Home /Featured Articles / Adding Value to Your Digital Workplace: Three Ways to Use Google Jamboard
Companies are now relying more heavily on tools and technologies that enable them to do business anywhere in the world. This means IT managers face the challenging task of finding cost-effective tools that optimize distributed team work.
After moving your business to a G Suite based infrastructure, you will be looking for the next important step in helping your company realize a fully digital workplace. The Google Jamboard is the only interactive whiteboard that leverages the power of G Suite to form a productivity tool that can keep up with such an environment.
In this article, we have gathered three vital ways Jamboard can improve your business environment and prevent you from losing out on new digital collaboration opportunities.
While traditional whiteboards were initially designed to capture knowledge on a reusable surface, changes in the way we work have outgrown their usefulness. More often than not, these boards take time away from actual tasks. A major pain point is that participants need to stop what they are talking about to erase the board when it gets full or to take pictures for reference at different points during and after meetings.
If you are reading this article, it is likely that staff has already approached you regarding a technological solution to these issues. Jamboard addresses these problems head on. Thanks to G Suite integration, it automatically saves every jam session to the cloud, making it easy to retrieve and share with collaborators and other stakeholders, so there is no need for picture taking.
Also, there is no more need for erasing, quite simple as employees can simply swipe to the next frame. Jamboards provide a limitless supply of creative space for brainstorming, ideation and other methods of collaboration. Forget reusable, this new creative space is the closest any digital whiteboard can come to infinite
In addition to these time saving applications, the Jamboard’s creative tools, such as AutoDraw, handwriting recognition, clip art, and access to web content allow teams to dive deeper into more engaging discussions and be more productive with less time and effort. Plus, the work looks nicer, making concepts easier to understand and share. Ultimately, this means employees spend less time on communicating directions and more time on completing tasks.
There is no industry where time saving measures and efficiency are more important than healthcare. Hunterdon Healthcare, a health system with a 178-bed hospital, 65 ambulatory locations, and more than 25 care facilities, says that implementing G Suite and Jamboard has been a great help to teams to sketch out ideas and save meeting minutes.1
Jamboard’s use as an effective knowledge sharing tool helps professionals communicate more efficiently, which leads to faster planning and increased action. Not only this, but your colleagues will thank you because Jamboard is so easy to use that one can easily get acquainted without any training.
The Opinium Workplace Productivity and Communications Technology Report performed by Mitel shows that inefficient communication and collaboration costs businesses in the UK the equivalent of £8,000 per person every year in lost productivity.2 Luckily, efficient communication and collaboration is what the Jamboard was built for.
Additionally, Google Jamboard can save your company expensive travel costs as it reduces the need for in person communication. Used as video conferencing tool, the Jamboard is the perfect solution for seamless remote communication. Allowing users to see, communicate, and collaborate in such a way that it feels like everyone is in the same room.
Effective remote collaboration is changing the way we do business and IT consulting firm Zoi TechCon GmbH says that having a Jamboard at the heart of its infrastructure will enable it to grow its business beyond Germany, becoming an international company. With its ability to expand office walls, bringing ideas and concepts across offices and even countries, the Google Jamboard not only helps facilitate this kind of international growth, but becomes an integral part of the process. [i]
Using seamless integration with G Suite, Jamboard’s intuitive design presents users with an interface that they are already familiar with, shortening the learning curve necessary to be proficient with the device. There is no need for onboarding employees and the digital whiteboard’s simplicity means that there is minimal room for technical emergencies. Even its accessories are designed with convenience in mind as the passive stylus and eraser do not need Bluetooth pairing or recharging, adding to the frictionless experience
Every IT manager knows that small problems add up to high costs over the long run. Integrating Jamboard into your company helps not only to save on costs but also to break down the barriers to your business growth. As a digital whiteboard that recovers lost budget rather than spends it, the Google Jamboard is the perfect solution to these problems.
An Udemy survey on workplace distraction found that 33% of meetings are interrupted by technology or connectivity problems. Distractions come in many forms: wrong meeting codes, poor audio-visual quality, and random disconnections.3 These small interruptions, when added up, can lead to large scale business problems such as lost opportunities.
Jamboard minimizes such interruptions by providing a seamless user experience. Google Calendar automatically adds the correct meeting code to invitations so that attendees never sign into the wrong meeting room. Also, Hangouts Meet supports high definition video and Google has over 2.5 million servers in 15 data centers around the world, leading to better video quality and fewer dropped calls.
It is such an intuitive tool that employees will even find ways to incorporate it into their work flow outside of the meeting room. Market leading music streaming service Spotify says that Jamboard is so engaging that following brainstorming their team cannot help but use it for creative pastime. The approachable design basically self-educates employees on how to use it and employers find that it helps bring more enthusiasm into the workplace while encouraging teamwork.
There is plenty of space for new concepts, thoughts, and ideas as each jam or session can support up to 20 frames and 50 users. Multiple users can even work on different frames simultaneously, eliminating the need to take turns at the board. Plus, everything is backed up on the cloud, making it easy to keep remote team members in the loop on what is happening in the office.
This kind of multifunctional technology will never be shoved in a corner to collect dust as it compliments so many things employees are already working in their daily routine. Unlike a traditional whiteboard that needs to be photographed and erased, Jamboard allows users to keep the ideas flowing free of interruptions and beyond the meeting room.
In conclusion, IT professionals face increasing expectations from their organizations to select and maintain the right tools to enhance workforce efficiency and cope with the demands of digitalized workplaces. Jamboard offers time-saving ease of use, cost saving efficiency in remote collaboration, and a new employee experience. Introducing the Jamboard to the workspace is a proactive way to take advantage of digitization to increase productivity and profits by facilitating efficient and higher quality work.