By the end of the year, Statista estimates more than 3.5 billion smart devices will be sold to consumers worldwide. This includes smart home devices, smart set-top (cable) boxes, smart TVs, 360-degree cameras, virtual reality devices, smartphones, tables, wearables and other portables. There’s even an influx in smart pet technology, likely to no surprise to the average person.

We’re used to the intuitive technology that we use in our personal lives – designed to make our lives easier, making things simpler. But anyone who has run a meeting knows that a meeting room seems to be designed to make our lives harder through complex and confusing technology.

It’s pretty clear there’s a disconnect between the goal of a meeting and the meeting room design. So, what makes a meeting room smart, and how is technology helping businesses get there?

Leave complexity at the door

Just as all the other smart technology in your life has made it easier and faster to get things done, a truly smart meeting room is built to simplify your life by reducing complexity. We’ve all fallen victim to a meeting gone wrong because of technology issues:

• Devices don’t show up on a screen
• Presentations freeze mid-stream
• Wi-Fi signals drop
• Participants get antsy and start playing on their phones

You know the drill.

The smart meeting room is designed to ensure there are no hiccups in your presentation. Technology allows the presenter to walk into the meeting room with lighting and temperature preset to their liking. Rather than fumbling with multiple buttons, devices and cords, they can launch a global meeting with a single touch on their smartphone. In short, they are in charge of the room long before others dial in.

What’s more, the smart meeting room continually gathers data to help predict future use. It allows the organization to understand how they’re leveraging their meeting space. For instance, if a 12-person meeting room has an average occupancy of four, the facility manager can see the issue and move that meeting to an appropriate room. Your meeting room should only grow smarter from the day it’s installed.

A sweet suite of meeting room solutions

At RoomReady, we’re working to transform every meeting room into a smart room. Our family of solutions – including the Connect, Go and View – simplifies everything related to the meeting room.

Connect

This allows participants to see what rooms are available and schedule a meeting room with ease.

Go

With its cloud connection, the Go aggregates data around user information, room utilization and support cases across platforms, and anticipates user needs before they even realize they need it. Go is so smart that it automatically wakes up and turns on the lights and displays when someone walks in the room.

View

The View allows a meeting planner or IT staff to conveniently monitor all meeting rooms without having to leave their office. Our meeting room analytics tool diagnoses, prioritizes and addresses problems as they come up. This means issues are visible in real-time and resolved before they get worse – and often before attendees know anything’s wrong.

How to Get Started

Meeting rooms should inspire collaboration – not frustration. Today’s meeting room technology helps bring “smartness” into the workplace, just like the convenience that’s at our fingertips at home.

I guess you could bring your smart pet to work to have a smart workplace, but RoomReady meeting space technology can make this happen – no allergies included. Ready to get smarter? Contact RoomReady!