rather than transcription issues.
Integration with scheduling and room management systems addresses another major drain on productivity: meeting availability and space utilization. With data-driven insights into how rooms are actually used, organizations can make more informed decisions about meeting room utilization.
By resolving these foundational issues, businesses can finally realize ROI across their technology stack. “If you’ve got a great solution implemented,” Heys says, “you should see a lot of these time-wasting issues solved.” This shift does not happen by chance. Organizations that achieve these gains share one trait: decisive action.
The Cost of Standing Still
IDC’s research makes it clear that inaction is not a neutral choice. Delaying investment in modern collaboration tools costs companies far more in the long run than any short-term savings deliver. Each time workflows are slowed or interrupted, the costs of poor collaboration setups compound, quietly eroding efficiency and momentum across the business.
Meanwhile, competitors with up-to-date collaboration infrastructure hold more productive meetings in the same amount of time and extract more value from the same AI tools. This disadvantage intensifies as AI adoption accelerates across industries. Companies operating in high-quality collaboration environments train their AI systems with cleaner data, reinforce reliable workflows, and build adoption habits that strengthen their position over time.
The question isn’t whether to upgrade, but whether you can afford to let competitors pull ahead purely on the strength of their collaboration setup. Every month spent debating this widens the gap as best practices solidify elsewhere and the cost of catching up increases. In markets where agility and innovation define success, collaboration infrastructure has become a competitive differentiator that no strategic organization can afford to ignore.
Download the full whitepaper to learn the seven “money wasters” limiting technology performance and how strategic AV investments unlock true value across your digital workplace.
