Whether you're making the jump to cloud with Cisco Spark or sticking with your existing on premise Unified Communications implementation, the push to enable collaboration is happening in businesses across all verticals. The need to enable collaboration and empower employees to work from anywhere while maintaining the same level of collaboration as an in-person interaction is in high demand. This need is driven by the influx of millennials into the workforce, the fact that no one likes commuting, or a bit of both.
In the past, enabling collaboration for employees focused on the needs of office “Road-Warriors”. We all know these people - they could be co-workers or they could even be you. Whichever the case, the tell-tale signs of the Road-Warrior are easy to spot:
- They/you probably have a desk at the office.
- Their/your desk phone and all other assorted accoutrement are coated in a layer of dust healthy enough for coworkers to begin making "have you seen me?" posters.
A cultural shift has begun in recent years to enable collaboration not only for Road-Warriors but, for all employees. This enablement goes far beyond simple voice and instant messaging too. Technology like Cisco Spark and the new Cisco Spark Board endpoint, allow employees to capture the entire history of a project or subject or anything they're working on. Are you adding someone new to the team? In the past, you *could* forward them some emails and all the notes you have. Then you must stop by their desk or give them a call and tell them all the other details you remembered off the top of your head just to give them a rough history on whatever it is they need to get up to speed on. Now with Cisco Spark you can simply add your new team member to the Spark space and they can look back on the entire history of anything and everything ever posted in the space. That includes all the shared files, documents, images, and even whiteboards.
Yes. You read that correctly, whiteboards. In the past, during a meeting, anything drawn on a whiteboard was, at the end of the meeting, banished like so many Superman villains, to the photos pile on one of the meeting participant's cell phones and then emailed out to the team from there. With Cisco Spark that all becomes a thing of the past. Now, you can natively create and edit living whiteboards using Cisco Spark. Collaborative whiteboards are only the beginning. Sharing your screen during a meeting has, in the past been a game of chance and inspired questions like "Did I bring the right cable?" or "I wonder if I'll have to ask that one weird help-desk guy to make this all work?". With the proximity sharing available on currently shipping Cisco Telepresence endpoints, you'll no longer be frozen with fear as you ponder those questions. Instead, you'll simply install the app on your laptop or mobile client and then just show up to the meeting. Once in range of the endpoint, your client will pair with the endpoint automagically and you are simply left to click the share button. See? Easy.
In short today's collaboration solutions are paving the way for the workforce of 2017 and beyond. Providing simple and secure collaboration solutions to help employees cast off the shackles of the daily commute. Empowering business to connect, communicate and innovate like never before. It’s time to stop worrying about the technical aspects of connecting and allow your staff to take the initiative and focus on developing innovative services and applications that enable your business.
Written By: Dustin Kaplan, LookingPoint Consultant Services Engineer