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The evolutionary shift towards virtual collaboration

Dana Corey, senior vice president at Avocor, discusses how Covid-19 has impacted the evolution of collaboration technology

Early 2020 introduced the greatest movement towards remote work the current labour force has ever experienced. The impact from Covid-19 has forced a shift in the collaboration tech industry and put a spotlight on virtual team collaboration and how it plays a role in maintaining business continuity now and in the future.

Digital transformation is a strategy that corporate and enterprise decision makers have come to embrace more frequently as the use of hardware and software technology to connect teams continues to mature. It is happening globally, and organisations, large and small, are embracing it in order to stay competitive in today’s evolving market.

Collaboration and unified communications technology are a critical part of business plans to support distributed teams. Management teams must be able to implement solutions that seamlessly bring together both remote and in-person team members, to support productivity and long-term success for their organisations.

CONNECT AND SHARE

Collaboration technology, such as interactive displays that provide touch screen capabilities, as well as integration with popular video conferencing software provide the ability to easily connect and share ideas, from wherever people are working – in the home or in the office. They also provide the added ability to share and engage with cloud-based, real-time annotations with (and from) everyone in a meeting and then saving and sending as notes to access afterwards and enhance engagement and teamwork among hybrid groups.

Organisations need to plan for a combination of in-person and remote work styles by investing in reliable collaboration technology that supports a seamless transition between locations. Employees should be able to move from each style of work fluidly, and collaboration and UC technology can support this transition by replicating the in-person experience through video display technology, and vice-versa. Some organisations are even investing to provide employees with interactive displays that function in a home office in the same way a video collaboration display does in a meeting room, allowing for a more dynamic and effective meeting experience.

The right combination of software and hardware technology developed specifically for bringing teams together both in-person and remotely, and the ability to work with any ecosystem of software and hardware partners, is critical to ensuring success and productivity. Whether a meeting is happening physically together in a boardroom, or from several different home offices, teams need to be able to easily access the meeting through video conferencing software.

With UC technology, team meetings are easy to set up and can be started quickly and they encourage confident decision-making, improving and expediting team relationships and even reducing meeting frequency, in turn bolstering productivity and bridging company-wide communication gaps.

COVID IMPACT

The Covid-19 pandemic has put a major emphasis on the essential impact that digital transformation plays in an organization’s overall business strategy implementation. Companies are learning that it is critical to be able to enable employees to communicate effectively from afar, but there are also key components of work-culture that, even with the best intentions, are impossible to completely replicate – but this transition can happen more seamlessly with the implementation of UC technology that supports distributed team collaboration.

For collaboration hardware the potential is immense. What’s become clear is that built-in microphones and cameras on our endpoint devices like laptops and tablets aren’t nearly good enough to rely on for important meetings. That’s given rise to a number of new display innovations that allow for remote collaboration. At Avocor, we have nurtured partnerships with leading software and hardware providers including Google, Zoom, HP, Lenovo, Logitech, Microsoft – Avocor is the first manufacturer to achieve a Teams certified large format interactive display – to create agnostic solutions that flow easily between every type of meeting. These hardware innovations are coupled with a quick rush to upgrade that improve the collaboration platforms on which these devices run.

PLATFORM RELICS

Single platform solutions are a relic of times gone by. User demands due to new product features and enhancements in the collaboration market will essentially make existing single-platform applications useless. Leading players including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Cisco Webex, are continuously releasing new features and upgraded platforms. Meanwhile, a variety of startups are entering the market, and other tech companies like Facebook are entering the video collaboration space for the first time.

All of the lessons we’re learning now will help manufacturers and other solutions-providers in the industry to better understand the specific needs that the modern workplace will entail, including the challenges that come with teams working remotely, and how they can develop new solutions to help mediate these challenges for the immediate future and beyond.