Streamline Meetings and Improving Collaboration

Guest Blogger: Jen Goeldner, Head of Workspace Technology, Transurban

Jen Goeldner is an industry expert leading Workplace transformations most recently at Transurban.

Transurban have been a Cisco customer for the past decade. Leveraging the best technology and cloud based capabilities aligned to Transurban’s strategic objectives, here is how we were able to successfully enhance our collaborative culture regardless of whether employees are working from home or any one of our satellite offices.

Challenges in the Modern Workplace

Most employees expect the technology at work to function as seamlessly as it does in their personal lives. More than that, they demand the ability to self-service, to access omnichannel support as well as a choice of end user devices and workplace settings to allow them to be productive.

For any business like Transurban, the challenge is delivering a collaborative experience in a workplace setting and in doing so, recognising that collaboration requires access to technology developed specifically with teamwork in mind.

Transurban’s Collaboration Transformation

In 2018, Transurban moved its Melbourne operations into a new, purpose built space in Tower 5 at the Collins Square complex in Docklands. With the company’s workforce spread across Australia and Northern America, our goal was to improve the way our people work together creating a tech enabled, customer centric and digital first modern workplace.

Before starting our collaboration transformation, we undertook a review of the platforms in our workspace environment. We found over five different collaboration tools, each with similar functionalities, were being utilised across the business with a mix of on-premise and cloud services. Users had to decide which solution best suited their needs resulting in an inconsistent and unguided user experience. We then rationalised utilisation for each platform and consolidated where possible. The result was identifying a single platform that met the needs of all of our end users, providing a simplified and consistent user experience.

Technology was at the forefront of the Tower 5 fit out. Our requirements for implementing collaboration technologies were:

A smart building that would support our workplace collaboration objectives and improve our processes workflows;
Improved audio visual and video conferencing, enabling real time connectivity that could be easily replicated across our offices offering the same user experience no matter the location;
Mobile friendly software that was easy to use and integrate providing a more connected, seamless and consistent user experience; and
Cloud based capabilities with the ability to access information anywhere at any time increasing productivity and agility to support our future growth.

We partnered with Cisco and implemented their cloud based Webex platform in Tower 5 and followed closely by rolling it out across our offices.

The ‘Webex Teams’ application enables our people to send messages, share files, record interactive sessions and create or edit whiteboards, securely in real time. It is simple, intuitive and effective.

The single user interface connects teams across the organisation instantly with the touch of a button to join meetings from Cisco panels, their laptops or mobile devices and share content quickly and wirelessly.

This shared meeting space has transformed into a more meaningful collaborative environment regardless of whether employees are working from home or any one of our offices, supporting Transurban’s collaborative culture. The adoption rates speak for themselves:

Improving Seamless Collaboration Through Automation

Automation is a key focus at Transurban. As our collaboration platforms continue to evolve, we will use the data to identify and implement innovative ways to make processes more efficient and improve the user experience.

We’ve automated our visitor management system to notify hosts via email and our collaboration platform when their guests arrive for meetings. We’ve also integrated our service management platform to automatically generate a collaboration space to manage major incidents, and we continue to explore opportunities to integrate with other enterprise systems and platforms..

Click to Watch How Cisco Helped Transurban Make Their Process More Efficient and Improve User Experience

What’s Next?

Webex adoption across the business has been outstanding. The next step is using the data and hardware we have to make the user experience even more seamless – and in some cases completely invisible.

As Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning continues to evolve and with the right technology capabilities and ‘user first’ experience leading the way, the possibilities for improvements are endless. Cognitive collaboration features are in development which provide users access to live transcriptions and the ability to publish meeting summaries, capture action items and search for meeting notes. Facial recognition and voice assistance are some of the other features we are preparing to release next.

Top Tips for Improving Collaboration

Looking to leverage technology to transform workplace collaboration in your organisation? Here are my top tips for integrating with collaboration technologies:

Understand your current state. Define what your workforce needs, what employees want, identify the gaps and use the best technology resources available
Recognise that technology exists to enable your people to perform at their peak. It should support them to communicate, collaborate and work productively
Implement intuitive technologies to assist with a seamless integration. Users should be able to pick it up, plug it in and get started

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Learn More:

Collaboration

Streamline Meetings and Improving Collaboration

Challenges in the Modern Workplace

Transurban’s Collaboration Transformation

Improving Seamless Collaboration Through Automation

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