Hybrid and flexible working is here to stay. Originally a way to manage reduced office capacities and social distancing during the toughest times of the pandemic, many organisations have decided to stick with it on a permanent basis. It’s easy to see why. From an employee’s perspective, the chance to work from home more often means they can cut out the time and financial cost of commuting. This gives them a much better work/life balance, and helps reduce their stress levels.
Hybrid work is beneficial for employers, too. Happier workers tend to be more motivated and productive workers. They also tend to be more loyal, and at a time when talent retention and acquisition is tougher than ever, giving employees the experiences they want is vital. And there’s also the potential financial benefits of downsizing office real estate and saving on leasing fees, energy costs and other overheads.
Hybrid working: not as simple as it looks
However, making hybrid work a smooth, seamless success isn’t as simple as sending everyone home with a laptop. For starters, collaborating virtually is a bit more complicated than it is in the office, when employees can easily meet each other for a chat or book a meeting room. Video calls and the like require a fair amount of organisation ahead of time, and they also need the supporting technology to work properly for every employee, whenever and wherever they’re working.
Where problems often arise is when some attendees in a meeting are at home, while others are together in person and taking part from a meeting room. Without the right meeting space solution in place, those connecting remotely can often end up feeling isolated from those attending in person. This means they get a second-class experience where they can’t contribute effectively and be as productive as possible.
Because of this, businesses are now being more proactive in exploring ways to make their offices and facilities more conducive for hybrid work. In particular, they’re assessing the technologies they need to bring people together in much smoother ways. However, many are struggling to work out the best way forward as they’re faced with a bewildering array of hardware and software options, some of which make more sense for certain businesses and meeting spaces than others. What they ideally need is a solution that works everywhere, for every type of worker, and is adaptable for whatever the future of work holds.
Better collaboration for all
These issues can be solved with ease by deploying Microsoft Teams Rooms into office meeting spaces. Microsoft Teams Rooms is a combination of Microsoft’s leading video conferencing platform and an array of hardware that brings meetings to life for all.
This hardware includes top-quality webcams, large wall-mounted monitors, crystal-clear sound bars and intuitive meeting room controllers; collectively, they can make remote attendees feel as close as they can possibly get to being in the room in person. There is a wide range of hardware options to choose from, making Microsoft Teams Rooms ideal for every size of meeting space, from small offices and one-to-one calls, right up to large conferencing suites with dozens of participants and more.
A Microsoft Teams Rooms kit can transform otherwise limited meeting rooms and conferencing suites into advanced hubs for collaboration. They can ensure that meetings always start on time, that everyone can see and hear everyone else clearly, and minimise the risk of people talking over each other because they’re unable to see who would like to speak. This way, all participants within a meeting feel included, relaxed and able to make meaningful contributions, even if they’re connecting from home.
All this helps avoid many of the niggling issues that can quickly cause major disruption to meetings or suboptimal experiences. These include (and are not necessarily limited to):
- Poor audio and video from those connecting through a Bring-Your-Own-Device setup
- Attendees sitting out of the frame and therefore out of sight of others
- Inconsistent audio across people sitting in different places
At a technical level, Microsoft Teams is compatible with all types of business devices, meaning attendees can access meetings from a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet or even a smartphone if they’re on the move. The integration between hardware and software means that organisers can start meetings at the touch of a button, and bring every attendee together in a matter of moments. And from an IT admin perspective, enterprise-grade security and auto-enrolment options make the whole package much easier, faster and more cost-effective to manage.
Why is Microsoft Teams Rooms so valuable for resellers?
From your perspective as a reseller, Microsoft Teams Rooms can be a vital part of the flexible working solutions you offer to your customers. You can position yourself as an expert partner who can deliver all the hardware and software they need to make collaboration easy and hassle-free for every employee.
Ingram Micro is a strategic alliance partner of Microsoft, standing us out as a leading provider of kits for Microsoft Teams Rooms. This combines with our portfolio of leading audio and video alliance partners, including Jabra, Poly, Lenovo, EPOS, HP and Logitech. That way, you can bring Microsoft Teams and the best meeting room hardware around and deliver a complete package that’s perfectly suited to your customers’ specific needs and meeting room characteristics.
If a customer needs to scale investments over time to achieve hybrid-readiness with Teams Rooms, they can take a phased approach instead. They can start their journey by leveraging Teams-certified peripherals for BYOD environments, which can then easily be upgraded to a Teams Room later as required. Teams-certified peripherals deliver high-quality audio and video to a space and maximise agility when deploying and building a hybrid meeting infrastructure. When it’s time to upgrade to Teams Rooms, the missing components (such as the Teams Pro licence, compute, touchscreen console, displays, and so on) can easily be added to complete the solution.
The Ingram Micro UCC team is here to help you explore all the potential of Microsoft Teams Rooms within your reselling portfolio. To find out how to add more value and profit to your business, and satisfy your customers even more, get in touch with us today.