Today’s guest author is Dana Corey, GM/VP of Sales for Avocor. Dana is an experienced technical sales, marketing, and operations executive successful at building high-performance sales teams and leading sophisticated organizations with P&L responsibility in the B2B electronics market. Dana is a strategic visionary with domestic and international experience in strategic planning and execution of multi-faceted global business development campaigns designed to improve market share. His experience includes a proven track record of increasing sales and profitability, meeting deadlines, managing budgets, and handling multiple tasks and projects for renowned technology companies such as Prysym, Barco, and Folsom Research.
Digital transformation was a trend before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has faced a resurgence of interest due to the workplace changes we met last year. This article explores how the technology supporting digital transformation must continue to evolve to support hybrid work.
The term ‘digital transformation’ paints a broad brush. At its core, digital transformation is the deployment of technology to change how people work to streamline efficiencies. Currently, organizations are adopting new digital tools and processes to support remote teammates better.
As the COVID-19 vaccine continues to roll out, there is an expectation that offices will fully reopen. While some companies have opted to implement a hybrid or fully remote mode, others, such as Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, previously announced their plans to bring teams back to the physical office. Some organizations, including Google, changed their plans again after the latest Omicron variant news.
Technology’s Role in the Post-COVID Workplace
Now more than ever, it’s critical to assess how the workplace must shift and how technology will play a role. Many executive teams have been preparing for this return to the office for months, while others are still developing plans. Regardless of timing, the notion of how the office itself will need to change remains an important consideration. The meeting rooms and spaces that employees will return to must look much different than the ones they left.
While the option to work remotely will still exist for many companies (as it did pre-pandemic), in-person collaboration continues to be the benefit that employees miss most about the office. According to a survey by Microsoft on hybrid work, more than 65 percent of those surveyed are craving more in-person time with their teams to collaborate. The new workplace requires a digital-first enterprise that seamlessly supports how teams work, meet, and connect – from anywhere.
Keep teams connected with Avocor and Microsoft Teams
Top 3 Considerations for Digital Transformation in the Modern Workplace
1. Seamless collaboration is critical to long-term workplace success – technology supports this.
The last year taught us that remote work is possible on a large scale, but it’s the in-person collaboration and connection that teams miss the most. Leaning on physical office space for in-person collaboration – whether they’re small group brainstorming sessions or larger, stand-up meetings – will become more critical than ever before. Regardless of location, employees must walk into any meeting room or workspace and quickly get to work collaborating with fellow team members without a lot of setup time.
Installing display technology for meeting spaces that supports features like the ability to show cloud-based real-time annotations in a meeting with (and from) everyone on a call, and then saving and sending the meeting’s ideas and edits make it easy to connect in-person teams with those working from home, across campus, or across the globe. They also foster a sense of connectivity by eliminating siloed conversations and meetings that are happening in-person with those who still opt to remain remote. Technology will be a critical tool to supporting this flexible workstyle.
Interactive displays are the most robust and impactful way to ensure that the in-person collaboration that teams have craved for so long can happen effectively.
2. Workplace technology must bridge the gap between the home and physical office with ease.
Remote work will still be an important benefit for many. However, the back-and-forth between the home and physical office also can potentially disrupt both employee workflow and organizational AV/IT maintenance.
The best approach is to develop a digital transformation strategy that:
- supports plug-and-play technology,
- has native integration for the increasing the number of enterprise services and platforms that employees use; and
- offers cloud-based maintenance and support
Employees should be able to move from each style of work fluidly. For example, suppose someone is in an in-person collaboration session in the office in the AM and at home working in the PM.
Those team members should be able to carry a single laptop device from each location and plug it into any room to start a meeting – wherever those collaboration sessions occur. Collaboration and UC technology can enable this seamless transition by replicating the in-person experience through video display technology and vice-versa.
3. With office real estate being evaluated more closely than ever before, include analytics and data in your digital transformation strategy.
Commercial real estate and office space are at a premium, from the basic cost per square foot to the amount it costs to manage those spaces. Decision makers are taking a hard look at what kind of physical workspace they will need to have long-term.
Organizations are looking to invest in the most prudent tools that enable communication and collaboration from anywhere. Data that helps decision makers better understand how employees now use meeting places will inform their long-term return-to-work strategies.
Analytics and data have always been essential components of decision-making for the enterprise. Workspace intelligence analytic solutions built into workplace hardware, such as meeting room displays, allow enterprise decision-makers to take immediate action.
This data helps leaders re-evaluate meeting room, UC hardware, and software ROI and guide future planning. Analytics will become even more critical for return-to-work planning to ensure operational efficiency and employee comfort and confidence.
For organizations that are still making decisions on when and how they will return to the physical workplace, it is important to consider how the workplace will need to be supported by technology.
Employee expectations around technology have changed. Enterprise decision-makers should plan a digital transformation strategy now that encompasses the specific needs of the new, collaborative workplace to ensure business continuity and employee satisfaction.
For assistance with deploying the technology to enable your hybrid workplace, contact AVI-SPL today.
