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Q&A on Supporting Productivity in the Workplace

AV Events

Beau Wilder of Poly is an expert in what companies can do to shift their organizations toward the future of work. In the Q&A below, I spoke with Wilder, Poly’s VP of innovation waves and new products, about creating a workplace that enables people to be their best. 

Q: Why is workplace transformation so important?
Wilder: We’re all in this war for talent. The companies winning are the ones recognizing that their most important assets are their people.

We can work anywhere, anytime on any device using UCC technology. Those solutions have allowed work policies to be flexible, so we need spaces where we can make best use of that technology and its capabilities. If you don’t provide those spaces, people will vote with their feet and move on to a better situation.

Q: Considering the ability for people to work from anywhere, how important is the workplace?
Wilder: Even though research shows people are more productive at home, most choose to go back to work because they miss the collaboration. We want people to work together and feel empowered when they’re in the office. It’s that cross-pollination where new thinking happens. We’re always looking for the next big idea, and so we need to make it easier for people in the workplace to work together.

Q: How did the open office take hold as the new template for the workplace?
Wilder: We thrive as humans when we’re outdoors. The open office offers flexibility in creating an environment that mirrors the one outside. In these spaces, we’ve seen huge trends with health and wellness. Biophilic design that includes natural light and greenery sets people up to be their best. When people are happier and healthier, you have more productivity and creative output. But the open office comes with its own set of challenges.

Q: What are some of those challenges?
Wilder: Although companies have raced to open offices, some didn’t do it thoughtfully. It can be hard to work while people are collaborating near you. Therefore, we need to focus on a human-centric design in the office so we can be at our best by using technology that blends distracting speech into the background.

Q: What are the solutions for these challenges?
Wilder: Do your homework ahead of time and bring in your vendor partners early. You’ll also want to include your users in the journey toward workplace transformation. Focus on the human experience above the cost-savings. Collaboration in meeting spaces should be intuitive and easy. When you design for open spaces, consider the activity that will be happening and build in choice that allows for a personalized experience.

Q: What’s a realistic expectation for companies that want to transform their workplaces?
Wilder: Ask targeted questions of your staff. Find out where things aren’t working. As you design open spaces, let the technology do the heavy lifting. 

This process continues even after you’ve made the transformation. Understand that you won’t get your building right from day one. But by collecting data like occupancy and use of technology, you can be proactive in refining it.

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TechBoost Events Reveal Future of Work in Canada

AV Events

Throughout 2019, AVI-SPL Canada is hosting its TechBoost series of networking events that give you access to digital workplace experts and technology providers that improve team productivity and reduce your real estate costs.

At venues across Canada, you’ll learn about the meeting solutions, video collaboration, and enterprise video capabilities that attract and retain talent.

You’ll understand how to apply technology strategies and solutions that increase business agility and results. You’ll also learn how AVI-SPL managed services ensure they measure up to your objectives. We’ve got our complete slate of events scheduled and ready for your registration.

TechBoost Cities in 2019

Join AVI-SPL and select partners as we spend an afternoon exploring the technology and unified communication trends that are facilitating groundbreaking changes to the workplace. Lunch will be served at each event.

Click the links above to register for the TechBoost event you’d like to attend.

Tout au long de 2019, AVI-SPL Canada est l’hôte d’une série d’événements de réseautage sous le nom de Pause-Techno, qui vous donnent accès à des experts en environnement de travail numérique et à des fournisseurs de technologie qui améliorent la productivité des équipes et réduisent les coûts immobiliers.

Partout au Canada, vous découvrirez les solutions de réunion, la collaboration vidéo et les systèmes de diffusion vidéo d’entreprise qui attirent et retiennent les talents.

Vous comprendrez comment appliquer des stratégies et des solutions technologiques qui augmentent l’agilité et les résultats de l’entreprise. Vous apprendrez également comment les services gérés d’AVI-SPL s’assurent qu’ils répondent à vos objectifs. Nous avons notre liste complète d’événements prévus et prêts pour votre inscription.

Pause Techno- Villes en 2019

Rejoignez AVI-SPL, et sélectionnez des partenaires, pendant que nous passons un après-midi à explorer les tendances technologiques et de communication unifiée qui facilitent les changements révolutionnaires dans le monde du travail. Le déjeuner sera servi à chaque événement.

Cliquez sur les liens ci-dessus pour vous inscrire à l’événement TechBoost auquel vous souhaitez participer.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Four Reasons Your Workplace Needs Huddle Rooms

AV Everywhere

With huddle rooms in the workplace, you can promote productivity and teamwork in your organization.  A new AVI-SPL paper looks at issues to consider so that you have huddle rooms that people want to use.

As you work with a partner like AVI-SPL to design, create and deploy your huddle rooms, you can start to gain the support of your stakeholders by making the case that having these flexible collaboration spaces will increase productivity by making it easier to people to work together on demand. Let’s briefly consider what the huddle room is, and then we’ll continue with why it’s important to organizations that want to be part of the future of work.

What Is a Huddle Room?

Think of the huddle room (or huddle space), as an area where people gather to do more than meet; they want to get work done. A huddle room has collaboration technology that allows a group of about 2-5 to gather around a small workstation and work together on content that can share from their personal devices. Technology systems usually include:

These assets make the huddle room much more than a small meeting space. It’s an area equipped for collaborative activities where people can work productively with one another.

Why Your Workplace Needs Huddle Rooms

  1. Collaborate right now.  Maybe your team is about to make a presentation or deliver a training session. You might have just left a meeting and a few members from that group need to work out their deliverables. Or you have colleagues at a remote location who need to share ideas. The huddle room is an ideal spot for team members to get together before an event, review and edit content, and share get the input of team members who’ve connected by video.
  2. People need a space for brainstorming. Doesn’t it seem like the meeting after the meeting is where the real productivity happens? Smaller working groups can use huddle rooms to assess their tasks, consider different plans of attack, and start to offer ideas to the group for further refinement. Connect by video to customers, clients, and colleagues, and your huddle room is a hub of productivity.
  3. Collaborative sessions are more frequent than meetings. Meetings are about sharing updates and assigning tasks. But as mentioned above, the huddle room is where the real work gets done. You’ll have more huddle rooms than conference rooms or training areas, and that’s OK because they take up less space than either.
  4. It’s better together. Your coworkers can complete their assignments faster when the work in teams. Tasks in a project may be dependent on one another, so collaborating face to face can help sort out what others need and expect.

Now that you know why the huddle room is a valuable asset, take a look at our guide to creating huddle rooms that people will use and deliver the benefits you expect.  You’ll learn:

  • How much huddle rooms cost
  • Figuring out how many huddle rooms you need
  • Examples of companies that are using huddle rooms

Get your copy of “How to Create Inspiring, Collaborative Huddle Rooms” >

To view our Partner blog, click here

Video Shows Benefits of AVI-SPL Services Team

AVI-SPL

Thanks to the teamwork and expertise of AVI-SPL technicians throughout four global service operations centers (GSOC) worldwide, AVI-SPL offers businesses 24/7 proactive monitoring and management of their technology to ensure a high-quality experience with meetings and collaboration. You can see and hear those technicians talk about the value they provide in this AVI-SPL video.

From GSOCs in Denver, Philadelphia, UK, and Germany, AVI-SPL uses its Symphony platform to monitor and manage its clients’ AV and UC assets throughout their estate. It also automates their meeting scheduling, launching, monitoring, management and experience. Symphony provides customized analytics that show the frequency of room usage and the quality of the meeting experience so that companies can refine their investments and meet their business goals. 

Watch the AVI-SPL Video of Its GSOC

This video shows that AVI-SPL is much more than a global AV and collaboration systems integrator. We are a digital services provider that makes it easier for organizations to use and manage their solutions. You’ll also get a look at our Customer Experience Center, where you can explore new solutions and see how they would work in your environment. Toward the end of the video, you’ll see statistics that show the positive impact our GSOC support has had for organizations like yours.

Check out the video here, and share it with colleagues and those in your company who want their AV and collaboration systems to be easy to use while bringing people together so they can focus on the meeting, not the technology.

Special thanks to VideoLink’s VL Creative team for creating this video. And thanks to all members of our GSOC teams around the world for helping companies improve their ability to innovate, solve problems, and efficiently take on their daily operations.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Poly’s “Power of Many” Message for Businesses

Alexa for Business

Poly made noise in the AV and workplace collaboration industry this week as it became the new face of the combination of Plantronics and Polycom.

The company is supporting its first marketing campaign, “The Power of Many,” with some high-profile announcements that focus on product integration with technology from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Poly made these announcements while at Enterprise Connect in Orlando.

In the days that followed the rebranding as Poly, the company announced:

The Power of Many

Common to these products is their emphasis on bringing people together, which is the message of Poly’s “Power of Many” campaign. The “power of many” also describes the functions that are brought together in a solution. Systems that combine useful functions are what you might envision when you hear the term “unified communications” — the ability to review one’s calendar, join a meeting, and make video calls from one device.

Along with this versatility, the goal is simplicity, which is key to the user experience of solutions that combine multiple functions. You could say that’s the main appeal of a solution that includes Alexa, making it possible to manage meetings and room devices through voice.

Poly’s solution announcements this week indicate their focus on a positive user experience. Common to each of them:  These solutions integrate with systems that people are comfortable with and want to keep using in a way that isn’t needlessly complex. One phrase on the Poly website touts the ability to “concentrate on ideas in the air, not devices in the room.” When people use workplace collaboration solutions, they shouldn’t notice the technology to an extent that is disruptive. Rather, they should be able to give their attention to the collaboration that the technology is making possible.

As new solutions enable us to do more from more places, companies are wise to incorporate those solutions in the workplace to attract talented people who want to be able to collaborate in a variety of ways and do it on demand.

The solutions that are easiest to use will be the most attractive, as long as they have the capabilities that people expect. Those capabilities are with us in a variety of solution packages. The power of Poly’s message is in its focus on how its solutions make it easier for people to produce the products, ideas, services and innovations that keeps their businesses growing.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Webinar Recording: Creating a Customized Collaboration Space for Any Environment

AV in Meeting Spaces

Learn about the NEC solutions that are designed to improve collaboration between teams in the same workplace and across different locations.  During this on-demand AVI-SPL webinar, Chris Feldman, product manager for NEC Display Solutions, addresses:

  • Roadblocks to incorporating collaboration technology
  • NEC solutions for team collaboration, wireless presentation, and interactive whiteboarding
  • The collaboration challenges solved by NEC’s Mosaic Suite, CB Series, and InfinityBoard.

You’ll also discover how you can choose from NEC’s hardware and software options to create the collaboration solution that works best for your organization.

During the Q&A, Feldman addresses how to save work from a session, typical equipment and capabilities in a huddle room, and the best system to use in a classroom environment.

Get the recording for “Creating a Customized Collaboration Space for Any Environment” >

To view our Partner blog, click here