Meeting Rooms In Days, Not Months – How Logitech and UnifiedCommunications.com see the (Immediate) Future of Fast, Flexible, and Cost-Effective Collab

“I’m not sure who’s coming into the office, or when,” the director of IT of a major US company told us recently. “But I need more collaboration spaces than I actually have physical rooms to put them in… so all those cubicles over there? I’m ripping them out. I’m putting in collaboration spaces. And I’ll do it myself. I have a screwdriver right here.”??

What this IT director said is no longer an isolated incident. We’re hearing this story more frequently, as IT professionals juggle the needs of a rapidly changing workplace and an uncertain financial outlook against the need to adapt to the new reality of mainstream video collaboration. And the solution is simple: the IT department is increasingly going to do a lot of the work themselves, in-house.??

The shift to do-it-yourself?

This shift to DIY is the result of a perfect storm of converging trends. Economic uncertainty has caused many to pull back on budgets across the enterprise. The post-pandemic shift to hybrid – now hovering at about 50% of workers in the office at any given time – has meant that workers “here” still need to communicate and collaborate with workers “there.” In addition, most enterprises haven’t fully figured out what their hybrid work strategy is. As such, the resulting uncertainty over office space occupancy leads many IT professionals to prioritize flexibility in their immediate investments.??

In short, the modern IT department is thinking along the lines of cost, speed, and flexibility – and realizing that for many small-scale collaboration room installations, DIY is the answer.??

Scale, Serviceability, and Affordability?

“What IT cares about, first of all, is that they've got to be able to manage these projects at scale,” Logitech’s Head of Analyst Relations and Business Strategy Nathan Coutinho says. “Our most expensive product is $5,000 and our cheapest conference room system is $199. We can fit in anywhere from BYOD all the way to the high-end custom rooms. So, I think that in general, IT needs something that's serviceable, they need something that's affordable, and they need something that works with multiple operating systems.”??

Managing the fast deployment of huddle spaces is paramount in today’s environment, as Coutinho says. But staying flexible in uncertain times – both in terms of budgets as well as user requirements – makes this job more challenging.??

“A lot of IT folks are saying it's getting really hard to say, OK, we want 20 large conference rooms and then the next week say, let's just build a bunch of huddle rooms,” Coutinho continues. “It's not easy to just flip flop like that. You might have a large room system and you need a hotel room system. I think it’s important to address the root cause problem, namely, that if you don't have a hybrid plan and you have not communicated that well to all your employees, you're already going to be in trouble.”??

Flexibility as a contingency plan?

Without a well-defined hybrid plan, flexibility suddenly becomes critical – particularly in times of static or shrinking budgets. No one wants to spend as much on channeling concrete and disrupting an entire floor’s productivity to create a permanent meeting room when the same budget could suffice for several DIY huddle rooms that can move when the needs of the business dictate. For many, an uncertain outlook on office occupancy and an undefined hybrid strategy means more reliance on planning for flexible space design and self-reliance for easier deployments.??

Expanding from high-touch to speed of deployment – but keeping service front and center?

This trade-off is familiar ground for UnifiedCommunications.com, where we’ve built an industry-leading position around making complex communication and collaboration problems simple for some of the biggest brands on earth. While the company’s DNA is firmly rooted in end user devices, we’ve built unarguable subject matter expertise and a substantial practice around room strategy, design, and deployment.??

Our shift to include DIY is an acknowledgement that many of our customers prioritize speed and cost over a white glove service level – but that service levels are still important, which is why we offer 60 minutes of free remote installation support, our own proprietary wiring and elevation guides and best practices, as well as a host of support documentation from Microsoft and our OEM partners like Logitech, to ensure that no matter how our customers choose to deploy their next series of meeting rooms, they’ll stay up and running.?

“Up-time and the ease and flexibility of moving either product or platform is where Logitech really excels,” Logitech’s senior global partner sales manager Nicole Reynolds says. “The opportunity to take devices and with a couple of clicks of a couple of cables and connectors plug them into an ethernet switch, you can have whatever configuration of room you want up in a very short period of time. This makes it easy for your team to stay working.”??

What next???

For IT departments up to the task, shifting simple to medium complexity collaboration spaces towards DIY is gaining traction. And this isn’t at odds with higher end, consultative value-added resellers who can bring the right technology, software, design, and service levels to bear on the enterprise’s bigger picture collaboration strategy.??

Want to learn more? Visit us at UnifiedCommunications.com

Interested in a Logitech DIY solution for a small or medium room project???

See our MTR small room Logitech Rally Bar Mini plus Tap IP Android bundle, with 60 minutes of free remote installation support, UC’s wiring and elevation documentation, plus all the technical readiness documentation from Microsoft and Logitech you need to get up and running quickly. Get it here.?

For MTR medium rooms, check out our Logitech Rally Bar with Tap controller and Lenovo Compute Windows bundle. This also comes with 60 minutes of free remote installation support, UC’s wiring and elevation documentation, plus all the technical readiness documentation from Microsoft and Logitech you need to get up and running quickly. Get it here.?

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