As our Workforce Spreads out Geographically, it’s Imperative to Find New Collaboration Solutions

Today’s workplaces are in the need of hour to smartly redefine an interactive and intuitive experience to business processes. No wonder workplace are dynamically revolutionizing with mobility and interactive visual workspace notching the business charts of IT decision makers.  Consistently disrupting the video collaboration space through social interaction and mobile access uniting with online, PRYSM is taking the front door to make a paradigm shift with its innovation-driven next gen solution. In a candid viz-a-viz, Kumar GB, Vice-President of Sales at Prysm jaws on the company’s strategic business moves to align with the ongoing digital-wave, demystifies its next-gen laser phosphor displays and its portfolio collaring India’s vigorous changing business corridors. Excerpts.

How to decode Prysm as a company, what solution and services does the company renders? 

Prysm Visual Workplace combines live applications, content, video conferencing, live sources and the web into a touch-interactive visual workspace where teams can simultaneously create, edit, share and store content to maximize productivity, regardless of device or geographical location. Robust, yet easy to use due to its intuitive user interface, Prysm Visual Workplace makes business teams more efficient from the first meeting. Prysm’s flexible, cloud-based software architecture ensures availability and access of customer data from virtually anywhere and any device including third party touch-based displays.

Prysm’s flexible, cloud-based solution architecture ensures availability and access of customer data from virtually anywhere.

Prysm Visual Workplace consists of the following:

• Prysm Application Suite – Dynamic software that combines applications, content, the web and video conferencing for enhanced collaboration experiences that can be shared simultaneously by many locations
• Prysm Cloud – Stores and organizes content into cloud-based visual workspaces enabling persistent access and increased productivity for global and remote teams
• Prysm Displays – Large touch-screen displays available in a variety of standard and customized sizes that are up to 75% more energy-efficient
• Prysm Mobile Licenses – Freedom to access private or shared cloud workspaces from anywhere on any device
• Prysm Services – Prysm is dedicated to providing an unparalleled level of support

Lately, the company’s LPD technology or (Laser Phosphor Display Technology) is turning heads. What is so unique about this technology and how has been the technology cemented to the Indian business needs? 

Prysm invented Laser Phosphor Display (LPD), which uses a patented laser engine and a phosphor panel to create breathtakingly beautiful images with low-power, solid-state lasers. LPD solutions offer brilliant image quality with canvas-wide uniformity, unmatched viewing angles and the industry’s smallest environmental footprint.

Compared to other digital technologies, Prysm’s solutions have the lowest total cost of ownership, using up to 75% less energy, and offer an array of advanced features, benefits and usage possibilities.

The built-in, browser-based Display Manager software is the main interface for managing the display during operation. Display Manager makes quick work of configuring and adjusting the display through a rich feature set including noise reduction, edge enhancement, dynamic brightness, color temperature, and more. System health and status are constantly monitored – alerting user about any problems during the system’s long life.

Looking at the traditional display today, in a typical boardroom configuration there is a 25 seater table, with a projection screen or a VC input, etc. If the chairman of the board or the head decision maker is sitting far away, he would not be able to see or examine a spread sheet or an analytical graph or other integrities of the document; this is the limitation of the current solutions deployed.

This is where Laser phosphor display becomes the best immersion and real life looking technology, for large canvas in a boardroom; you can, for example the entire wall as the Prysm video wall, or collaboration video wall, where one can display any type of content and can zoom-in zoom-out, just like the way on a smartphone or tablet. Since it is known to be touch based, or it can even be remote, if there is a need to analyze a spreadsheet, it can be zoomed to such an extent that one can actually start analyzing every single cell content. So that takes it to a whole different level, and then it can be mirrored between multiple locations as well; multiple devices can be used in any infrastructure – it’s not necessary for the other location to have the same big screen. That is where the laser phosphor technology becomes an integral part of the overall solution.

How Prysm currently sees the Visual Collaboration market in India and what scope does the Indian Market underlie/ How important or can say what opportunities does content collaboration or visual workplace bring for CIOs or CEOs amid mobility-front businesses? 

From a global perspective there are three significant trends that can be observed:

• First, everyone is looking at an enhanced productivity at a global level and that is what is driving the content collaboration conversations. And that is a good thing because businesses are in a phase where majority of the industries have already adopted, experimented, and understood the strengths and weaknesses of video conferencing driven collaboration solutions.
• Second, the risk mitigation aspects and ability to collaborate in a manner that is bringing the content but also minimizing the risk aspects. Taking an example of an R&D design team which sits at diverse locations and yet in real time need to bring the entire stake holders at the same thought process where they are collaborating and getting their work done in real time.
• The third aspect, so far the business success has come from the talent that is resident in one location for organizations, moving forward, Prysm strongly believes that pooling of the talent across boundaries is what will give the next level of innovation and productivity.

Similarly in India, there is tremendous opportunity here because while the CEO’s are actually still contemplating whether to go in this direction or not and they are convinced about the visual workplace as an argument, taking the plunge that is required at an enterprise level. In India, many companies today are looking at growth as the key driver – whether a global company with footprint in India or a local company aspiring a global status.

They are all looking for cutting edge technologies to leverage in terms of bringing in innovation between the diversity of talent that are scattered within the organization. This is where Prysm sees an opportunity from India vantage point in terms of adoption of technology and solution. 

India’s market dynamics is more on service-front added with cost-effectiveness. How is the company set to collar it? 

In India, customers have really understood the type of ROI that they are able to provide their business stakeholders by adopting Prysm’s visual workplace solutions. It has got more to do with the value that we are able to establish with our customers versus just being the lowest in terms of price point. The second aspect is that as it is a cloud based software as a service solution, we are not looking at a high capex investment from day 1, it is usually spread out at a period of 3 years term and so on. The third aspect is that companies’ current investment into video conferencing and collaboration technologies, we provide investment protection which means that they all get seamlessly integrated into this unified Prysm visual workplace platform.

Key benefits of Prysm Visual Workplace to businesses

Regardless of the size of the company or industry, Prysm solutions update the workplace by enabling a new level of collaboration and efficiency.

• Digital Briefcase – Store, annotate and save work in Prysm’s persistent, cloud-based workspaces so employees can pick up where they left off at the next meeting, even in a different room or completely virtual setting
• Solution for any Workplace – Prysm is the only vendor with hardware and software solutions that can deliver an enterprise standard for all meeting requirements — from the desktop to large auditoriums and everything in between, like huddle rooms and executive briefing centers
• Open Cloud Architecture – Prysm’s flexible cloud architecture and out-of-the-box integrations with leading tools such as Skype for Business mean that Prysm Visual Workplace solutions will work in tandem with existing tools
• Mobile Ready – Connect dispersed meeting participants both visually and to the main meeting content with Prysm Mobile to ensure active collaboration from remote employees via any mobile device
• Real-time, Multi-site Collaboration – Create interactive experiences for over 25 sites simultaneously collaborating in physical rooms with a Prysm solution or via Prysm Mobile
• Persistent Data Model – The Prysm cloud always saves the latest meeting information, making it easy for any meeting participant to access information regardless of time, location or device

Prysm helps businesses achieve:

• 2X increase in number of projects completed per employee
• 33% decrease in time required to put recommendations into market
• 30% improvement in information recall from meetings

There is huge uproar as the digital-driven wave is cascading the country. What opportunities do this digital transformation brings for the company? 

The Digital India initiative promises to transform India by connecting every part of the country with a high speed knowledge network and offering world class services to the citizens – a critical step for empowering people.

For the initiative to be successful, the ICT infrastructure needs to be created at the micro level with scalability and interoperability at the outset. In the long run, the infrastructure should be able to drive faster transactions, simplify processes and regulations, while cutting down the time needed for all these.

Prysm believes ‘Digital India’ programme will touch millions of lives through its various aspects including better healthcare, financial inclusion, better governance and better education. This, in turn, will create new job and exciting job opportunities in the software, hardware and services industries. As a company, we are keen to play an active part in accelerating this plan for the government via our solutions

Customers across verticals including BFSI, IT/ITes, M&E, education are looking for solutions that would help them better their business and optimize their operations. Almost every industry in India has become IT-centric – organizations have become dependent on IT to deliver products, services and to interact with various stakeholders.

We believe that the key industries of growth will be sectors like banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), telecommunications, healthcare, education, and the public sector.

Our long term vision for our customers is to deliver new capabilities which enable the value of a shared virtual infrastructure and the company is relentlessly focused on delivering differentiated and innovative technologies that are future ready as well as industry leading.

What keeps Prysm upfront in contrast to your competitors? 

Prysm offers visual workplace solution which enhances the productivity and multi-location collaboration experience like no other. We work closely with the other video conferencing players in the industry such as Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, Skype for Business etc to provide compatibility. This ensures investment protection to end customers who are already invested into other collaboration or VC technologies.

In terms of the experience Prysm visual workplace leverages its leadership in the display business while bringing applications, content, video and the web into an interactive canvas. The ability to bring the quality of content anywhere, anytime and any device is unique to Prysm. 

How do you demystify the statement, “Digital empowerment and why work is not a ‘place’ anymore”?

The workplace has changed. Work used to be a place that we went to for a fixed period of time, now it’s   an activity that we perform constantly and from anywhere. In today’s modern workplace mandate, employers must create a variety of flexible, engaging workspaces that connect in-office and remote team members in order to:

• Foster collaboration and higher productivity
• Facilitate learning and decision making
• Drive employee engagement and retention
• Speed R&D & time to market for new products

Technology has provided opportunities to integrate onsite and remote employees, regardless of where they are or in what timezones they reside. Some companies have taken advantage of this phenomenon by reducing expenditures for physical office space. Others are reworking existing spaces to make them more conducive to distributed teams.

As our workforce spreads out geographically, it’s imperative to find new collaboration solutions. Merging physical and digital workspaces necessitates a new look at how employees engage with one another and how they spend their workdays. Cube farms isolate employees and aren’t well-suited to teamwork or collaboration with remote colleagues.

According to Gartner, 46% of companies today have a Digital Workplace initiative underway – with the rest will be implementing one in the next 2 years. This clearly indicates a definite workplace transition that promotes location-independent collaboration.

To survive and thrive, employers must optimize their offices to accommodate this next-generation paradigm.