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A lot has changed in the business scene since the outbreak of Covid 19. To keep afloat, businesses had to revamp how they operate and employ new strategies to achieve their goals. Meetings, which are an integral part of the workday, are now done differently. Before the Pandemic, business meetings were mostly done face-to-face, but they are now being done virtually.

There is a possibility that the way meetings and other key activities are carried out will not go back to normal even after the pandemic. Read on to learn how business meetings have changed since Covid.

It is easier to see who is contributing

Many businesses have a dedicated space or meeting rooms where ideas are brainstormed and key issues are discussed. During these meetings, some participants are vocal and like to air their opinions, at the same time; others hide in plain sight and offer little or no contribution.

In a virtual meeting room, it is a lot easier to see who is contributing and who is not. With no corners and blind spots to hide, it will be easier to tell if everyone is contributing. What’s more, it will be harder for some participants to dominate the conversation.

Not all meetings are necessary

Since the pandemic, many business leaders have wised up. They now understand that herding everyone to the conference room for a meeting isn’t always the best decision. Of course, meetings are important, but they may hurt the productivity and output of a business when they don’t add any value or are too frequent.

With everyone working from home these days, things that were accomplished via meetings can now be done through wireless presentation, conference calls, or email.

Businesses and organizations that have eliminated unnecessary business meetings can achieve their goals quicker because their teams now have more time to focus on important tasks.

Flexibility in meeting timing

Before Covid, businesses and organizations don’t usually schedule meetings first thing in the morning. They seem to have a specific time of the day they schedule important appointments and meetings.

Since Covid, people have become more flexible. They are now willing to schedule meetings early in the morning or late in the evening.

This has helped a lot of organizations strategize better and adapt to the needs of their teams.

No more marathon work session

Not long ago, it was a norm for teams to have multiple days of planning sessions to brainstorm ways to address their current challenges. These gatherings are a mix of business, pleasure, discussions, team-building exercises, and many more.

Since Covid, most people no longer travel for business. Because of this, many organizations have scraped out long planning sessions and focused on solutions that will help their company reach new heights.

Move value on time

The value for time has never been this high. Businesses and organizations now understand that working from home doesn’t equate always working. To ensure that their employees get as much work done during their working hours, teams now brainstorm, exchange recommendation, and offer feedback during cable-free meetings, which usually lasts for a few hours.

Final note

It is hard to say if things will return to normal or if meetings and other key business activities will be carried out the way they used to. In the meantime, businesses should embrace change and adopt strategies that will guide them into the “new normal”.

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Back to “Normal”

COVID-19 wreaked havoc on normal American work life.  At the start of the pandemic, many companies around the world acted quickly to keep employees safe and moved to a new way of work – a work from home lifestyle. Across industries, COVID-19 serves as a lesson into the work-from-home life. How work is done and how offices are run has changed.  As we move forward, and as many companies are beginning to make the switch back to the office, industries are looking at offices and meeting room setups in more creative ways.  

Meeting Times

Studies show that time in meetings has been rising by 8% to 10% annually since 2000. As of 2019, an average of 31 hours are spent on monthly meetings. Meetings did not disappear during the pandemic and they are definitely not going to disappear when everyone is able to return to a conference room. Along with the added distancing and potential for masks, what we knew as typical conference room meetings are a thing of the past.  With modern day AV equipment and wireless presentation capabilities, the way we used to think of meetings will be a thing of the past.  

Meeting Rooms

A meeting room is especially designed for meetings and conferences and are typically found in places like offices, industries, and hospitals.  A meeting room should be equipped with the proper conference room audio video equipment to ensure smooth transmission.  There are a lot of ways a typical pre-COVID meeting room setup can look depending on the purpose of the meetings.  

Technology and Comfort

Thanks to technology (and COVID), meetings do not have to be in typical conference rooms like in the image below. 

 

Having conference room AV systems allows you to host your meetings anywhere.  This means with the proper equipment and positioning, meetings can be held and engaged from anywhere in the office.  This can keep employees safe, by keeping them distanced from each other, and comfortable in their own spaces.  

For example, the meeting space shown below encourages collaboration and flow while also promoting a relaxing and comfortable space.  The mobile lounge chairs allow for employees to distance themselves while the mobile whiteboard and wireless presentation can serve to move meetings to employees rather than all gathering in a stuffy conference room. 

Outdoors

Do you remember the first warm Spring day and your teacher taking the class to learn outside for the day? That first smell of fresh cut grass, sitting under a tree, enjoying a book for the day while you defrost from the cold classroom AC.  Nature has a great impact on humans. According to Kurstry Groves, a work space strategist, “Sunlight, fresh air and natural surroundings positively affect people’s sense of wellbeing and happiness.”  With modern day technologies like portable conference room AV equipment and wireless presentations, you can take your meetings outside! Your employees will be able to take a much needed mask break and enjoy the sunshine while staying productive, maybe even a little more creative too!

The days of piling into a stuffy meeting room are over.  We have to keep employees safe while still maintaining a productive and comfortable working environment.  If you are planning to return to the office and are struggling to figure out how your meetings will look, invest in proper conference room AV equipment, wireless presentations, and research the best way to adapt your meeting space. 

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When it comes to meeting and discussing serious matters among the staffs, employees, and directors, the first thing to have in mind and put in place is to select a conducive, quiet, secured and comfortable meeting room that will aid interactions and communication.

The Meeting Room

A meeting room (also known as a conference room or conference hall) is a room specially prepared and designed for events such as meetings and business conferences, and commonly found at convention centers, hotels, and establishments such as institutions, and even hospital. The meeting rooms can sometimes be designed for large meetings such as arenas and concert halls. Some of these meeting rooms can be for personal or security reasons without windows. However, a meeting room should be equipped with the latest technology setup, which includes Audio Video Installation for interactive display and should be conducive for smooth communication.

Meeting Room Setup

Meeting rooms may be set up in diverse styles like Banquet, Hollowed, U-Shape, Conference Style, etc., aiding wireless presentation depending on the purpose of the meeting.

Shortage of Meeting Rooms

Scarcity and unavailability of meeting rooms are alarming due to the vast creation of new companies. They are consequently contributing to the shortage of Meeting rooms.

Shortage of meeting rooms could lead to unnecessary changing of the meeting venue, and this could get you or your boss pissed off than you could ever imagine.

Imagine a situation whereby you have received a mail with stating that you need to hold a meeting your boss, and you need to book a meeting room, and you find out that there is no meeting room available at the moment. Sadly, this could be frustrating and make you depressed.

The Solution to Meeting Rooms Shortage

In such a scenario, it is a clear sign that you need more or explore other needs like:

  • Legacy meeting
  • Phone calls
  • Concentration

Writing a communication guideline can change peoples’ mindset of what a meeting room actually means. The space we inhabit have to change as the world of work is changing.

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If a time traveler from the year 2005 were to set foot in your living room, they would have a hard time figuring out your home entertainment system. Apple TV? Netflix? How are you supposed to insert the DVD into the Apple TV box when the DVD is nearly twice the size of the box? And how come this remote control only has one button on it? Has the world gone crazy?

And yet if that same time traveler were to set foot in your conference room, they would be completely at home. Although business meetings rely on pretty much the exact same technology as home entertainment (TVs, projectors, media to play on said TVs and projectors), many meeting rooms are still stuck in the Blockbuster era, relying on HDMI, VGA, and countless other cables and adapters for their presentation solution.

Things don’t have to be this way. With a wireless presentation system such as the Ubiq Hive, you can bring your conference room into the Netflix/Apple TV-era and briefly confuse any time travelers that happen to wander in.

Here are just some of the benefits:

1. Easy Set-up.

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Have you ever successfully plugged an electronic device into a wall socket such as a vacuum cleaner or hair dryer? Then you shouldn’t have any trouble setting up the Ubiq Hive. Once the device is powered on and connected to your conference room TV or projector, all you have to do is download the Ubiq app or go to present.goubiq.com and you can begin streaming right away.

2. Less Strain on IT.

internal-users-sept-9

Like E.R. doctors, IT people are always on-call in case of an emergency. If a project manager is having issues hooking up his 2008 MacBook to a projector, the first person to hear about it is usually the system admin, who is then expected to drop everything he’s doing and rush into the conference room and try to diagnose the problem.

With Ubiq, however, IT does not need to be physically present in the conference room. To monitor a presentation, all you have to do is log in to the Ubiq dashboard.

3. Increased Productivity.  Keep employees in the loop by sending notifications to your conference room displays.

Ubiq integrates with calendar tools (like Google Calendar) so teams can schedule meetings, reserve rooms, and request “hive” access. It also allows IT to post notifications and digital signage to meeting room displays in order to help teams stay organized.

4. Security.

Ubiq integrates with multiple networks so internal users stream over the corporate network and guest users stream over the guest network.

The Ubiq application ensures that internal users stream over the corporate network and guest users stream over the guest network. Since Ubiq integrates with your company’s Active Directory, internal users do not need to create their own accounts. Simply enter your Active Directory domain during installation and Ubiq will check credentials against the domain.

5. Better Looking Conference Rooms.

No conference room is complete without the Ubiq wireless presentation system.

Wires are ugly, and hiding them is difficult. Some people try to run them behind their baseboards or under their carpets, but few succeed. This is especially true if we’re dealing with multiple cables like HDMI, VGA, HDMI to VGA, DVI, and Thunderbolt (which is the bare minimum of what you’ll need to have on-hand in today’s BYOD era in lieu of a wireless solution). Hiding that many cables is like trying to hide 6% of the world’s aluminum in the Mexican desert; it’s only a matter of time before it shows up on Reddit.

Discover how Ubiq can work for your organization. Request a demo today!

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Meetings are the lifeline of organizations. All decisions – big and small – are made in meetings, and each department in an organization relies on meetings to discuss plans, set targets, and to resolve disputes. With advancements in technology, the way business people collaborate and communicate have changed completely.
Today, virtual teams and business associates across all geographical borders can communicate without having to step out of their offices, thanks to video conferencing technology. However, it is important to understand that modern technology promises convenience, but often at the cost of efficiency. So, we must think whether all the hype surrounding video conferencing is justified or not? Does it really bring people together and help save on costs and time? May be not. Let us discuss how organisations across the world are trying to use video conferencing to make communication and collaboration better, and how it might be doing just the opposite.
Why companies choose video conferencing
Most organisations use video conferencing because

  • It allows people from different geographic locations to communicate without anyone having to travel
  • Video conferencing can be organized to facilitate meetings on any device, like laptops, smartphones and even large screen projectors in a conference room.
  • They facilitate better communication than telephones for important decision that require quick, face-to-face discussions.

However, in spite of these positives, video conferencing poses some serious challenges too. Some of these challenges are serious enough to render meetings ineffective and unproductive. Here is how video conferencing can make meetings unproductive:

  1. User experience

Every year, video vendors introduce “new and improved” versions of video conferencing technology, in a bid to provide a better user experience for their customers. However, despite these changes and improvements, users find that a number of glitches make video conferencing, on the whole, ineffective. The main issues and concerns that users face are

  • Inter-operability: Most video conferencing solutions fail when it comes to operability across difference hardware systems and virtual bridges.
  • Training gaps – In an organisation, not everyone is technology savvy. Users are required to get accustomed to new and changing video conferencing technology, and they often need regular assistance from the IT department. At times, the IT departments cannot accommodate all requests for assistance, once again causing delay and reducing cost effectiveness.
  1. Quality issues

Even with the most popular video conferencing solutions, users often face quality concerns rendering video conferencing ineffective. Quality issues such as call drops, call fails, incorrect configurations, inability to make products compatible to existing firewalls, poor call quality, jittery video, latency, packet loss and low resolution may make the meeting unproductive.

  1. Device and infrastructure issues

It takes a lot of time and resources to track infrastructure issues efficiently and to troubleshoot these issues on an organization-wide basis becomes virtually impossible.  These technical snags at hardware and infrastructure level make meetings either impossible, or grossly unproductive. By the time a company pulls out reports on effective usage and adoption of the current software, it is time to change the product.

  1. Stability

Technology is not always stable. Hardware, software and wireless connections are prone to breakdowns, especially in case of video conferencing. For example, if a call or video gets disconnected, it interrupts the flow of the meeting, rendering meeting ineffective. These issues are often faced when using inexpensive or free video conferencing packages.
 

  1. Human interaction

Unlike face- to- face meetings, video conferencing relies on proper functioning of the hardware and the software. Low resolution, poor video quality, incoherent video and sound, incorrect positioning of the webcam, and bad light are some of the issues that limit human interaction making meetings unproductive. Inability to make eye contact due to limitations in webcam positioning hinder effective communication. Research shows that even video conference job interviews are bad for both companies and candidates.
This shows that video conferencing does not really live up to its promise of enabling better communication and collaboration virtually. Another main argument in favour of video conferencing is that it is cost effective, however, there are two key issues that challenge this argument. First, that it is often extremely difficult for IT teams to prove ROI of this technology, and second that does not produce a substantial ROI unless it is used widely across the organization.
In short, no form of virtual meetings can beat face-to-face interactions in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

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Meetings are an important part of running businesses, and they come in all shapes and sizes. From unplanned chats in the office corridor to monthly sales reviews and annual conferences, meetings can take many forms.
A face-to-face discussion of organizational issues can be conducted in various ways. In this digital age, people can conveniently communicate through emails and video conference, however, this limits the ability of individuals to express their ideas only through the power of words. Alternatively, traditional, face-to-face meetings allow people to facilitate interaction and discussion in a more effective manner, and allows participants to express their views freely using both verbal and non-verbal communication.
Here are some ways in which meetings benefit individuals and businesses
A Potent Business Weapon
Considering the fact that we live in a world where competition is cut throat, business people need more personal interaction than ever before. While online communication and telephone offer a convenient and quick way to communicate, conducting a face-to-face meeting with clients creates an altogether different effect. Business meetings provide the best avenue to carry out negotiations.
Keep organizations on track
Regular meetings strengthen work relationships and bonds among employees, and keeps them on track regarding work matters. Let us take an example. Whenever a team is required to work on a new, large project, it is best to have a kick-off meetings to delegate responsibilities and tasks. Regular meetings can then be conducted to keep track of work progress. This way, whole team can stay abreast with the way project is progressing. Meetings also offer a great opportunity for the management to acknowledge and appreciate the achievements of the team through public recognition.
Relationship building through “human connection” 
Human connection via face-to-face meetings is probably the best way to become closer as a team and people, and it makes collaboration much easier. As you spend more time together, you are able to make a complete personal assessment that can help you learn more about your own personality and behavior and that of others. Discussing and sharing this assessment with the team members allows you to understand how you can better adapt your style to communicate and collaborate more effectively with others. Human connection and face-to-face interaction also minimizes team conflict.
Build Good Working Relationship
When people with diverse opinions, personalities and interests come together in a meeting, they somehow end up creating a cordial affiliation with their colleagues and the bond strengthens over time. This may be because people, despite their busy schedule at work find time to meet others and bond with them. This kind of relationship building is not possible with phone calls, emails or even virtual meetings. Facial expressions, handshakes and a positive body language can go a long way in building strong human bonds.
Boost Individual Morale
Meetings provide the perfect platform for good and open communication. A good meeting facilitator can help even the most timid team member to open up and share his thoughts, and contribute to the discussion. This boosts individual morale and helps bring some brilliant ideas to the table.
Brainstorming
Most organizations survive on ideas and creativity. When it comes to brainstorming, meetings are the perfect platform. Many minds put together can bring out better ideas and solutions and that too much faster. Mere presence of other people can make things work. It could be the visual aids from markers and flipcharts, their body language or sharing their experience, but face-to-face communication does make a brainstorming session more engaging and fruitful.
Broader buy-in and consensus
Whenever an organization or team has to make a major decision, it becomes extremely important for people to buy-in to the decision, and meetings are the perfect way to achieve it. Consensus can be best achieved face-to-face, not on a phone call or email. Decision making and consensus achieved through effective meetings has immense business value.
It is important for individuals to understand that meetings are essential to the success of the organization. While some people may find it plain and boring, but in the long run, meetings go beyond achieving goals; they help foster and strengthen good working relationships.

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It is estimated that a whopping 11 million official business meetings take place in the United States on a daily basis. That translates to 2.6 billion meetings per year. Therefore it is not surprising that almost all companies – from new fledgling start-ups to gigantic conglomerates – run on meetings. And meetings run on presentations!
Presentations determine the way we work, the way we understand our business, the way we analyze the business, the outcome, the planning, and so much more. Presentations are the centerpiece of meetings. A tedious, uninformative presentation can ruin your day; a great one can make your week. However, statistics also reveal that on average, out of the 62 monthly meetings that are attended by an employee, the employee spends 31 meeting hours unproductively. That means the economy loses $37 billion to unproductive meeting hours.
On average, employees spend 15% of their time attending meetings. For mid-level managers, the figure rises to 35%.
Yet statistics reveal that these meetings are not as efficient as they should be nor are they as productive or cost-efficient. This clearly goes to show that while plenty of meetings are taking place, they are not smart meetings
Here are some of the reasons that make meetings unproductive:
Cables on the Table
Conventional meeting rooms use cables to connect computers, laptops, and other devices for presentations. However, ensuring that all meeting attendees can view the same material becomes increasingly cumbersome, especially, for remote attendees attending meetings from other locations. Finding cables for HDMI / HDMI Mini / USB / Micro outputs, and getting them to work also proves to be a difficult task.
BYOD – Bring your own device
The concept of BYOD was first coined by Intel. With more and more employees getting their own devices, the problem of supporting different systems, different hardware, connectivity ports, etc. emerges. This slows down meetings, makes them ineffective, and pose a threat to the company’s security too.
Inefficient meeting rooms
Conventional meeting rooms make the job of the presenter tough. As it is, not everyone is good at presentations, and then to ensure that the connectivity cables work, connected devices work properly, that every member present can view the material properly, displays are uniform, the software is compatible, etc. prove to be additional hindrances.
Changing conference room technology and cost-effectiveness.
Conventional meeting room systems do not adapt to changing technology, rendering them ineffective and eventually increasing costs to make them adaptable to newer and constantly changing technology.
The antidote for these shortcomings is simple: wireless presentation systems.
Wireless presentation systems enable better meetings. Here’s how:
• Wireless presentation systems and meeting room software enable hassle free connectivity. All devices in the meeting room can connect to the main display, allowing wireless transmission of data, eliminating the need for printing copies, moving laptops and phones around the room so that all attendees can get a look, or send heavy presentation files via e-mail.
• With the advent of smartphones, wireless presentation systems make it easy to use different platforms like Windows, MAC, Android and iOS.
• Anyone can connect to the wireless system from anywhere, making meetings and presentations seamless and multi-user collaborative. Your meetings become more interactive, enabling a seamless presentation, as other participants can simultaneously share and present data from their devices.
• Training becomes easier, more interactive, and covers a wider range as users can log into the system from anywhere.
• Organizations and their meeting rooms are able to keep up with changing technology, as the wireless presentation system can adapt to newer AV technology.
In short, wireless presentation systems are more cost-effective, more productive and efficient. Wireless presentation systems make meeting a success!

Jacqueline Chan, Business Development at Ubiq, was a recent guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series. The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.
In this episode we discuss video conferencing trends, the importance of smart watches, and beta testing.
Below are a few highlights from our conversation:
TA: With all the advancements in technology what is Ubiq looking to in the next few years?
 
Chan: There’s definitely so many things that we’re really excited about. We definitely notice one of the biggest trends is that in 2016, people are really moving to a collaborative setting and really focusing on user experience and making sure that their users are liking the products that are actually in their office setting right now. When new users are coming in, they expect things to be very simple, and they expect that things will actually work. That’s the biggest trend right now is just to have ease of use on both end users and IT.
 
TA: In terms of challenges, what are you guys helping customers to overcome with Ubiq?
 
Chan: One of the biggest problems I’ve noticed with some of our customers is that there’s just so many devices coming in to any meeting room or any organization in general, every single day. In the past two years, you can come in with a tablet now, smart phone, new computers, even the new macbook doesn’t even have a USB slot. It’s just really hard to monitor which devices are coming in and that’s something that we’re really trying to solve. Helping anyone with any device able to present without any extra adapters or really willing to accommodate with anyone.
 
TA: How do you do all of that while also creating a secure solution that gives IT what they need?
 
We actually have a cloud management dashboard where you’re really able to manage all the meeting rooms, really control what is going on in that specific meeting room at any given time. Our dashboard really gives you an idea of who is using it. You can manage the meeting room. You can update the unit, you can reboot the unit. All those different commands is actually able to be done on the dashboard. This is something that can really help IT and the team.
 
TA: Do you see Ubiq (or something similar) as something that almost every company will have deployed in 2020?
 
Chan: Yeah, for sure. Wireless presentation is just one step to our product. Right now we’re actually incorporating the digital signage component. And what the digital signage does is we can add campaigns to displays. You can add images, web links, videos, all that good stuff onto the display, so we’re not really just taking over a meeting room, we’re taking over all the displays.
 
On top of that for meeting rooms, what we’re envisioning in the future, there’s going to be external software, and meeting room tools, collaboration tools. That’s going to be an add-on to our device. That’s essentially our goal. We want to be that unified tool out there that can do multiple things.
 
TA: What are some of the big generational differences with wireless presenting? Is this something that Millennials are much more likely to adopt?
 
Chan: For sure. For sure. The younger the generation is, the more they are going to expect wireless presentation and they are actually going to be more prone to using it, and the adoption period is going to be a lot easier. But the challenge that comes along with it is that your product has to be stellar, because they’re going to be using a lot of different products, a lot of really good products, so having an easy to use product that will work all the time is the key for the younger generation that’s coming into the workforce.
 
TA: Speaking of the younger generation, I feel like sort of apart of that too, and a part of the technological transformation that we’re seeing right now, a big piece of that is smart devices. How do you see that fitting into the future workplace?
 
Chan: I actually think it’s happening already. The transition from laptops to tablets and smartphones, it’s happening right now – right before this year ends – it’s happening right now. Companies just have to be really fast to adapt to all of this, and in order to really adapt to it, they need to think of a solution such as wireless presentation that can really accommodate everyone, and especially smart phones. And the next thing we know you might need to find a solution for smart watches and having those smartwatches to be able to present. There’s just so many technologies coming out every day and you just don’t know what’s going to come out tomorrow.
This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice, an Inc. 5000 company looking to help buyers find the best IT software, wireless presentation systems, and more. Interview conducted by Josh Bland.

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It may have been considered the norm to have wires and cables installed throughout company meeting spaces a few years ago. Now, however, cables are more often viewed as an unnecessary clutter. When upgrading working spaces and conference room technology, businesses are thinking wirelessly.
If your organization is upgrading its facilities in the near future, here are some of the top reasons why you should think wirelessly too.

Cables are eyesores.

One of the top considerations when re-thinking a meeting room setup is appearance. When it comes to office aesthetics, cables are eyesores, especially when they are hanging everywhere. In time, they’ll likely get tangled or risk becoming a tripping hazard. Meeting spaces without cables are more visually appealing and secure.

Mobile eliminates installation and maintenance costs.

Cables also come with cost installation and maintenance fees. Adding cables to a meeting room usually means hiring professionals to install them. They often break or simply wear down over time too, which means you’ll need to repair or replace them eventually. Wireless solutions like wireless presentation systems save businesses from the burden and costs associated with maintaining cables and equipment.

Mobility creates more flexibility.

With wireless technology, businesses free themselves from being locked in one place. Should your organization ever decide to relocate, it will not have to unhook the cables or reinstall them in a new location. Instead, with wireless solutions, it can be as easy as moving a mobile device from one room to another.

Wireless is the future.

Companies no longer need to be tied down by cables because of poor wireless performance. Wireless technologies and mobile performance has greatly advanced in the last decade. Cables simply are not as necessary as they may have been in the past. Instead, wireless solutions have become more vital.
According to a recent study by Constant Contact, over 66 percent of small business owners use mobile solutions as part of their daily business processes. Another two-thirds of SMBs say that they would struggle to survive without wireless tech. Collaboration tools, software and other business technology has evolved to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce and population. Renovated meeting spaces should be equipped with cutting-edge technology, which means that they should be designed with mobility in mind.
It is important to be forward-thinking when renovating office space. Cables are a thing of the past. If organizations want their meeting room to remain relevant and useful for years to come, wireless is the way to go.