Consumerisation has undoubtedly changed the way employees and employers think about their use of business technology.

Conor McGrogan, MD of Steljes Ireland

Today, the design of the most successful work environments is increasingly being dictated by the technology workers choose to take into the office, signifying a major shift in power. This consumerisation trend could mean that IT departments now have to react to user demands rather than dictate the IT strategy, however the majority of businesses see this as a positive evolution.

The result of using the right technology, with access both inside and outside of the workplace, enables staff to work smarter and be far more efficient, productive and collaborative.

Aside from the impact of consumerisation there are other fundamental factors which have triggered new ways of working, with cost pressures and the need for better collaboration high on the list.

Work and the workplace now extends well beyond the confines of the office, and technology allows many knowledge workers to be mobile part, or sometimes, all, of the time. The purpose of the office is gradually changing in response, becoming more about collaboration, meetings and exchanging ideas and experiences – leaving employees to work elsewhere when they need to concentrate and work by themselves.

This approach requires several elements to be put in place, from management culture, new workstyles that allow mobility, to enabling technologies that allow independent working. The design of the next generation workplace is based on the principle of Activity Based Working (ABW) – reflecting the variety of activities employees do and then creating spaces and environments for each of these tasks in proportion to their frequency.

One of the key tasks that ABW caters for is collaboration, whether it’s a high tech space with state of the art technology, noisy café style settings, or a low tech, sparse environment with phone-free zones. Perhaps this is a result of modern businesses now understanding the importance of collaboration, and as consumerisation has led to more technologies which better replicate and enhance the experience of collaborating in person, it can become more engrained in the company ethos.

There are two types of collaboration in the corporate world – intra company and inter company. Intra company collaboration, the most common area, is where employees from the same company work together on projects and processes, both in co-located facilities and increasingly across a broad range of geographical offices.

Intercompany collaboration, involves people from different companies working together, however this is more of challenge, as connecting people through different technology and security systems across public networks makes it difficult. In response, a range of new technological solutions are emerging on the market that will accelerate the ability to collaborate successfully – from the latest high definition video conferencing to unified communications and collaboration software.

For example, in the industrial design, engineering and construction sectors, collaborative display technology used in conjunction with the appropriate software, is now enabling team members to present their drawings on an interactive screen — in high resolution — and make any changes using digital ink.

In addition to the quality of the plans on display, participants don’t need to be the in the same room to benefit. Users can effectively connect to the meeting from anywhere in the building, on site, in the country, or the world and interact and amend the digital content simultaneously and in real time. Essentially participants would join via a link in an email and once clicked it would enable them to view the meeting host’s desktop and all changes would be annotated onto the drawing on their own device.

The latest innovations, like kapp iQ from SMART, can be powered by your smart phone or tablet. It simply connects to the digital display to easily allow you to capture your notes, ideas and actions during a meeting. Then you can share with your colleagues at the end of the meeting – or even invite them to join during the meeting whether they are in the same room or not.

But it doesn’t stop there, every participant can contribute to the display from their device. When they do, their writing instantly appears on the display and on everyone else’s device. It’s true multi-way collaboration, where work can be saved at any time to a storage service.

In this way, the entire process of collaboration becomes more accurate, more streamlined, more efficient, and more cost-effective as remote collaboration is possible. Team members can also ensure that by using technology the risk of misreading changes, or misinterpreting drawings is rapidly reduced and could potentially save companies huge amounts of money.

And, in addition, to keeping key staff on site or in their offices and not requiring them to travel, there’s also a significant reduction in carbon footprint which is a definite advantage for companies with a green focus or those responsible for public sector buildings. Eliminating the need for people to travel around the world for meetings a massive cost saver and we have found is a key driver for this type of technology in the past two years.

Conor McGrogan is the Managing Director of Vibrance Ltd.