As life gets back to normal post-COVID-19 and organizations plan to return to the office, businesses need to adapt to the latest safety guidelines related to occupancy, social distancing, and changing workplace designs to make the entire process seamless. The buzzword now is “The Contactless Enterprise”, a safe space where interactions happen at arm’s length with the help of technology. Touchless AV experiences are integral to enterprises managing the contactless work environment in the post-pandemic world. With the emphasis on a contactless experience, let’s see how AV solutions can usher in innovations across varied industry sectors.How AV solutions are enabling a Contactless enterprise
Enterprises across industry sectors like healthcare, retail, and hospitality are adopting innovative AV technology to stay safe. Among their diverse offerings, AV solution providers offer video conferencing, web streaming, and live broadcast services to help enterprises adjust to new protocols.
For example, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) models integrated into flexible and powerful AV solutions for hospitals allow users to for everything from controlling lighting from a mobile app to ordering tests and accessing patient information. For example, the Ottawa Hospital in Canada started BYOD to give healthcare providers a secure way of messaging each other for coordinating patient care.
Audio-visual technologies are quickly becoming a mainstay of the hospitality industry too. Hospitality guests are visiting hotels, restaurants, or cruise ships; and expecting safe services through video displays, touchscreens, and mobile connectivity. For example, interactive smart mirrors in hotels also act as touchscreen displays and offer services like digital check-outs and ordering room services.
Next, let’s have a look at some innovative AV solutions that encourage contactless environments.Innovative AV solutions for contactless enterprises
With more employees preferring to work from home, enterprises are turning towards hybrid work models to reduce their real estate footprint and offer a safe working environment to their employees.
That raises the question, how can enterprises offer much-needed visual interaction without the physical touch? Here are a few AV solutions that are trending across industries.
- Touchless meeting rooms
Social distancing is likely to be a recurring theme as enterprises open their offices in a post-pandemic world. A survey by Gartner revealed that 41% of employees are likely to work remotely at least for some time post-pandemic.
With modern AV solutions, enterprises can create self-service platforms that allow their employees to access relevant information on their mobile phones. With BYOM (Bring Your Own Meeting) mode, users can now use their device to host a video conference on platforms like Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Zoom – while using the physical audio-visual equipment in the meeting room.
Hybrid workspace models also call for innovative meeting spaces to ensure effective collaboration and communication between on-premise and remote employees. In addition, technologies like wireless collaboration, content sharing, and video conferencing systems allow interactions between all employees without the need for physical touch.
For example, companies can offer employees access cards that use RFID scanning to grant (or deny) entry into meeting rooms. Innovative automation can ensure that swiping the card triggers the switching on of the lights and initiates presentations and scheduled calls.
With people scared of touching physical surfaces in offices, how to ensure a contactless boardroom presentation? Resurgent has created options that make it possible to automate the entire presentation or boardroom process by tapping on smartphones. These innovative AV solutions will start the meeting room devices such as projector, screens, curtains, and even lights, in a specified order, using which users can go ahead with the contactless presentation.
- Digital signage
Over the years, digital signages have been effective in displaying or providing information to in-store customers and employees. This has assumed greater importance in the post-COVID world where offices have become smaller and more flexible.
As companies adapt to the new normal, modern workplaces are turning to digital signage technology to communicate and make navigation easy for employees unused to the layout and infrastructure. They can be deployed across the office space and deliver powerful and timely messages to the employees and customers using rich media content in video, audio, and animated formats.
Digital signages can also broadcast AV content to multiple screens in various locations to distribute information, such as news, wayfinding information, alerts, emergency messages, or commercial content. For example, it may become possible to connect employees with a live and remote helpdesk as they navigate their way through the new workspace.
Similarly, the use of digital signages in shopping malls, hospitals, and theme parks helps in guiding people, measuring occupancy, and keeping everyone informed of important alerts and information.
- Live streaming
Group discussions, collaboration, and brainstorming sessions are a part of everyday office culture. But, with most employees working remotely, how to broadcast to multiple people simultaneously? Live streaming is the answer. Innovative AV solutions now enable companies to stream live meetings and manage remote and hybrid meetings. For example, users can go from group chat to video conference instantly just with the touch of a button in Microsoft Teams.
We rarely talked about organizing virtual events before 2020. In a post-pandemic world, 72% of event planners are moving to a virtual or hybrid format for events in 2021. Going forward, live streaming will play a significant role in connecting people across geographical barriers in such scenarios as they unfold within organizations and beyond. From music concerts, award ceremonies, graduation events, and marketing seminars, we expect more virtual audiences and a richer AV-driven impact.Conclusion
The pandemic has accelerated the use of touchless AV solutions by enterprises to ensure overall safety and hygiene. In addition, enterprises are looking to make use of the technology to create more meaningful experiences for their staff. As employees return to work, managing meeting room density, remote collaboration, room scheduling, and occupancy will play a key role in office management.
Are you looking to design a contactless enterprise for your business? You can partner with Resurgent in developing the right AV solution for your organization. From virtual conference rooms to digital signages, we’ve delivered innovative solutions to a wide range of companies across industries.
