Business Info - issue 147

businessinfomag.uk magazine 28 COLLABORATION Turn the clock back less than a decade and the majority of video conferencing was confined to traditional boardrooms, in marked contrast to today when video calls regularly take place in as many as 15 different room environments all with their own technology requirements and challenges. These include: n Personal/Home Offices • Equipment needs to be portable, unobtrusive, easy to use and high quality. • Privacy and personal settings are key (built-in lens cover). • Freedom to choose any meeting app. • Cost-effective (for large volume deployment). • Mobility to support hybrid work between homes and offices. n Focus And Huddle Rooms • Quick set-up for instant, convenient meetings. • Easy to use products. • Camera with wide field of view. • Quality on the same level as formal meeting rooms. • A BYOM (Bring Your Own Meeting) solution to avoid sharing devices since the user brings their own laptop to join and manage meetings. n Large Meeting Rooms • A camera with pan, tilt and zoom to capture every inch of the room. • Best in class audio in both pick-up and sound distribution, with easy expandability. • Ease of use, quality design and a seamless user experience. The changing face of video meetings • Freedom to choose any meeting app. • Hybrid conferencing ability with IP call options. To cut through the conferencing jungle, we’ve created an interactive room type guide (available via Konftel. com) that helps customers pinpoint the optimum set-up and understand the different dynamics of any video meeting scenario. This innovative 3D guide identifies the most appropriate products and connectivity set-up, from personal workspaces, focus and huddle rooms to large multipurpose facilities. Success factors With the hybrid workplace emerging as the new norm, video meetings have become the central resource for collaboration and efficient decision- making. This means that every meeting space, whether at home or in the office, needs to be equipped for instant, easy-to use and high-quality video conferencing. There are many factors involved in achieving successful and consistent video meetings, from room lay out, lighting, power, cabling and broadband reliability to choosing the right type of technology. How often will rooms and equipment be used and by how many people? Even with larger numbers of staff returning to offices, not everyone will be physically present. There will always be people joining by video and those in attendance will need to be socially distanced too, so the use of video meeting rooms will increase and change. This puts pressure on organisations to be ready for current and future workplace demands. Product design At the same time, product design is becoming as important as overall performance.When conferencing technology was adopted to facilitate mass remote work, cameras, video conferencing systems, conference phones, collaboration software all became a permanent fixture of operations. And when technology becomes a permanent part of workers’ lives, they tend to notice it more. Because of how prevalent they’ve become, conferencing systems have morphed into lifestyle devices, blending form and function to achieve seamless, clear, easy collaboration, with hybrid workers relating to them as much for their design as their purpose. Gone are the days when videoconferencing systems were confined to conference rooms and executive offices. Today, video collaboration is normal practice for many more workers – as normal as telephone communication used to be. As the technology becomes near- ubiquitous, aesthetics will matter more than ever. The challenge for organisations is how to support video conferencing and collaboration in more spaces. How do they take a new hybrid office space and incorporate conferencing wherever it is needed – in big and small conference rooms, individual offices, shared offices designed for safe spacing etc.? And how do they ensure the equipment in those rooms has an aesthetic that will improve employees’ relationship with the technology? Konftel has addressed these challenges by making technology design central to the development of all our conferencing products. Sleek, modern easy-to-use technology makes workers more effective. It will play a vital role in the success of the hybrid workplace. konftel.com Jeff May, UK Sales Director at collaboration endpoint solutions specialist Konftel, explains the importance of choice and diversity in an age of hybrid working Jeff May