Return To Office Technology Playbook

Audiovisual technology is instrumental to the remote employee and in office experience.   Employees have changed their lifestyle as a result of COVID and business owners will need to adapt to return to office.  No longer will employees be dedicated to working from an office Monday to Friday 9 to 5.  This means that your company needs to provide communication technology to enable a seamless collaboration experience for your employees when they return to office.  If you don’t have the proper technology in place, where everyone can hear and see each other clearly, then you no longer are meeting the modern workforces requirements to an efficient and successful communication technology strategy.

Your company will be more profitable and more successful in the long run if you make the investments today into creating collaboration spaces.  What is a collaboration space? Collaboration spaces are dedicated areas of the office where employees can communicate with employees outside the office seamlessly.  Without struggling, without frustration, and with ease.  This means that if you’re conferencing spaces are still dedicated for teleconferencing, then you need to change that now.  You can’t wait any longer to make the investment in your next generation collaboration spaces.  Your teams are already back in the office.

Here is a comprehensive list that summarizes what you should have already done to your conference rooms to convert them NEW COLLABORATION SPACES.  No more is it acceptable to have the dreary gray walls, concrete floor, linoleum table, a Polycom star phone on the desk and a whiteboard on the wall and a paper flip chart on a cart.  Everything in the room should either integrate with your collaboration software of choice (Microsoft Teams or Zoom), or be replaced.  Macronet Services has completed thousands of conference room to collaboration space transformations for our customers.  We’d love to work with you, as long as you’ve got an open mind and the willingness to collaborate together.  We have some great examples and ideas to share with you, so feel free to reach out and we hope to hear from you soon!

Upgrading AV:

1. Designing your new collaboration space
   1. Focus on in-person + remote participant experience
   2. New Technologies
   3. Improving audio
   4. Improving video
2. Building a standard for all your offices
3. Simplifying the end user experience
4. Defining technology requirements
5. Building a budget
6. Building a timeline
7. Communicating with the workforce
8. Training

WAN + LAN Upgrades

The pandemic demonstrated that IT leaders need to seamlessly support the workforce while in the office and throughout prolonged periods of working from home. Further, many management teams have realized that there is a growing percentage of their workforce that can be highly productive at home and may never return to the office with any regularity.  Therefore, now is a good time to hire an experienced WAN consultant to  audit your WAN environment and determine the best mix of services for your network infrastructure moving forward.

The team at Macronet Services helps IT teams design and source the best options for SD-WAN and cloud-based collaboration tools including Unified Communications as a Service and Contact Center as a Service.  Further, we can help to size your network accordingly to support fluctuations between in-house and remote work.  Beyond technical design, we understand service provider contract negotiations and will help to secure the best possible terms to ensure that your business remains nimble.

It is critical that network security always remains top-of-mind, but especially now that users are accessing the network from anywhere and attack surfaces are expanding every day.  The SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) design helps to simplify and secure the customer edge network and allows for rapid deployment of new office spaces.  Contact us for a consultation about secure next generation network services to support your return to office push and longer-term global office strategies.

Here are a few additional resources that may be helpful on your journey from office to remote:

SDWAN Explained – Macronet Services

Telephony The Ultimate Guide for 2021 – Macronet Services

Why you need an IT Audit Immediately – Macronet Services

What is a Virtual Call Center – Macronet Services

Choosing The Best WAN Consultant For RFPs in 2021 – Macronet Services

The Evolution of Network Security with SASE – Macronet Services