The business meeting is not what it used to be. The scene of a group of company executives sitting around a table in a conference room while munching on sandwiches and brainstorming ideas is more like a take from Mad Men than a description of how businesses operate today. Even if you update the scene and fill the office with advanced technology such as color- display phones, telepresence or high-end video conferencing systems, it’s still clear that there’s something wrong with this picture.
The business meeting of today reflects the myriad ways in which collaboration can occur and leverages the technology that has transformed the workplace in the last few years through increased mobility, “always on” business environments, smartphones and tablets and near-ubiquitous Internet connectivity. To adapt to this new reality, business and IT leaders must provide workers with the platforms and tools they need to meet and collaborate successfully.
In this article, we look at five of the most significant challenges in modernizing unified communications and collaboration to obtain all the tools necessary to meet the needs of today’s workplace and workforce. We also examine how hosted services delivered by communications service providers can help organizations deploy cost-effective and easy-to-use technology that is transforming the nature of the business meeting for today and tomorrow.
