Boardrooms and Beyond: Enterprise Solutions Redefine the Boundaries of Visual Interactive Collaboration

Traditionally, company boardrooms have been stiff and stodgy places, designed for one very specific purpose: to bring people together for highly structured, formal meetings. In fact, if we asked you to describe the interior of a typical corporate boardroom, you’d probably mention a long, rectangular table surrounded by attendees who sit there passively, listening to presenters click-through slide deck after slide deck… after slide deck.

We're here to share the good news, though: All that’s changing.

Today, boardrooms are being transformed into what can only be described as “high-value collaboration centers,” able to accommodate interactive, multi-media content, real-time analytics, and participants who join in from locations all around the world. In short, they’re becoming innovative, dynamic, and increasingly regarded as essential places to achieve consensus and add to the company's bottom line.

We’ve seen that more and more CEOs are recognizing the growing importance of high-value collaborative boardrooms, and they’re taking an increasingly proactive role in designing them. That’s why we weren’t surprised to see that 24 percent of those polled by Altimeter said the CEO officially owns or sponsors the digital transformation initiative at their company. That’s up from 17 percent a few years prior and second only to CIOs, who were cited as the most typical owners or sponsors of transformation initiatives at 33 percent.

What's clear is that effective collaborative experiences are highly valued by the C-suite. 

"Those companies that embrace collaborative technologies and strategies are the ones that succeed," said futurist and best-selling author, Jacob Morgan, in our eBook 12 Habits of Highly Collaborative Organizations. "Virtually every executive today will tell you that collaboration is a crucial component of the future of work, so it’s no wonder that so many organizations around the world are investing in better technologies and strategies to connect their people and information."

What kind of solutions are CEOs looking for? Here’s what we’ve heard they would most like to improve about the technology in their company boardrooms:

1. CEOs want meeting prep to be straightforward and seamless. Whether it’s sales figures from a business intelligence dashboard, a video snippet from a product demonstration, or a bulleted list from a white paper, compiling content across platforms and devices should be hassle-free. CEOs want technology that enables information to be easily prepped, uploaded, and shared—ideally via a single, interactive digital canvas.
2. CEOs want advanced, integrated technologies that improve the meeting experience. In addition to key players in the room, it’s critical for remote participants to feel equally engaged and part of the process. New approaches to touch display and collaboration visual interactive software are integral with video conferencing solutions and provide compelling, immersive experiences that enable those attending to not only participate in discussions but also interact with data and contribute their own content. Another exciting innovation in this space is identity access management, which allows a participant’s profile and preferences to automatically appear on displays and other equipment as soon as they enter the room. 
3. CEOs want meeting content to be preserved and easily accessible later. The latest executive boardroom technology offers content persistence (meaning that all documents, videos, annotations, can be preserved and accessed later). As a result, there’s less worry about note-taking during the meeting and more focus on what’s being presented, whether that’s organizational KPIs, strategies, metrics, or other data from the CEO dashboard. In addition, content persistence improves transparency by enabling easy access to meeting files so presentations can be reviewed at a later date. 
4. CEOs want their boardrooms to drive business. Combining meeting room space with the right technology can improve the bottom line. After all, when data is presented as part of a highly interactive experience, it’s easier to engage, identify relationships, and even test hypotheses. That makes meetings more effective—for everyone, whether they’re sales teams eager to close more deals or company directors looking for new business opportunities.

Including the boardroom in a company’s digital transformation is only one step in improving information sharing and collaboration.   

“Our enterprise customers are expanding these interactive boardroom solutions to other key meeting spaces throughout their organizations, from learning centers to multi-purpose all-hands meeting rooms as well as larger conference rooms all across their physical locations,” said Prysm Head of Product Marketing, Frank DeMartin. 

There’s no getting around it: People will always need to meet in company boardrooms or other meeting spaces. But more and more CEOs recognize that the way information is presented—and how attendees interact with it—is changing rapidly. Today’s sophisticated display and visual interactive solutions can help your company communicate ideas through rich visuals and content-centric experiences so that everyone in the boardroom works smarter and more efficiently. 

Could your business benefit from a boardroom makeover? Go to Prysm.com to learn more about our LPD large-format display solutions, offering best-in-class image quality, powerful visualization software, interactivity, touchscreen, low energy consumption (think ESG) and more.