Redefining collaboration spaces with AI
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a major rethink within business communication. All around the world, organisations came to realise just how important smooth and easy comms are to operations and collaboration. And as hybrid working has emerged as a long-term solution, the businesses that have invested in digital transformation and online means of communication have found themselves best-placed for success.
For example, by 2021, Microsoft Teams had reached a total of 145 active daily users with a record 2.7 billion meeting minutes, over 10 times the amount of users it had registered just two years previously, pre-pandemic. Technology is now central to keeping businesses and employees connected – but making it work in practice can be easier said than done
Barriers to modern communication
Because businesses had to change their approach to collaboration so quickly at the advent of the pandemic, many didn’t have the time to put the right underlying technology in place. This means that their ‘sticking plaster’ solutions through lockdown have proved increasingly unsuitable as long-term strategies, rendering many meeting room video solutions unsuitable for the new hybrid world. Some different reasons include:
- Outdated equipment: any legacy issues with hardware or meeting room environments have been exacerbated now that video meetings take place much more often. These can include poor camera placement, inadequate microphone pickup, bad lighting and background noise. Many cloud platforms have also been designed to work with native room solutions rather than on laptops in remote settings
- Lack of technical expertise: if end users aren’t sure how to run the software and hardware they’re provided with, then they’ll struggle to run and participate in virtual meeting rooms properly. The increased use of cloud, and wider distribution of working locations, has complicated matters further
- Inadequate reporting capabilities: if automated reporting isn’t in place, then any issues with call quality, software and hardware problems, or human error have to be recorded manually. This relies on users being diligent and proactive enough to report faults so that they can be resolved
- Wasted resources: any difficulties in meeting set up can waste employee time, cause them to seek other options leading to solutions being under-utilised, as well as contributing to negative employee experience
Meet the AI meeting room
One of the biggest problems that emerges in hybrid video meetings is when some employees connect through meeting rooms in the office. These offices generally weren’t designed for video calls, and so audio, video and user experiences are often sub-optimal. Believe it or not, the answer to this difficult challenge lies in artificial intelligence.
AI-powered meeting rooms use the latest technology to make virtual and physical collaboration equally seamless, even when meetings consist of a combination of the two. This technology can include speech recognition, real-time translation, call quality analysis, meeting workflow capturing and much more. The result is that every attendee in every meeting can play a meaningful part in the discussion and collaborate without stress and difficulty, wherever they’re connecting from.
Further benefits of AI meeting rooms include:
- Improved audio: AI can be used to filter out any background noise from calls through active noise cancellation and acoustic fencing, making it easier for attendees to hear and understand each other. It can also identify individual speakers and automatically attribute transcripts and notes to different people
- Improved video: the use of virtual backgrounds, face framing and higher-quality imaging means visual experiences are enhanced for all. AI can also identify individual users, track moving presenters, and support separate video feeds for each attendee within a meeting room
- Captioning and note-taking: different speakers can automatically be captioned so that all attendees can refer back to information and collect relevant notes
- Automated reporting: insights can be generated to improve meeting efficiency in the future, with real-time call quality analysis helping IT staff resolve any issues that emerge
Take the step towards AI meeting rooms with SCC
At SCC, we’ve made considerable investment into developing and procuring the best AI meeting room technology around, so that we can deliver bespoke solutions that perfectly fulfil your specific needs and use cases.
With our help, we can apply the right solutions in the right environments, along with monitoring and management of all applications and technologies to maintain optimal meeting experiences in the long term. From our implementation roadmap and customer-centric model, to our enterprise-class multi-tenant service platform, you’ll get all the expertise and support you need to continually adapt as your hybrid strategy evolves. What’s more, we’ll make sure that your solution is easy to use for all your workforce, and generates a real return on investment.
If you’d like to find out more on our game-changing AV services to enhance your digital workplace, explore them in detail here, then get in touch with the SCC team to discuss.