When Eagle Investment Systems, a global provider of financial services technology and software, built their new office a year ago they wanted it to match their "high performance workforce" and it has some remarkable capabilities.
In any room in the building you can scribble on the wall. Then you can hook up some portable Bluetooth-enabled wands and fire up a Cisco WebEx meeting and everyone can see and interact with your wall.
Here are some of the other features:
No More Email They created an application where everyone is on a network where they can drag and drop messages, data, schedules and anything else needed. It went from taking two weeks to launch a new project to the current two days.
Does your office have any of this technology? Is this type of office the future? What was the worst office you ever worked in?
No More Desk Phones Each employee has his/her own tablet, laptop, software-phone, and portable headsets and speakerphones. The use Jabber and WebEx to communicate.
Huddle RoomsInstead of having offices and very few conference rooms that workers would have to reserve, EIS built small meeting rooms every 40 feet equipped with monitors for web conferences in order to increase information flow and collaboration.
Status Updates Video conferencing is a constant, increasing communication with employees abroad or at other sites and "status updates" are posted throughout the building on monitors allowing employees to stay in the loop of what is going on.
Next up, Fitzgerald envisions a day when when applications between companies are this social. For instance, as an employee travels, a calendar app can track the GPS location from phone or tablet and keep all the people on the agenda in the loop. People in the contact list can be automatically alerted if they are nearby, attending the same event.
Everytime I walk into my office I feel like I'm going back to 2003
The walls sound cool but expensive as hell.
We have some stuff like this:
We're also looking into these interactive whiteboards for the new space we're moving into, but waiting to see if our entire firm will invest - otherwise it's not worth it (e.g., if you can't interact with people in other offices).
This is sarcasm right?
My office is str8 up 1993 in its design and technology.
Our new office has some fancy features like motion sensors, remotely controlled doors and CCTV monitoring.
The MDs are also quite proud of what they call a "podular" layout where VPs are assigned to supervise each pod. The pods contain tiers of work stations arranged around a central control station or desk from which they can monitor all of the work stations and the entire pod, and communicate with the rest of the office.
Did anyone else envision Conan O'Brien reading this and starting off with "In the Year 3000"
Iusto maxime expedita atque repudiandae repellendus. Ducimus ut praesentium facere ut occaecati voluptate amet. Animi nam dolor quo et molestias atque debitis. Non eos quibusdam rerum.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...