The AV Integrators Role in the Workplace of the Future

[Randy Riebe (Randy)]

It’s no secret that workplace culture is at an inflection point—how we collaborate, how we communicate, and where we communicate is rapidly evolving. With changes in workplace dynamics come new objectives and challenges for employees, managers and executives. They include managing the security implications of the BYOD movement, optimizing virtualized offerings through the cloud and accommodating demands for mobility and flexible work arrangements.

This need for hyper-connectivity in the workplace is also creating a number of challenges for AV integrators who now must address the expectation of constant access to collaboration technology. They are faced with more complex systems, managing network capacity and location flexibility, all while ensuring security.

While these challenges are real, they open doors to never-before-possible innovations and profit opportunities. With everything from immersive sound, HD video, digital signage to heighten video collaboration, AV integrators have the opportunity to churn out new collaboration experiences at a breathtaking pace. For example, Video Content Management (VCM) is a small part of the market now and used primarily in education for streaming and lecture capture, but the opportunity here is huge. It becomes an easy cross-sell and upsell into a more strategic area. It expands the conversation and leverages existing technologies, so customers benefit from a new way to stream, record and archive; and AV integrators open up new opportunities to capture more revenue.

What if AV integrators could empower organizations to build and design the workplaces of the future?  This is now a reality. AV integrators now have the unique ability to anticipate all of the ways employees will want to use a given room for collaboration, and they can make all of these permutations possible.

With innovative technology, such as VCM, Acoustic Bubble and more, Polycom is positioned to help AV integrators become the critical advisors to these new workspaces. One that helps organizations embrace a design process that encompasses a range of tasks, a myriad of devices and that fits in the employees’ workflows.

Polycom can also help AV integrators shift from a focus on connecting physical endpoints to continuously developing a virtual collaboration universe. The AV integrators who combine technology know-how with services for new modes of delivery will lead this new paradigm of collaboration.