Technology to Lead Business Collaboration: “Future of Meetings” Research by Barco and Savanta

New-age collaborative technology is at the core of stronger business relations and improves turnaround for enterprises by minimising the waste of time and human resources during inefficient meetings. Indian meeting rooms and professionals are more adaptive to disruptive technology compared to the global scenario according to “The Future of Meetings” white paper launched by Barco ClickShare, in association with independent research agency Savanta which shows that 83% of Indian employees carry at least two devices into the meeting room as against 72% globally.

The research found that the most ardent users of technology, in India and globally, include Baby Boomers and Millennials and that the laptop is the most common device in use. The survey saw participation from over 1,500 white-collar professionals across Europe, the US, China, India and the Pacific, aged between 21 and 65, and emphasized that technology is at the heart of great meetings and the arena is set to be revolutionised with further innovations.

The clear preference for technology becomes even stronger when it comes to smaller organisations in India, with 100% Small and Medium Enterprises and 97% of mid-sized and large firms adopting technological innovations in a big way. In comparison, 78% of employees at SMEs and 89% of those who work for large firms, globally, prefer technology in meeting rooms. Technology is a major boon to smaller businesses, such as SMEs as it enables them to manage their business efficiently through better collaboration and faster turnaround time.

Commenting on the findings of the research, Mr Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, Barco Electronics Systems Pvt. Ltd said, “The workplace of today has undergone a revolution aided by new age technologies and it continues to evolve at a fast pace. At Barco India, we believe that better meetings mean better business, across all domains. Real specialists ae necessary to bring forth actual solutions in our complex world, making collaboration crucial in any business context. Collaborations function seamlessly through visual assistance and that is where Barco’s visual collaboration solutions for meeting rooms step in, resulting in better handling of operations and improved return on investment for the enterprises.”

He added, “India is in a digital transformation and modernization phase, aided by technological advances. Barco’s collaborative solutions, including ClickShare and wePresent products, deliver the finest image quality and highest reliability. These solutions enable people to work together in an easy and natural way through collaborative technology and content visualization management. Barco is empowering businesses, both small and big, to enhance the efficiency of meetings and collaborations, thus driving brighter outcomes.”

Collaborative technology boosts productivity while enhancing the quality of the interaction through remote connectivity and faster turnaround time. Accounting for the number of meeting attendees, the average salary cost and the minutes per meeting lost brings forth the hidden cost of meeting inefficiency, which can be solved with technology. Collaborative innovations enable the enterprise to start saving by creating a new meeting culture and investing in easy-to-use meeting room tech which lead to long-term ROI for the company.

Technology has made meetings better

Meetings today are better than they were five years ago, with technology at the heart of this transformation. Meeting attendees are confident about using digital technologies and overwhelmingly prefer meetings that use technology. Nearly all employees take their own tech devices with them to meetings – over one in ten take four separate pieces of tech.

Technology facilitates shorter, smaller meetings

The working population prefers

meetings that are short, with few people in them. Meetings are better when visual solutions such as large built-in displays, screen sharing and video are key drivers of engagement. The research found that plug-and-play solutions are the future of meetings.

Technology in meetings is crucial, as the majority of participants (60%) say that meetings are now remote – either partially or fully. This shifting balance is strongly linked to increases in flexible working, with the number of remote workers having increased 115% during the last decade. The majority (87%) in India expect the proportion of meetings with only remote attendees to increase in the next three years, which is much higher than the global average of 74%.
Increasing pace of change

Over 90% of the participants in the survey want to see voice recognition in meetings within the next two years. They are also looking forward
to video filters, hand-gesture control, AR, VR and bots to be commonplace in meetings within the next three years. This will improve remote collaboration, enable more efficient meeting management, and increase engagement. Organizations that are slow to recognize and react to these evolving employee demands risk being left behind.