How many meetings does your company have in huddle rooms each year? (Yes, Zoom meetings count.) How long does it take to operate the remote for the flat panel on the wall? How easily do you share your presentation with an online meeting?
Multiply those numbers by the average cost of the attendees’ time, and you can see what using retro or consumer-grade remotes can cost your company. And that doesn’t count time spent looking for lost remotes.
Beyond the pure economics of using low-grade AV controls, there’s the user experience. The more smoothly a meeting starts, the more positive and productive the dynamic of that meeting. These are the reasons that enterprise-class AV controls have been developed.
For ease of set-up, you can’t get any easier than a fully automated system. Walk into the meeting room and the lights come on, the flat panel is powered up and ready for your input, and the temperature might even adjust. These systems use motion detectors in the room to activate their operations.
Such a set-up might sound luxurious, but it is also extremely practical in addressing the issues raised at the start of this article. In addition to eliminating the set-up hassles, the sense of productivity and control is all about “getting stuff done;” the perfect tone to start any business meeting. Such a system is particularly effective in executive meeting environments, like board rooms.
Not surprisingly, this hands-free interface is the front end of a smart system controller behind the scenes. Also—not surprisingly—such a professional-grade system requires professional installation.
The very newest automation designs take a different tack altogether: mobile apps. While the basic technology has been around for a while, such “personal controls” have advanced significantly to be standardized for all users inside a corporation. This can be an ideal solution for rooms and users that require frequent access.
Loading the system on participants’ smartphones, users can program all the pre-sets they need and start their meeting with one click. An unanticipated benefit of such a system is its utility in a post-COVID world; it eliminates the need to sanitize a shared remote.
If you want your meetings to be more productive, your business to be more efficient, and your company to present a more sophisticated profile, your AV controls might be a good place to look.
