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Webinar Recording: How to Manage Your Classroom or Conference Room Technology

AV in Meeting Spaces

Whether you’re in a corporate conference room or a higher education classroom, it can be a challenge to manage different devices in one room as efficiently as possible while also maximizing the potential of the source and display content.

We’ll try to help you solve these challenges during this AVI-SPL/Harman webinar, “How to Manage Your Classroom or Conference Room Technology.”  Our host and panelists discuss:

  • The technology you need inside and outside the classroom to support remote work
  • The necessary ingredients to an exceptional video conferencing experience
  • How to tie together collaboration systems for a seamless experience that’s easy to manage
  • Use cases for different kinds of switches that transfer content

Stephen Bogart of Harman and Laurie Berg of AVI-SPL will walk you through technologies that aid in the conference room, including AMX Acendo Vibe, AMX DVX 4K60 presentation switcher, and AVI-SPL Symphony. The presenters also answer questions about the future of remote work and huddle rooms, and the difference between Symphony and other monitoring solutions.

Get the recording for “How to Manage Your Classroom or Conference Room Technology” >

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Coronavirus Highlights Value of Remote Work

AV Everywhere

With the recent news of the coronavirus dominating world headlines, this is a good opportunity to evaluate your company’s emergency plans. We’ve already seen the effects of the virus, also known as COVID-19, on the global markets. On Thurs, Feb. 27, the Dow fell almost 1,200 points, its highest one-day point drop in history. Much of that is being attributed to the effect of the virus on supply and demand. As a result, some of the largest companies in the world are restricting their employees’ business travel while also allocating more resources for virtual work. 

At around the 3:40 mark of this TechCrunch podcast, the speakers discuss Zoom and its ascent in price from the low $70s just a month ago to reaching over $120 in early trading on Friday, Feb. 28. That notable rise is occurring as video conferencing has become not just attractive but necessary. The TechCrunch discussion notes a number of major conferences – including Facebook’s F8 – that have been cancelled out of caution against the coronavirus.

Whether the cause is a virus, natural disaster, or some other disruptive event: How you will handle interruptions and minimize a negative impact to your business?

Uninterrupted Workforce Collaboration

Branch office locations need to function even if a main office is closed, and employees need a reliable, agile collaboration environment to enable them to work from home without missing a step.  AVI-SPL’s digital workplace solutions can ensure your workplace has the collaboration tools to handle any challenge and keep your talent and operations connected even amidst a crisis like the one we’re currently facing. 

By deploying a solution such as Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex Teams, your workforce can continue to communicate regardless of distance or time zone.  These platforms also provide video conferencing to enhance the collaboration experience.  Popular cloud-based solutions like Zoom and Pexip can be easily integrated with these collaboration platforms.

A Better User Experience of Collaboration Technology

Some offices may have to close because of an event like the coronavirus.  But that circumstance only underscores the need to support those offices that are still open for business. AVI-SPL Symphony enables you to keep your operations functioning and your workforce productive – even when some of them can’t be at the office.

You can remotely monitor and control all collaboration technology from any of your locations. By leveraging Symphony, either as a managed service or Symphony as a Service, organizations can manage their meeting scheduling and launching. They can also monitor their meeting health status while it’s in progress by monitoring connection status and giving staff the information they need to provide in-meeting support without being in the room. You will know what rooms and devices are ready for use and can make fixes before the participants are impacted.

Be Prepared – And Reap the Benefits at the Same Time

Digital workplace collaboration can’t just be part of a contingency plan in the face of rare – we hope — emergencies. This is the way we work today, and it’s a big reason why companies can so easily expand into locations and markets and attract the talent that drives their success.

How can you ensure that your investment in collaboration is having the desired impact? The key is having the data. AVI-SPL Symphony provides tactical and strategic business intelligence through analytics as customized insight through Build Your Own Reports. You can then make informed decisions about room construction/repurposing, technology refreshes, and addressing issues like technology adoption.

Not only will you gain more insight into your environment, but AVI-SPL digital workplace solution deployments will help your organization save time and money.  In 2018, Forrester Consulting’s “Total Economic Impact of AVI-SPL’s Digital Workplace Solutions” found a meeting productivity increase worth $11.9M over three years for a large enterprise organization, and savings of 122,500 hours per year due to meetings that start on time.  In an uncertain economic environment, these savings will help your organization maintain its agility to meet the ever-changing climate.   

While we all hope that no emergencies ever impact our offices, events like the coronavirus bring into sharp relief the value of collaboration technology. Build your digital workplace, and your company will have more than a set of just-in-case tools; it will be equipped to compete in today’s business environment by empowering your people to share the ideas and create the value that leads to growth.

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See the Real-World Impact of AVI-SPL Symphony

AVI-SPL

We know that AVI-SPL Symphony improves your collaboration experience. Now we’re excited to share real-world statistics from one of our clients to demonstrate how large that improvement can be.

The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) relies heavily on distance education and online collaboration to overcome the challenges in delivering education across such a vast region. Our RMIT case study explained the positive impact that Symphony had on the user experience and the support staff.

Since that study, an audit of the Institute’s 2019 data found:Issues RMIT resolved with AVI-SPL Symphony

  • 580 auto-detected faults
  • 761 proactively resolved critical tickets
  • 30% fewer client-led tickets

These led to the following savings:

  • 380 teaching hours
  • 1,160 classes and events
  • 750 tech hoursTeaching and tech support hours RMIT saved with AVI-SPL Symphony

Overall, Symphony has helped nearly 32,000 students and faculty avoided a negative impact.  This impact avoidance increases end user confidence and adoption of the technology provided – thus increasing ROI of the environment. 

These results provide evidence of the improved user experience that attracts and keeps talented students and faculty engaged with each other and enhances the ability to reliably collaborate across locations. By ensuring that its collaboration technology is available and ready for use, RMIT has experienced overall adoption increases and collaboration satisfaction.

 

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Why You Need Actionable Business Intelligence to Develop Your Workplace Strategy

actionable business intelligence

When you’re developing a workplace technology strategy these days, you have a million aspects to consider:

  • Is the technology accessible to the entire workforce across generational, geographic, and cultural boundaries?
  • Is it easy to use, intuitive, and sophisticated – but not intimidating?
  • Does it provide instant, usable data (not just a flood for the sake of data)?

You have a variety of methods available to figure out this strategy: Survey your population and hope you asked the right questions and that it gets completed accurately; stake out your conference rooms and record what goes on for a month; find a consultant who may or may not be versed in your particular needs.AVI-SPL Symphony Analytics screenshot

Business technology investments are too important to just throw up your hands and settle for a solution that may not meet the needs of your team.  We’ve designed AVI-SPL Symphony to provide the type of data that you need, the actionable business intelligence that will make a real difference in how you design, deploy, and manage your collaboration environment.

Actionable business intelligence – what Symphony provides – enables evidence-based decision making that translates into effective communication, collaboration, and unlocks real business value.  It’s not a single report or a bunch of statistics: It’s a daily observance of what works, what doesn’t, and what engages your workforce. This long-term data allows you to track the changes in employee behavior with experimental equipment, see which manufacturer’s equipment is preferred (and which causes the most trouble), and determine the load that collaboration is placing on your larger network.

Employee preferences depend a lot on your workforce composition – age, gender, and location, among other factors.  Often, the preferences in one locality don’t extend to others, leaving you with the possibility of supporting multiple types of equipment or standardizing on technology that leaves some users out.  With Symphony’s analytics you can find those few items everyone agrees on and utilize them as the basis for building a collaboration solution that meets end user preferences and provides you with standards for the corporate environment.

Root cause analysis is invaluable for a variety of different applications for both your IT team and your AV team.  Are jitter or poor performance caused by network issues or bad design choices?  Is the network functioning, but your AV or UCC are configured incorrectly?  Is your network great, but suboptimal equipment choices in your AV are causing a poor user experience?  Without finding the real cause of any issue or set of issues, countless hours and dollars can be spent without improving the quality.  Actionable business intelligence ensures that you can narrow in on the root cause of an issue, spending less time and resources spinning your wheels.

Symphony isn’t just a tool in your toolbox – it is a complete solution to the challenge of excellent user experiences with collaboration technologies.  Actionable business intelligence gleaned from the deployment of Symphony on your networks will enable you to spend less time and effort while still receiving a better end user experience. 

Contact us for a demo today. You can also demo these features at ISE 2020 at AVI-SPL booth 11-C155.

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Create Your Ideal Workplace With AVI-SPL

AV Everywhere

In this video, you’ll see why AVI-SPL is the company you can trust to deliver a workplace strategy that meets positive business outcomes that are measurable. We do it through AV and collaboration technology solutions and services we integrate into your environment. The result is a better user experience, which means better engagement with the projects that lead to your success.

Watch the video below:

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