Guest contributor |
American writer and leadership expert John C. Maxwell once wrote that “collaboration is multiplication”. By this, he meant that effective teamwork is a force multiplier for any organisation. Being competitive and winning are by-products of collaboration, which indicates that there are few business challenges more important than developing and maintaining great teams.
As hybrid work scenarios continue to become a default business practice of business worldwide, organisations face another challenge in intelligent transformation – making meeting spaces smarter. According to collaboration technology provider Logitel’s global workforce survey, more than 43 per cent of remote workers feel they are not fully included in meetings and less than eight per cent of meeting rooms worldwide are video enabled. Consequently, firms are looking to level up collaboration experiences to meet the needs of workers and the IT departments serving them.
Lenovo works with Microsoft to build certified solutions for Microsoft Teams under our ThinkSmart portfolio, helping to elevate meeting experiences and amplify collaboration. The role of smart collaboration technology has never been more critical as many Lenovo customers are continuing to redefine meeting spaces and how work is done.
The integration of artificial intelligence into collaboration tools presents a transformative opportunity to connect people and improve productivity. Lenovo, the global leader in PCs, is bringing more compute power to collaboration with innovative solutions like the ThinkSmart Core Gen 2, one of the first AI-optimised computing devices purpose built to run video conferencing room systems. Powered by the Intel Core Ultra processor with an integrated neural processing unit, the ThinkSmart Core Gen 2 is ready for AI-heavy meeting room workloads and delivers unparalleled performance for intuitive collaboration and enhanced productivity, all in a protected and user-friendly solution.
In the future, end users of platforms like Teams will be empowered by enhanced predictive capabilities that anticipate their needs and suggest relevant resources or actions before they’re requested. And AI-driven analytics will provide real-time feedback on productivity and team dynamics, enabling more informed decision-making and fostering a more agile and responsive work environment.
For IT managers, collaborative AI tools hold the potential for even greater automation, proactive management and strategic insight. AI is expected to further reduce the manual workload by automating more complex maintenance tasks, predictive monitoring and security measures, allowing IT teams to focus on innovation rather than routine operations.
As these AI-enabled collaboration tools evolve, they will increasingly become essential resources in daily tasks for meeting participants while helping to reduce complexity and workloads for IT managers.
These changes to how we work and collaborate with the assistance of AI are just the tip of the iceberg. In the years to come, not only will hybrid meetings become an even more seamless business activity, but the value that can be derived and executed on will also increase. Meeting participants can have clear action items automatically generated for them afterwards, and AI assistants will support them in finding and organising information on AI PCs so those action items can be completed faster and better.
The AI revolution in business and its impact on corporations’ meeting cultures couldn’t be happening at a better time. According to Harvard Business Review, meetings have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years. Executives now spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in meetings, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s.
From conference calls to video conferencing, technology enabled more meetings and greater connectivity as enterprises grew globally. Now, technology is not just making more meetings possible, it’s also making them better. And it’s enabling workers to make smarter decisions about attending meetings. Got a schedule conflict or just too busy with other pressing tasks? No problem. Meetings are now recorded, so you can quickly read high-quality auto-generated transcripts.
Working closely with our strategic partners like Microsoft, Lenovo will continue to deliver on its promise of ‘smarter technology for all’ and make meetings better for our customers by delivering the hardware and computing power to get the most out of innovative AI applications.
Shannon MacKay is general manager of worldwide smart collaboration business at Lenovo
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