Investments in audiovisual systems are often significant. The hardware can carry a large price tag, and the bigger or more complex the system is, the more labor required to integrate everything together. However, this technology is essential to the way most of us do business.
Collaboration and communication tools have reduced travel expenses and increased speed in delivery. System automation gives consistency in use across locations and keeps technical support for the typical operations to a minimum. For many organizations, the reliance on this type of technology has been elevated directly into the culture — it’s how work gets done and business stays competitive.
One interesting thing about technology is how its use can change our process. Due to the investment typically made in these systems, many of us change the way we do business to fit the available tech, rather than deploying and configuring rooms to fit the way the organization works. This is where the real value in capturing technology usage data can become incredibly beneficial to business leaders.
With most audio-visual devices today network-enabled, there’s no real reason not to capture usage information — especially when most devices are controlled over the network anyway. This data tells a story about how each room is used, and equally important, how each room is not used.
Looking at each piece of hardware, you may find actionable trends. Perhaps you had been deploying video endpoints into every conference room in your facility. A look at room use might show that your smaller meeting rooms aren’t making use of this technology, likely in favor of soft codecs such as Zoom or Skype. Moving forward, you could save the spend on endpoints for your smaller spaces, and the endpoints that are deployed in existing rooms could be removed and redeployed elsewhere.
Looking at overall room use can provide interesting stories as well. Looking at usage can reveal that certain types of rooms are booked much more frequently than others. Perhaps your huddle spaces are constantly in use, but your larger rooms are hardly used. You might make a case to convert a larger room into multiple smaller rooms to help fill that demand or use this information for future space planning designs.
Or you may find there’s a different reason those rooms aren’t being used. You might discover that the system in larger rooms is too complicated for everyday use, or that there is a lack of training on how to operate it. Both are dilemmas that can easily be solved for.
The point is, if you aren’t minding the data, there is a good chance you’re overpaying for your conference, collaboration, and automation technology. Have questions or want to talk about how to collect data on your rooms? Reach out!
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