Communication of Things: Embracing a New Era of Collaboration
In recent years, we’ve begun to interact with many Internet of Things devices in new and revolutionary ways. It’s difficult to remember a time when we couldn’t use our voices to text or to turn off lights. According to Gartner, the number of IoT devices in use, largely in homes, grew to 8.4 billion connected “things” by the end of 2017. This year will bring about new adoptions of such voice recognition capabilities in modern workplaces, advancing us from the dawn of the Internet of Things to the advent of what I call the Communication of Things, enabling even more efficient communication and collaboration.
Did you know that the average U.S. worker spends half of his or her day reading and replying to e-mails? This unavoidable task sinks enormous amount of time. If you had a way to speed through it, wouldn’t you? These days, getting work done through voice interfaces can and should be our reality. Integrated communication practices can increase our productivity in meaningful ways. Imagine the time savings: people speak at about 150 words per minute while their average typing speed is 40 words per minute. Using speech to text is a time-hack, whether in work or in life. Meanwhile, adoption of voice assistants is as high as 65%. Already, voicemails can be converted into text. As an alternative to text-based messages, Apple facilitates the sending of voice-based messages from its iMessage “text” product, similar to sending a voicemail but from within a texting app -- so texting isn’t just for text anymore. The tools at our fingertips are offering us multiple ways, via a choice of voice or text, to jump in and out of conversations easily and efficiently.
The translation and adoption of these voice technologies in the workplace is an exciting thing to watch from my perspective as an EVP of Innovation for RingCentral. Companies like mine are working with IoT companies to offer powerful integrations that enable more conversations between humans and technology. In our suite of products, people can leverage voice commands to join meetings, send text messages, listen to voicemails, and make phone calls. Future expansions of these capabilities are imminent. After all, if devices like Alexa can hear and respond to your music requests, why can’t your computer listen to your meetings and take notes?
Increasingly, the future of modern work will depend on availability of open APIs and application interoperability that support the Communication of Things. For voice to become part of our natural workflow, it must fit seamlessly within the collaboration and communications tools employees use. To be atop this urgent, time-saving trend, companies must be vigilant about making sure that their technology can “converse.” Because of the enormous benefits it offers, it’s important that IoT/CoT adoption isn’t stalled by the potential complexity of integration. Communications technologies across a business will have to be smoothly integrated so that employees aren’t toggling between multiple systems. When we invest in ensuring that the Communication of Things can be as smooth as human-to-human interaction, the possibilities are endless and are exciting innovations to watch.
Originally published on LinkedIn