With remote and distributed workforces becoming the norm, teams must be able to communicate, even when they aren’t sitting in the same room. With it, conference room technologies have become a necessity. But with every necessity comes a challenge, and the standard of meeting room technology can make or break your event.
Common problems such as complex logins, few participant engagements, device incompatibility, confusing input options, etc., can be distracting, making your meeting a bad experience rather than a resounding success.
These challenges in the meeting room can cause 24% of teams to miss a deadline, 12% to lose money, and 10% to miss an opportunity. And there are many other reasons why meeting room technology fails. It relies on other software, hardware, and networking components. So, pinpointing the exact point of failure can be tricky for a business user.
Fewer Participants Engagement
Problem: Access to interactive technologies encourages productive audience participation, and collaborative communication platforms are more important now. When it comes to conference room technology, it is quite an issue to understand who is speaking and whom to see. This results in people talking over each other and diverting from the main issue. This leads to inefficient and tedious meetings lacking creativity or idea generation.
Solution: One solution is using technology that offers an interactive in-built digital whiteboard. This will make them feel as if you’re brainstorming with your team in the same room—even if everyone is remote.
Confusing Input Options
Problem: Nothing is more frustrating than getting ready for a major meeting only to face connectivity issues. The issue could be due to HDMI cables or the fact that your laptop cannot connect to the projector’s AV cables. And sometimes, it could be impossible to choose the right input for the right dongle. And even more to coordinate the laptop with the monitor so that the display is accurate. It’s time-consuming to plug and unplug HDMI or AV cables to connect different sources.
Solution: To reduce confusion, try using devices that integrate hardware and software and connect with a simple HDMI cable. You can also use a simple and cost-effective solution such as wireless presentation systems instead of cables. It creates a faster and easier connection.
Unable to hear voices
Problem: Another extremely common problem people face with meeting room technology is a lack of vision and sound. They can either happen due to a slow audio or wifi connection. Thus, it becomes impossible for meeting attendees to stay focused on the presentation. Poor acoustics are normally the result of sound waves bouncing off of hard surfaces in the room. It may also be an audio hardware problem. If there aren’t enough microphones in the room, or if they aren’t positioned correctly, your room may not be capturing enough audio.
Solution: Look for technology with in-built, powerful speakers. You can also add virtual soundbars that deliver crystal-clear audio during meetings.
Another option is using a microphone with beamforming technology to ensure that every voice gets heard in meetings. If the output volume is too low, you can add speakers or reposition existing speakers for better audio coverage.
Device incompatibility
Problem: Once a conference is underway, there’s usually little to worry about. Getting started is tough for many, and it often comes down to connectivity. Many conference room systems are incompatible with the latest smartphones, tablets, and laptops, limiting connections to specific operating systems or software.
Besides, many participants keep shuffling HDMI cables to run presentations. It hampers the flow of information and makes the meeting time-consuming.
Solution: A simple video conferencing solution with support for screen sharing allows teams to be more engaged. Thus, good technology in a meeting room can connect with personal devices such as laptops or mobile devices with embedded webcams.
Difficulty in Login
Problem: There is not much that is worse than watching the clock tick away while you wait for a meeting. Many conference room tools have passwords that are as secure as Fort Knox. Users need to arrive on time by the time they figure out the password settings and log in to the meeting, they will need to arrive on time. Participants keep waiting for the meeting to begin while the organiser is trying to input a login on the other end.
Solution: Try using a solution that requires one simple click on a URL instead of a complicated login. When it comes to conference room technology logins, the simpler, the better.
Not enough space for meetings of various sizes
Problem: Another big issue is that there are too many meetings but not enough videoconferencing rooms to accommodate them. However, this problem generally occurs in medium- or large-sized enterprises. Finding the right balance between too few and too many conference rooms takes a lot of work. Every conference room is well spent if it is utilised appropriately. It becomes frustrating when teams need to get rooms according to their meeting size.
Solution: One of the options is to maintain tighter control over how your conference rooms are utilised. If your teams are all trying to meet simultaneously, your peak usage times may overwhelm your conference rooms, leaving them empty the rest of the day.
Alternatively, you can make up the difference by increasing the number of conference rooms.
Lastly, you can also do room scheduling to eliminate meeting space bottlenecks. This can be used in tandem with other AV solutions as well. Professional teams using room scheduling can reserve a room in advance to prevent usage overlap. It works best when tied to a shared calendar, so users can see the available rooms and time slots before reserving a room.
