Only slightly less elusive than a needle in a haystack – How to choose the right meeting room solution

Distill the selection process into finite steps

Or, in other words, eat the elephant one bite at a time. Gartner recently broke down the meeting room selection process into two main steps¹:

1. Analyze your business needs for meeting room solutions by examining the current and future needs of your digital workforce – keeping in mind that meeting room solutions are typically in use for years so they should be able to accommodate future enterprise needs and growth.

2. Then align the four types of meeting room solutions with your company's meeting requirements by “matching evolving activity-based work and team collaboration needs to available options"²

First and foremost, it's critical to understand that there are various types of both meetings and meeting spaces. So it's usually better to assemble a solution portfolio than to search for a one-size-fits-all system.³

According to Gartner, meeting rooms fall into four categories³:

• Basic conference rooms – for prearranged meetings for 4 to 24 attendees; feature basic audioconferencing services and participant work surfaces

• Huddle spaces and private offices – ad hoc meeting spaces that are often added to other facilities; should permit users to gather around content and brainstorm

• Collaborative project rooms – sometimes called “war rooms," physical rooms (possibly with restricted access) that are dedicated to a team or project for a time period; require both formal presentation space as well as informal meeting areas and should permit the display of lots of information rather than a single presentation

• Executive briefing facility – larger facilities for formal presentations, low need for collaboration; meetings are usually scheduled and must be able to produce a high-quality appearance and reliable operation of the meeting room solution

When analyzing meeting room solutions, you'll also want to try to future-proof your selection. Ask yourself what physical changes could be in store, how technological advances might impact your choice as well as anticipate any cultural shifts to come, such as reorganizations or enterprise realignments.

Finally, you'll need to determine the who and how. Who will be permitted to initiate meetings? Will it be specific employees, designated departments or all knowledge workers? And how will users be able to schedule, start and participate in these collaborative meetings? At the risk of stating the obvious, strive to choose a simple meeting room solution, one with intuitive steps and straightforward workflows. Ideally, you should also set a goal to deliver consistent experiences regardless of whether users are at their desks, in conference rooms, working remotely on laptops or using their mobile devices while traveling.