Meet and collaborate without travelling

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Introducing the collaboration hub thinking: navigating a world of uncertainty with minimal or even travel-free life

The business world is progressively finding its way to a new normal, fighting to maintain productivity and, above all, encourage collaboration and human interactions within and between teams, partners and customers. With new outbreaks and alert colors of countries changing daily, we are still in a precarious situation. The first significant shift we can see is that the home office has become a common and encouraged practice. Indeed, 88% of organizations have encouraged or required their employees to work from home and 91% of teams in Asia Pacific have implemented ‘work from home’ arrangements since the outbreak(1). And, it seems to be here to stay, as 74% of companies plan to permanently shift to more remote work post COVID-19 (2).

The culture of meetings is changing

The second important shift for businesses is the constraints and lack of appetite to travel. In times of uncertainty, there will be a rise of scattered workforces with growing collaboration technology savviness; the culture of meetings is changing. So, it is time to think harder about what work will look like in the future, what employees expect from their workplace post pandemic, and what we can do to anticipate the new way of working. At Cyviz, we firmly believe that collaboration and meeting between people are fundamental to accomplishing work. Being able to physically stand up, walk around, point to a screen, rearrange content or watch the reactions in the room are conducive factors of collaboration as we know it. So how can we use collaboration technology to bridge the physical void created by the pandemic?

A new hybrid model for collaboration

The meetings (or people interactions) of the future are calling for a new hybrid model combining remote working and office presence. Our proposition goes even further suggesting the investment in central, designated collaboration hubs in charge of leading the meetings for people physically present and people remotely engaged. These hubs need to be designed to connect to other locations, to satellite offices and with remote workers. The suggested hybrid model goes beyond the idea of a simple video conference call. The core meeting would be in a hub room, which can connect with another location, set up with same type of room functionality, connecting different teams with complementary skillsets. This hybrid model effectively bridges the distance that travel would have resolved in the past, whilst delivering an experience as close to face-to-face as possible.

People will continue to meet and collaborate

As businesses progressively find their way back to the office, with restrictions on the number of people allowed in one space, or with rotation schedules of staff, the idea of collaboration hubs become important. With collaboration hubs in central locations, hosting a limited number of people in the room to drive the meeting or brainstorming session, offers a new interactive and truly engaging model worth investing in. Not just for the business, but for the people. We know that as employees return to the office, organizations should expect that 75% of their staff will ask to expand their remote work hours by 35% (3). Hence, it is an idea that will engage those confined to their homes, working shift hours or in remote locations, as well as boost morale and the feeling of belonging, to create a common understanding across geography and teams.

We see collaboration tailing digitalization closely for those tasked to deliver outstanding results, take decisions, and solve complex problems. The trend is clear, focus on the task and make sure you have all the resources needed to do so. It may be in the oil and gas world where operations or drilling activities need to operational at any cost, in security incident management for those guarding the network or in a board meeting. The key difference is that it is everyone doesn’t have to be in the same room.

Our proposition is clear: collaboration as a concept – not just conducting meetings

True, engaging and problem-solving collaboration is more than ever needed to keep businesses and institutions afloat in times of uncertainty, and it requires unique tools and technology. Cyviz’ core collaboration hubs come with video walls that can be interactive, touch-enabled and allowing unlimited sources of content to be interacted with in real time. They create the perfect canvas to lead a meeting, and to visualize information and data. These hubs are also integrated fully with unified communication, audio, camera and building management systems, to offer the best in class face-to-face-like interactions quality. The solutions are critical investments that don’t need to be deployed everywhere. When deployed in key locations, one hub can be enough to bridge gaps in collaboration and to solve problems. The quality of collaboration and the richness of functionality serves to enable and engage without the need to be present.

The Cyviz core collaboration hubs packages:

Scalable and designed to fit any size of collaboration rooms, including boardrooms. They are typically built on a set of expandable core components:

• The Cyviz Easy Platform
• Seamless and high-quality video wall technology
• Premium connectivity with audio, camera and building management systems
• Unified Communication integration
• Software & application-agnostic
• Remote support & maintenance

Sources:

(1) Gartner, Coronavirus in Mind: Make Remote Work Successful! 5 March 2020

(2) Gartner, What CIOs Need to Know About Managing Remote and Virtual Teams through the COVID-19 Crisis

(3) Gartner, COVID-19 Bulletin: Executive Pulse, 3 April 2020

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