How COVID-19 Has Impacted the Evolution of Collaboration Technology

This year introduced the greatest movement towards remote work the current labor 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 organizations, 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 for years to come. Management teams across the enterprise market must be able to implement solutions that support seamlessly bringing together both remote and in-person team members, to support productivity and long-term success for their organizations.

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.

Organizations 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 organizations 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 board room, 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.

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.

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.

Original article from Telecom Reseller