Meetings are now more collaborative than ever before, while the significant increase in remote working is changing the ways in which businesses communicate.
Now with clients, teams and collaborators based all over the world, modern workplaces are having to find dependable ways of keeping everyone connected. Instead of worrying about high travel costs and confusing email trails, businesses are beginning to turn their attention to video conferencing, smart rooms and innovative audio-visual solutions.
Although a recent survey found UK workers spend an average of 13 days a year in ‘unproductive’ meetings, the growing influence of technology is now allowing businesses to provide more creative meeting environments; encouraging participants to not only present new ideas with one another, but to also share, discuss and truly work together.
So, how exactly do these innovative conferencing solutions improve the overall meeting experience?
Encouraging Collaboration and Creativity
Collaboration has become a huge part of the modern workplace, with businesses keen to encourage creativity and teamwork through innovative smart meeting rooms. Using cutting-edge technology and a user-friendly design, smart rooms provide reliable audio-visual solutions to create a truly collaborative environment.
Digital whiteboards allow meeting participants to annotate and edit relevant documents; video conferencing helps teams to share presentations, display visual assets and enjoy face-to-face interaction; digital signage and interactive displays allow them to draw attention to the right content at the right time.
Visual conferencing solutions make it easier and more convenient for teams to work together during meetings, as smart rooms address the common everyday problems experienced in meeting rooms today– and ultimately transform the ways teams collaborate.
Improving Communication
At its heart, modern conferencing technology is all about improving communication and keeping teams connected from anywhere in the world. There’s nothing more exciting than working together, but long email chains and one-way presentations can often lead to misunderstandings, poor communication and wasted time.
Conferencing solutions such as video conferencing, digital whiteboards, video walls and presentation systems allow teams to communicate faster and smarter. Instead of wasting time chasing up old emails, teams can now communicate in ways that best suit them, while visual platforms allow them to pick up on non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and body language.
By allowing participants to share presentations and relevant files at the right time, visual conferencing technology ensures everyone is on the same page and engaged with what’s being discussed; helping meetings become more focused and driven, with clearer agendas and goals in mind.
Increasing Productivity
Meetings have always been essential in allowing teams to collaborate and strengthen their relationships, but research carried out by Harvard Business Review found that 71% of senior managers feel traditional meetings are unproductive and inefficient.
Vague agendas, poor planning and inconvenient travel delays can all lead to huge amounts of wasted time; fortunately, modern conferencing solutions seek to eradicate those problems and ensure that meetings become much more productive. In fact, studies from Wainhouse Research show that 94% of businesses that utilize video technology have seen an increase in productivity.
Since video conferencing so greatly improves communication, this allows teams to come to much faster decisions, with the activity-based workspaces helping them become more engaged in meetings and ultimately keep driving projects forward. By integrating the right technology, you’ll be supporting the ways in which teams wantto work together, significantly reducing the need for travel and allowing employees to focus on the project in-hand.
Enhancing Flexibility and Improving Attendance
Visual conferencing solutions allow team members to join meetings from anywhere in the world. Instead of having to worry about adverse weather conditions and lengthy travel delays, they can participate in meetings through a touch from the palm of their hand; staying connected with the team in a way that best suits them.
By allowing employees to join meetings from multiple devices, you’ll be providing a level of flexibility which makes it much easier for people to actually attend regularly. Through video conferencing and smart rooms, people who would normally be restricted by large travel distances are now able to join meetings as though they were based in the same building.
When it’s easier to regularly get full teams together for meetings, projects can be moved forward much faster and more efficiently, while the improved levels of communication will also help teams produce the best results possible.
