Empty office areas, clean workstations, well-equipped meeting rooms...
At the moment of the epidemic, poly's Beijing office area has disappeared from the employees who usually come to the office to work. Li Jinshui, President of Poly Greater China, explained, "Since 2020, Poly has implemented a hybrid office system in global offices, and the daily collaboration and communication of the team is mainly carried out remotely."
Li Jinshui, who has many years of EXPERIENCE in IT, once described himself as "growing up in IT". He has served as the general manager and president of SGI, Compaq, Polycom and other companies in China. After the merger of Plantronics and Polycom in 2019, Li Jinshui served as the president of Poly Poly Greater China and continued to deepen the audio and video field.
Recently, ComputerWorld conducted a "face-to-face" communication and exchange with Mr. Li Jinshui in the Poly Intelligent Conference Room in Beijing on the development of hybrid office and intelligent tools.
"Always communicate"
In the post-epidemic era, enterprises have shifted to new office models, and text, voice, and video images have become the basis for smooth remote collaborative office. "Industry development, communication and communication is the foundation, Poly is to adhere to the foundation." Li Jinshui said.
It is understood that Polycom is the first audio and video company to launch face recognition and speech recognition, and Plantronics has a history of about 60 years in the audio industry. After the merger of the two companies, the integration of related technologies and audio and video has become deeper, and the front line of solutions has been continuously enriched. At present, Poly has about 1817 intellectual property rights in the field of audio and video, which is the richest in the world.
Li Jinshui pointed out that in the post-epidemic period, video conferencing will become the norm for office collaboration. All walks of life will use real-time audio and video applications to communicate and collaborate among employees, customers, and users, especially in business meetings, business negotiations, internal training, webinars, and other scenarios.
With today's hybrid office model, businesses and employees need a communications device that collaborates and communicates quickly and clearly. Therefore, a barrier-free telecommuting solution should have the following essential qualities, which are also the focus of Poly's current product development:
First of all, whether it is for large conference space, or small conference space or mobile office, communication equipment should be convenient to use, plug and play; secondly, the product should have excellent audio and video hardware capabilities and professional technical configuration, to ensure that the sound and picture are clear, can intelligently show the best side of the spokesperson; in addition, the product can be seamlessly connected with other office platforms, no matter the user uses any cloud platform can be used immediately; finally, the product should have flexible scene adaptability, can be adapted to a variety of environmental needs, Deliver great performance regardless of location and background environment.
"After the merger of the two technology-based companies, they continue to focus on technology and continue to create revolutionary technologies and products for the next generation." Li Jinshui said, "All poly products revolve around audio and video, thinking about how to give audio and video capabilities to different hardware and equipment, and can provide a complete set of audio and video solutions, which is very important for the future." ”
"One-type, equal experience"
Affected by the epidemic, enterprises need to continue to explore more efficient, more flexible and more resilient development directions, and digital transformation is accelerating. At the same time, the hybrid office model also makes enterprises face more challenges, and problems such as not being able to work on site and meeting customers face-to-face need to be solved urgently.
"Businesses need to open up their own online collaboration channels and build the infrastructure and capabilities to work remotely to keep them up and running." Li Jinshui said, "The IT department of the enterprise should ensure that employees can still cooperate with each other and communicate without boundaries under different environments and different circumstances, so as to help all employees face the 'new normal' of mixed office." ”
Talking about the value brought by Poly In the era of mixed office, Li Jinshui used eight words to describe it - "one type will, equal experience".
Among them, "equal experience" means that whether it is a speaker or a listener at the far end, through any device of Poly Poly, the best communication experience can be obtained. "One type will" refers to the simple and easy-to-use Poly USB device, which can be plugged and played by everyone, and can get an excellent audio and video experience without professional IT staff debugging.
It is worth mentioning that compared with other audio and video enterprise products: Poly is the first manufacturer to use voice recognition for tracking, and its AI technologies such as NoiseBlockAI and DirectorAI can actively track the speaker's audio, facial movements and gestures, intelligently blocking interference noise. As long as one person in the conference room speaks, even if wearing a mask, the camera can accurately identify and turn the camera completely to the speaker, and the switching is smooth.
In addition, if the participating employees are in multiple different cities, the two people who speak in a video conference conversation can be identified and merged on a single screen, which is Poly Poly's "speaker dialogue mode". Li Jinshui said: "Poly's camera products are equipped with face recognition AI technology, not only on Poly Poly's proprietary products, but also give technical capabilities to all device hardware, into a complete set of solutions, provided to different industries, to provide everyone with an equal and consistent communication and collaboration experience." ”
According to Li Jinshui, Poly currently has a traditional customized conference system business, which is still its core business. This part of the business is mainly aimed at enterprises and institutions that have heavy requirements for security and need private conference systems, such as finance, real estate, state institutions, etc.
"Hybrid office mode is the core competitiveness of enterprises in the future"
In the post-pandemic era or the new normal, the trend of mixed office has become irreversible. Accenture's report shows that 94% of Chinese respondents are willing to embrace a hybrid office model in their future work. Free office locations, an alternative office environment and flexible working hours make flexible working a new factor for many job seekers to consider when looking for a job. At the same time, "remote positions" also greatly reduce the capacity of the workplace, which can help enterprises save costs in the long run.
The report also notes that more businesses are now opening up their telecommuting or hybrid job options. In the Asia-Pacific region, the number of applications for "remote positions" in major countries, including China, increased by about 60%.
"The hybrid office model is the core competitiveness of the enterprise in the future, and the future workforce is no longer on-site or remote, but a blended workforce." Li Jinshui said, "Especially those intellectual, business, management-oriented workplace roles, location is not an absolute requirement for them, maintaining flexibility without losing performance is the focus." ”
How can enterprises implement a hybrid office model? Li Jinshui believes that enterprises need more scientific management. On the one hand, it is necessary to understand the company's own business priorities, technical support, employee portraits, and the nature of work content. On the other hand, technology increases productivity and makes communication and collaboration smoother and more efficient.
In addition, employees need to slowly learn new models under the new situation. In Li Jinshui's view, for employees, the office is more of a social center, and irregular face-to-face communication can maintain the working relationship of employees and enhance the emotional exchange between employees. For enterprises, offices and meeting rooms are not only used for offices and meetings, but can become exhibition centers, meeting centers, and allowing customers to visit product demonstrations.