Author: Ubiq

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Are Your Meetings Productive Enough?

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Calling a business meeting shouldn’t be met with sighs and groans from your team. Any sense of time being wasted can impact their levels of efficiencies and performance. Just like you, your team has their set priorities and they want to be as productive as possible while at work.
As a leader, your meetings should be informative and engaging. They should present opportunities to have two-way conversations and exchange ideas. Your team members work everyday to support the company in reaching its goals. Your work should also be to support them.
How to Ensure Your Meetings are Productive:

  1. Purpose: Any gathering should have a purpose, whether it’s to share company updates or to check in with individuals to see how they are doing. That purpose should be clear to you as well as each team member. It will set the right expectation for when you do meet.
  2. Agenda. An agenda is an outline of what should be covered during a meeting. Again, you want to set the right expectation. You and your team should be as prepared as they can be. Presenting an agenda before the meeting gives everyone a chance to put together feedback and questions. It helps to make meetings run smoothly and more efficiently.
  3. Time. If your meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes, keep it to 30 minutes. Team members have set roles, responsibilities and priorities that they need to attend. It’s very easy for a meeting to become a distraction to their workflow. As much as your team should respect your time, you should also respect theirs. Remind yourself of the meeting’s purpose and follow your agenda. If the discussion goes off on a tangent, reel it back in! If you see you’re going over your scheduled time, it may be necessary to schedule another meeting. Check with the team. There are a few things we do at Ubiq, we ensure that wireless presentation is used so we don’t have to waste time with cables. Secondly, the organizer of the meeting would integrate their calendar to ensure that the meeting is run on time, and won’t go overtime.
  4. Action. Your meetings should be conversations. There’s nothing worse than leaving a meeting confused and not knowing what to do. As you share feedback and ideas, you should look at what is meant to come out of the meeting. Work with the team to create actionable items as “next steps.” Reinforce the purpose and make sure everyone is clear and is aligned with who should work on what items. We use Asana to document all actionable items, and make sure that everyone is accountable for their tasks.
  5. Follow-Up. The follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself. Your meeting may be over, but there is still more to do. Recap your discussion in an email. This includes the purpose, the agenda, anything missed and scheduling a next session, if necessary. In addition to the recap, meet with team members individually and as a group to check on progress on those actionable items, gauge their sense of motivation and performance and ask them questions. Your meeting doesn’t end conversations. You need to continue to sincerely engage with the team, as it will demonstrate how productive your meetings are.

Meetings are meant to be informative and conversational. Whether it’s a presentation or a project status check, you and your team should work together to make sure goals and expectations are being met. Clear communication, sharing and follow-up will help teams stay on task and be motivated. That motivation will increase productivity and performance across the team, and hopefully across the company.

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How to Reduce Stress on Your IT Department

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Is your IT department the life force of your organization? It may very well be! From your WiFi connection to figuring out how the new printer works, your IT department is continuously working on projects and tasks to support every individual in your company. No matter the size, the work can be stressful and put a strain on resources.
The impact of stress on your IT department can lead to decreased employee motivation, increased turnover and inefficient support. It can also create a backlog or overflow of requests, creating a risk of mismanagement. Without proper IT support, other departments can suffer if work cannot be performed or tools do not properly function.
5 Ways to Reduce Stress on Your IT Department:
1. IT Ticketing System. Having an IT ticketing system, allows users to submit trackable support requests. That means, your help desk teams spend less time on the phone trying to walk through issues and more time attending to the root causes. Many systems allow priority setting with transparency. Therefore, both the user and the ticket assignee can work together and communicate under the appropriate expectations until a matter is resolved. Less priority items can have quicker turnaround times and higher priority items can have the right people working through the problem.
2. Knowledge Database. For users seeking basic hardware/software assistance, having a knowledge database can provide faster solutions. Product manuals, quick step-by-step guides or frequently asked questions can be valuable resources for your colleagues. Making them searchable on your company’s Intranet brings information directly to them without having to go to IT, unless it’s necessary.

3. Assign by Specialty. Your IT department is a talent pools from coders to network operators. By assigning team members to projects and support tasks based on their expertise will deliver a subject matter expert into the discussion. It also can improve efficiencies related to that specialty, rather than leaving it in the hands of an IT generalist or just someone who happens to be available.
4. Resource Management. Map out your employees’ work. As your team is working through projects and help desk tickets, look at how their time is being managed. If some team members are being overworked, do you have others to whom those tasks can be delegated? While working with project managers, ask for their feedback on how IT is performing. If it seems that your team is being overextended, see where you can find support by adding another team member or having employees reassigned.
5. Checking In. Your team needs you, as much as you need them. Communicate with them to ask how they are feeling at work and in general. If you find a gap in performance or motivation, work with them to uncover ways to be productive for them and you. It could range from tapping into their specialty, providing more opportunities for professional development or just shifting assignments. From that open dialogue, take the opportunity to reflect about your management style as well as how to optimize and support your team.
Your employees want to work to their best abilities. You should want them to do the same. Stress can hurt your team, your colleagues and your company. By working to reduce stress on your IT department is a step in the right direction to boost morale and productivity across the board.

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5 Ways a Guest Can Make a Wireless Presentation

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Wireless presentations are meant to be collaborative and engaging. Sharing and streaming content from multiple devices without being tethered to wires creates greater access. By using systems, like Ubiq, you and your team are not limited to share with those in the same company. Your guests can be active participants as well.
Here are 5 ways to bring your guests into a wireless presentation:

  1. Be Proactive: The purpose behind wireless presentations is to empower and promote self-management with little involvement from IT. That doesn’t mean that your IT team shouldn’t be hands-off. Wireless presentations are new to many, and your colleagues need to be trained to use it. They also need to be able to prepare their guests. As they book their meeting space, IT can help teams plan ahead for their meetings by providing instructions, security policy and support for employees and their guests in advance. This will decrease strain on IT and help the meetings run smoother, as hoped.
  2. Support BYOD: Your guests are not tied to your corporate IT policy when it comes to device and software usage and requirements. However, your policy should make accommodations for them to use their devices on your networks, other than just hardwiring into it. Your BYOD policy should extend to guests by supporting multiple device types and access to your WiFi. If security is a concern, wireless presentations system, like Ubiq, offer data encryption and secured access to ensure the proper parties are connected.
  3. Collaborate: Turn your presentation into a work session with your guest. Rather than just standing in front of an audience, your guests can engage with your colleagues and stakeholders. That way, they can experience your company’s culture, understand expectations and provide immediate feedback. Wireless presentations make for great brainstorming sessions between you and your vendor, client or partner. Create the opportunity to define your working relationship with them.
  4. Open Up: When a guest comes into your company, you have to be careful of how much access they should have to your network and data. Closing them off completely can certainly hurt your communication and work exchange. By setting the right security parameters, you can allow guests to connect through a secure WiFi connection and engage in a wireless presentation. For example, Ubiq uses data encryption by session. Therefore, data shared during the presentation is cleared when it has ended. Your goal is to protect your company and its employees, first. However, your policy should extend to include and protect your guests as well.
  5. Be Remote: Remote presentations are not just for your virtual employees. They can be a great way to work globally with clients and vendors. Larger corporations can benefit as remote presentations can be cost effective and timely. By allowing your guests to lead or engage in a wireless presentation, you can save on travel, collaborate without boundaries and reduce time waste. It allows you to get work completed quicker, which is a plus when working on time-sensitive projects.

Whether it’s a potential vendor or a third-party consultant, their contributions in meetings and conferences should be valuable for your business. Wireless presentations make it possible for them to connect their devices with one simple click and begin sharing. You’ve invited them to your meeting. Let them be fully a part of it.
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Not Implementing New Enterprise Technology Can Hurt Your Business

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The world of enterprise technology is evolving at a rapid pace. Cloud computing, and mobile technology are changing the way we work and share information. Data is said to be the “life blood” of an organization. The better your enterprise gets at storing, disseminating, sharing, and securing that data, the more efficient you will be in accomplishing your goals. Here are some suggestions as to why you want to stay ahead of the technology evolution, and what you need to do to stay current.
1) You Need to Embrace Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is similar to an electric power utility in that the providers benefit from economies of scale, and the users benefit from lower usage costs. Users pay for what they consume without investing all that money into infrastructure. With cloud computing, an enterprise can spend less time managing complex IT resources and more time investing in core mission work.
2) The Mobile Workforce Demands Innovative Enterprise Technology. A high percentage of employees are now using two or more mobile devices to get work done. Your enterprise must accommodate and prioritize this new demand for efficiency and productivity as the line between an employee’s personal and professional lives continues to blur. There is an ever increasing demand to adopt cloud-based enterprise mobility strategies, including the concept of personal clouds.
3) Experimentation Cost is Low. In a world where plugging into the latest enterprise technology requires little more than an API, the cost to test new ideas and concepts has never been lower, and the barrier to entry never been easier. This means that if you see an idea that is worth looking at, you probably don’t need to spend a lot of time and money investing in a new infrastructure before you can get an idea of whether the idea is going to work for your enterprise.
4) Keep Your Data Secure. If you are not keeping up with the latest innovations in technology, you are opening yourselves up for increased liability. As mentioned earlier, data is the lifeblood of your business. However, that same data can also be a huge liability if not properly secured. With increased access to data through cloud computing, there is also an increased demand to share that data. You need to stay ahead of the latest innovations so that you can ensure that your data stays secure and so that you are only sharing the segments of data with the appropriate users, and not creating a free-for-all where everybody has access to everything.
5) The “Office” Has Been Redefined. Chances are that your business is not located in one building. You probably have several locations, and you probably have employees working remotely. How do you tie all of this together in one enterprise solution? This is the reality of the modern business world and the challenge facing IT directors. There are innovative conference room technologies and wireless presentation technologies that facilitate all of this remote work, but you must be aware of the latest trends in this aspect of enterprise technology to ensure efficient productivity in your workforce.

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5 Tips to make "Working-from-Home" Efficient!

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The internet and technology continue to allow more and more people to work from home. This creates obvious efficiencies such as eliminating commute time and fuel costs, as well as eliminating the need to find office space for employees that work from home. However, those who have worked from home will attest that eliminating your commute does not automatically translate into an efficient working environment.
There are many obvious ways to encourage efficiency when working from home, including the need to set physical office boundaries as well as boundaries for the time you spend “at work”. There are myriad articles across the internet touching on these efficiencies. Instead, here are 5 tips involving the latest conference room technologies, wireless presentation, and collaboration tools, and that will go a long way to improving your efficiency.

  1. Enable Calendar Sharing with Colleagues. When you choose to work remotely, it can be very easy to lose touch with what is going on around you. If you work with others on a team who are not physically located in the same place, it becomes even more important to share your calendar. There are many free and paid services (including google) that allow you to see your coworker’s schedules, and allow them to see yours. This makes collaboration so much more efficient by allowing you to see at a glance when a colleague is available for a meeting or to help out on a project.
  2. Learn to Master Wireless Presentation and Screen Sharing Technology. Remote meetings are pretty much unavoidable when working from home. This is where Ubiq comes to play, we are soon coming out with remote presentation where you can access a presentation from any location. This makes working from home so much easier rather than physically being in meetings. Emails and phone conferences are probably a big part of the day. Some jobs require you to present complex ideas over the phone or through online meetings. Taking the time to learn features and functions of your chosen presentation technology will help you relay your ideas more efficiently. If you can learn to create short, succinct presentations via PowerPoint, video, or by just sharing your screen, you will find it easier to make the sell, or to relay your ideas.
  3. BROADBAND! This probably goes without saying, but if you work from home, make sure you have the best internet service that you can afford. This is probably the most important tool you have. Nothing kills efficiency like waiting for a page to load, or losing a connection during an important online presentation.
  4. Invest in the Right Headset, or Microphone and Speakers. If you do spend a lot of time in online meetings, you will want to invest in the right audio visual setup. Just like having the right conference room technology in a physical office, your computer, wireless presentation equipment, and internet connection ARE your conference room. Having the right headset, or microphone will increase the efficiency of your meetings by eliminating disturbing background noise, and other distractions that require you to repeat yourself.
  5. Consider using apps that track activities and/or manage team projects. There are many online collaboration applications that allow you to segment any project into smaller portions that can be completed by different individuals and then show the combined results in one central location. Many of these applications also provide internal messaging systems for communication back and forth between team members. Constantly updated project information will decrease lag time waiting for replies to emails, or returning phone calls. Everybody’s work is there for all to see in real time.

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Managing Wireless Presentation tools just got easier!

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Implementing new technology can be met with skepticism and fear from colleagues outside of the IT department. With encouragement and a bit of training, those concerns can subside over time. The end result for IT should be to have colleagues feel confident in using new technology without putting a strain on the IT department.
When it comes to communication, especially through wireless presentations, having an easy-to-use tool is key! It reduces the amount of involvement IT needs to have in meeting organization, especially in setting up and/or breaking down conference room hardware and software. The user has more control over the technology and can be his own director in how content is shared through the presentation across devices and platforms.
Wireless presentations are meant to create new means of communication and collaboration across teams. The tools to support them do not need to be complicated. In fact, the purpose of any new technology should be to simply operations. Therefore, IT should seek solutions that will improve upon or create new workflows that benefit the business.
Ubiq’s enterprise solution provides access and security through single sign-on (SSO) and data encryption, all with a simple click. Presentations are activated in 10 seconds or less, empowering the user minimal need for IT assistance. IT team members do not have to be “on call” to manage presentations or provide full audio/visual connection support, unless it’s truly necessary.
With Ubiq, IT resources can review an all-in-one cloud-hosted management dashboard to monitor usage from a central location. The dashboard provides real-time analytics and performance status information to track activities connected to the presentation, down to a specific meeting participant. The ability to conduct performance maintenance checks without having to having to enter a conference room promotes efficiency. There’s no longer the need to manage each individual meeting and the technology supporting it.
Wireless presentations are meant to bring teams together to perform meaningful work without boundaries. That includes your IT team. The team can now be a part of the conversation rather than waiting on the sidelines until someone needs help. It’s time to empower your colleagues and free your IT team to focus on higher priority tasks and projects.

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How to Overcome Meeting Distractions

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Anything can happen when you have a meeting in the workplace. Distractions abound and if you aren’t prepared for them, you can find yourself losing composure and your meeting could lose its effectiveness. Being prepared is the key to successfully navigating any distraction. If you are confident in your objective and you know your material, you can make it through almost any distraction. Here are some common distractions that can happen during a work meeting and ways you can overcome.
1) Your Computer Crashes. If your audience recognizes what has happened, you can play along with humor and attempt to go through the material without your computer. If they don’t realize what has happened, you might consider playing it cool and carry on as if you never intended to use your computer. Your ability to adapt on the fly has a great deal to do with how prepared you are. If you are really prepared, you may have already saved your presentation in the cloud, or on a thumb drive, and you probably arrived to the meeting room a little early so you could work through any such distractions before the meeting starts.
2) Connectivity Issues. What should you do if you can’t find the right connector for your projector? Again, be prepared – make sure to do several test runs before your presentation. There’s no need for carrying multiple adapters when the meeting room provides wireless presentation. This ensures professionalism, reliability and predictability to all presentations.
3) Disturbing Background Noise. Maybe there is construction work going on outside the conference room, or maybe there is a thunderstorm going on outside. Watch your audience for their reaction to the distraction. If they are ignoring the distraction, so should you. If your audience is visibly distracted, you can briefly acknowledge the distraction and move on. If the distraction is bad enough, you might consider switching locations, or attempting to stop the distraction until the meeting is over.
4) Somebody’s Cell Phone Rings. Our society puts a lot of pressure on us to obey certain cell phone rules of etiquette. Unfortunately, not all adhere to this etiquette. If a phone rings during your meeting and the offender does not silence it immediately, you have a couple of options for handling it. You can acknowledge what happened with humor and hope that the offender got the message, or you can stop the presentation and wait for the offender to silence the phone or leave the room. The best solution would be to ask all meeting participants to silence their phones before the meeting starts, thus setting the tone and expectation that such disruptions won’t be tolerated.
5) Meeting Participants Pay more Attention to their Phones than to the Presenter. It is common in our society for people to be constantly looking at their smartphones. Smartphones are great and definitely can increase productivity. However, if facebook and twitter are distracting your meeting attendees from active participation in the meeting, you might be tempted to ban cell phones at all meetings. As this is not realistic, you are better off setting the expectation that phones be used ONLY for matters pertaining to the meeting. If you discover offenders during the meeting, consider drawing attention to them in a light-hearted manner. Nobody likes to be pointed out as inattentive.

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The Top 10 Ways to Make Your Conference Room More Professional

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We live in a technologically evolving world. The professional conference room of yesterday looks far different than it did even 10 years ago. The prevalence of handheld computing, cloud-based sharing, and wireless solutions have increase the speed of business and have necessitated some changes in the workplace as well. Here are some ideas to help you improve the professionalism in your conference room:

  1. Elimate Clutter.This includes unsightly cords and wires, but can also refer to items stored in the conference room. Take the time to have your conference room equipment such as your projector, phone and speakers neatly installed to enhance to professional feel of the room. Perhaps making your conference room wireless to avoid clutter and making it safe for everyone.
  2. Install Equipment that is Easy to Operate. You shouldn’t have to call the IT guy in every time you need to hook up a projector, it makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Similarly, inability to effectively use a conference phone will make you sound like an amateur to those on the other line. That being said, Ubiq provides a management dashboard for the IT Department to remotely manage your conference room – making both the IT Department and users’ lives easier.
  3. Provide Adequate Internet Bandwidth Our world revolves around access to the internet. Be sure to provide adequate bandwidth for any type of presentation you might have in your conference room. Presentations can get frustrating if a streaming video continues to pause for buffering.
  4. Don’t use Free Services at the Expense of Professionalism. If you hold a lot of video conferences because most of your users are remote, it would probably be worth using a premium paid service. Some of the free services available are more likely to lag and cut out.
  5. Use Wireless Presentation. In our ever-evolving wireless world, more and more conference rooms are utilizing devices that allow multiple users on different platforms (smartphones, tablet, laptop, etc.) to wirelessly connect to a presentation and share what’s on their device. This promotes a more fluid transfer of information and sharing of ideas.
  6. Control the Climate. Nobody likes it too hot or too cold when they sitting in a conference room for long periods of time. A professional conference room will be well ventilated and climate controlled so that the most memorable thing to come out of the room IS NOT how uncomfortable it was.
  7. Provide Meeting Room Names. Many conference rooms would have a specific name. From all the in person deployments’ we’ve been to, the coolest ones would be naming all the conference rooms after Marvel superheroes, or countries around the world. Naming the conference room adds more of a personal touch and customization. Also, this makes booking conference rooms so much easier rather than booking Meeting Room 1.
  8. Use Meeting Room Scheduling and Analytics. If you work in a busy office, your conference room is probably in constant use. Not only is it necessary to be able to schedule its use, so as to avoid conflicting meetings, but it might also be interesting to know how your room is being used. There are programs available that not only help you schedule, but will give you insight into what specific meetings your rooms are being used for.
  9. Use Whiteboards for Walls. What is a meeting without plenty of space to collaborate ideas? Your professional conference room should provide plenty of whiteboard space, and they look and function much better when mounted to the wall. Now it is easy to be creative.
  10. Less is More. It seems like there are a lot of different aspects to a professional conference room but less is more. Keeping your conference room simple, clutter free and easy for your users to make a wireless presentation is key. Fancy doesn’t mean practical!

Additional Reading
10 Conference Room Design Mistakes
Impress Board Members With These Five Modern Conference Room Designs
Why You Can’t Afford to Skimp On Office Interior Design
 

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Don't Use Teleconferencing for your meeting rooms Ever Again!

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With the shift towards video integrations, is there still a place for the telephone in conference room technology enhancements? Let’s explore!

Is the teleconference still relevant for business?

Telephone technology has changed the way we speak to one another, near and far. VoIP combined with SaaS (software as a service) has given us the ability to speak to our colleagues across time zones and country codes at low-to-no cost. Phone calls are no longer just 1-to-1; they are 1-to-many. The hardware (phones) now supports the capability with a simple “Conference” button. There are now companies that manage conference lines. Tools like Skype can easily bring multiple parties together with options in how to communicate. This shows that teleconferencing is alive and well, but for how long?

Should we all be on video?

Video conferencing has added a sensory layer to communication. Video gives more context to discussions with the ability to see body language and emotion. At the same time, clear conversation over the telephone can also give the necessary context. This would make video an option rather than a requirement in communication.
The shift in conference room technology has promoted video integration. Wireless presentations allow team members to connect across multiple platforms, including video, and devices to share ideas. They have allowed companies to become global villages, where team members can speak, see and hear each other from remote locations. However, there is the possibility for technical difficulties. While video may seem like the best option, the phone still has a role in communication, even as a back-up resource.
Sometimes, the face-to-face can prove to be more effective than just the audio to build understanding and support. However, face-to-face with video can take more time than a telephone conversation in coordinating schedules, resources and equipment. With teleconferencing, it’s usually just a phone and maybe a dedicated conference line. One really has to determine the need for video and how it will benefit the discussion.

The happy medium!

Video is trending across all media. It’s essential for some industries, but not so much for others. While your IT team should support the request and use of video, it should also be mindful of its effectiveness to the company. Your company should also evaluate existing phone usage across the business, especially for meetings that involve remote and external resources. If you find that video is a “nice to have” option, perhaps more resources should be available to support teleconferencing with phones, VoIP, conference lines, Skype, etc.
As it stands, video conferencing is emerging and holds a strong place in business. They serve a purpose based on time and need. Video may represent stronger face-to-face interactions from remote locations. There’s a benefit in promoting active communication. Choose wisely how you want to engage with your teams and partners.

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