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Revolution in the workplace; how AI is transforming collaborative work

Oblong’s VP EMEA, Mary Ann de Lares Norris explores how future-thinking enterprises can harness next-generation technology – from AI to immersive collaboration tools

Oblong’s VP EMEA, Mary Ann de Lares Norris explores how future-thinking enterprises can harness next-generation technology – from AI to immersive collaboration tools – to help the workforce deliver maximum business impact

In today’s globalised world, the increasing pace and complexity of business demands the absolute best workplace collaboration, data visualization and intelligence that technology can offer. Because work is changing, workplace tech needs to change too, and enterprises must deliver solutions that adapt to its evolving requirements.

Modern meeting demands 

Much of our work today is done collaboratively, in meetings, from smaller huddle groups, larger briefing sessions, periodic brainstorms, and connected teleconferences. The different dynamics of these meetings require that the technology underpinning these meetings must flex to support the variations, and provide everything from multi-screen live content streams to the seamless delivery of information-on-demand for a productive team experience.

The traditional meeting, with everyone gathering in one room with one large screen to sit through a presentation is clearly outdated. Knowledge workers are bringing laptops, tablets and smartphones to meetings to take notes (or videos) and to reference work in real-time. With the right technology they can share data instantly for everyone to see. The most sophisticated and productive collaboration rooms provide participants with the means to share data simultaneously, utilize the most intuitive controls like gesture and/or touch, and instantly access the answers they need. When collaborators share a united workspace, regardless of their location – meetings are more engaging, enlightening and immersive.

AI can be leveraged to surface the most relevant data points across large sets of structured and unstructured data

Embracing the cognitive approach

Artificial Intelligence is becoming progressively more relevant to the enterprise. To solve our biggest business problems, and to manage the proliferation of new and essential data sources, we need to both see and share better information, faster. This is where AI comes in. Cognitive computing brings that unbiased expert resource into the meeting. Most often in the form of a chatbot or query tool, AI can be leveraged to surface the most relevant data points across large sets of structured and unstructured data.

Cognitive computing, particularly when combined with spatial computing, delivers an immersive data-rich environment for visualizing and navigating information streams in three dimensions, simultaneously. When collaborators can see data streams side-by-side, when they can reconfigure them on the fly and use their own collective brain power plus the power of AI to analyse them in real-time, more reliable and accurate outcomes are achieved.

When AI gets a seat at the table where important conversations happen, when you transform meeting rooms into cognitive rooms, you harness the power of the team by changing the nature of the team to more easily surface insights and deliver results.

The future of work: How AI is changing the landscape

Artificial Intelligence is becoming progressively more relevant to the enterprise. To solve our biggest business problems, and to manage the proliferation of new and essential data sources, we need to both see and share better information, faster. This is where AI comes in. AI makes sense of all the unstructured data to deliver it in a way that humans can understand.

AI removes many mundane, transactional tasks and frees up time for employees

AI removes many mundane, transactional tasks and frees up time for employees to focus on the creative, macro-level, or big picture work. Workplace collaboration technology needs to respond to the evolution in the workplace engendered by AI: solutions must be immersive, fast, visually beautiful, innovative, adaptive and future-proof. Whereas yesterday’s notion of advanced collaboration technology might be a video teleconference system where we can see and hear each other, today’s is defined by our collective ability to immerse at once in the myriad of information we all bring to the table.

Smart enterprises will need to embrace the power of AI and free up their team members to engage in higher-order creative work—with technology that empowers and emboldens them to think outside the box.