'Flexibility and Agility To Drive Digital Transformation'

Transformation is dynamically influencing the future of work culture. and the trend is graduating towards a strong and deeply interconnected hybrid collaboration model when it comes to working styles of COVID era.

In a conversation with Rajiv Bhalla, MD, Barco India, Faiz Askari of SMEStreet found some key insights on contemporary digital transformation.

• What are the strategies adopted by Barco to enable digital transformation for its customers?

As a global enabler of collaboration and visualisation solutions, Barco is at the forefront of digital transformation. While most organisations grasped the importance of digitisation only after the pandemic necessitated work from home, Barco was already working towards making remote and hybrid collaboration a reality. We realised that the future of work was changing and understood that businesses must adopt a digital strategy focused on flexibility and agility. Our products and solutions based portfolio is aimed at making digital transformation a reality for companies and offering employees all the amenities required to create a resilient workstyle. 

Barco is aiding digital transformation by targeting markets that are exploring hybrid working possibilities for futuristic businesses. With technology becoming more and more pervasive, offices need to be retooled and redesigned to cater to a more collaborative and flexible work environment. Barco sees hybrid workplaces steadily adopting virtual collaboration tools, video conferencing tools, and communication tools and, as leaders in the segment, we are making consistent efforts to enable digital transformation in our partners and end consumers. Barco aims to enable people, enhance operational excellence, create a superlative technological presence and promote brand leadership. We are also leveraging our capabilities to design and provide innovative smart city solutions, surveillance and security via control room solutions and hybrid workplace solutions for the digital transformation of enterprises.

• In the future, what are the new innovations in hybrid workplaces that we can expect from Barco?

Barco is always focused on the possibility of designing new and innovative solutions for our users. We are consistently engaged in bringing newer and more advanced technology and hybrid workspaces remain one of our focus segments. Our surveys suggest that workplaces will only become more hybrid in the future and our R&D teams are striving to create solutions aimed at further empowering organisations in the hybrid ecosystem. We have been launching upgraded ClickShare Conference models on a regular basis, catering to the varied requirements of the Indian market. In May, we launched the new ClickShare Present in global markets and aim to release the solution in India soon.

• Does Barco ClickShare Conference help in minimizing cyber threats?

Barco believes that security is integral to a healthy workplace ecosystem and we are frontrunners in the secure collaborative services segment. Our flagship solution ClickShare Conference provides customers seamless applications and enterprise-grade security by ensuring secure and wireless collaboration in meeting spaces. ClickShare Conference, as well as other models in our ClickShare range, combine powerful remote communication with easy-to-use wireless collaboration, offering users a secure, connected and cloud-managed solution that enables conferencing and collaboration in just 7 seconds. Barco ClickShare is also ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified, ensuring uncompromised security from cybercrimes.

• How Barco is improving collaboration technology with its wireless conferencing solutions?

Barco is focused on enhancing collaboration and visualization technology, especially given the importance of hybrid and digital innovations in the current pandemic environment. Leveraging our suite of seamless ClickShare products and solutions Barco provides frictionless entry for all users, no matter where they are working from. To further boost collaboration, Barco is now providing users with the complete collaborative experience, with full BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), interactivity features and workflow integration via the globally launched ClickShare Present and seamless Bring Your Own Meeting experience with the fully agnostic ClickShare Conference models. Using our wireless conferencing solutions, end customers can host calls from their laptop, use their preferred UC&C platform, and wirelessly connect to the meeting room display and AV peripherals. 

• According to the Barco survey, 81% of employees think their employer should start preparing for hybrid work now. What’s your view on this?

We agree with the Barco survey and believe that it is now high time for organisations to adopt the hybrid workstyle and offer employees flexible and agile office structures. Organisations must pivot towards developing more agility, resilience and risk tolerance so that they are better prepared, with stronger business continuity plans, in case of future black swan events of this magnitude and hybrid work is the first step in this direction. The future is hybrid and organisations have to accept it. We all must prepare ourselves for the monumental shift required to adapt to the new generation workplace and the sooner we do it, the better.  

• How are SMEs adopting new technologies for work from home?

Barco’s recent survey found that employees across organisations want a hybrid workplace model, where they have the flexibility and freedom to work from home when it works best for them or suits the type of work they need to do. For SMEs, WFH is an ideal solution as it enables them to reduce operational costs while offering them the chance to hire talented people across geographies. Reports suggest that SMEs have made a digital shift and adopted work from home solutions during the pandemic, with 82% respondents in a recent Dun & Bradstreet survey of over 250 small businesses stating that they have digitised their daily operations during the pandemic. The move is said to have enabled cost reduction for 54% of the surveyed SMEs and enhanced competitiveness for 51% of the participants. Work from home technology and the gig economy are likely to further empower SMEs in their move towards expansion and development going ahead.