Digital transformation, the shift from traditional technologies and processes to new digital technologies, is constantly impacting companies and organizations of all types and sizes. For many, embracing digital transformation is critical to competitiveness and survival.
Many smaller businesses have been greatly enabled by easy to implement and relatively low cost payment technologies that have not only expanded their options for getting paid but have also made the move to digital records easier. In addition government moves to require digital reporting have added motivation. Of course that is only part of the process but implementing systems like this help with awareness and lower barriers for other digital transformation changes.
…the importance of screens…
For larger organizations digital transformation is much more of a strategic investment and the implications of any changes are further reaching. Having said that we see incremental changes for certain peripheral activities can have a significant effect. For example in product and architectural design the move to digital started many years ago and is now a given. But organizations still print, why? Why indeed.
This is probably the area of most rapid change, with the lower costs and improved display and visualization technologies companies are indeed closing that last step. Organizations are implementing use of smartphones, tablets, laptops, large touch screens, digital whiteboards, video walls as well as still nascent AR and VR products.
There are some fairly straightforward steps such as viewing and marking up digital designs, that requires having the appropriate displays available. For example many companies and organizations in the construction related industries use an application called Bluebeam, this allows for the viewing and markup of plans together with other functions such as collaboration. The Volanti lift & tilt touch tables have been popular for this as it enables both single person use, small group collaboration & review as well as larger meeting presentations.
For many users the use of a large display to review digital designs is an obvious step. Certainly in the construction industry where the alternative in the past has been frequent and expensive printing of tens of pages of blueprints the case for using a touch screen has seemed an easy one to make.
The other area that many companies are implementing digital technologies is in meeting rooms with large displays on the wall that are then either connected to a laptop for presentations or if touch screen enabled they are used as digital whiteboards. Microsoft recently released a free application for Windows 10 called Microsoft Whiteboard. This application is a good example of a very easy to use application that makes it easy to keep everything digital. The drawing tools are what a user might expect with functions such as image import as well as very easy sharing and collaboration across a multitude of devices.
For meeting rooms the introduction of fine pitch LED has enabled very large high resolution displays to greatly enhance presentation capabilities. The are often complemented with interactive collaborative display systems within the meeting room.
Digital signage, most commonly deployed in retail and public spaces is also significantly more common in the workplace as part of the digital transformation. Instead of paper signs posted on cork-boards companies can easily post notices digitally as well as provide added value type information such as weather, international times or other information.
In addition these digital signage displays within an organization can be used to display dashboards of company data. For organizations looking to implement smart building initiatives displays showing dashboards for IOT collected data can be an important part of the process.
