By John Arenas | May 6, 2014

Enterprise Technology May Finally Be Catching Up

For the past few decades, stuffy “enterprise solutions” have lagged behind the consumer hardware revolution. So while our domestic lives are blessed by the magic of iPhones and Xboxes, our professional lives are still filled with confounding telephone systems, stuffy task management software, and at least one piece of printing equipment you’d like to take a baseball bat to a la Office Space.”

Mark Wilson in Fast Company

Enterprise technology, or “infrastructure,” has a reputation for being boring, cumbersome, and often troublesome. One New York based company is working to break the mold and make infrastructure look cool. Control Group believes enterprise technology should be future-proof and built to scale. And not only do their systems look sleek and innovative, they are actually useful.

In Fast Company’s review of the new design at Brookfield’s World Financial Center location, they explain how Control Group’s wall-sized screen takes the intimidation out of interacting with new technology. By creating an interface that lessens the possibility of error, it encourages users to feel safe and embrace their natural curiosity.

If entertaining people waiting in your lobby isn’t a top priority, Control Group provides software solutions that are designed to make life easier and more organized for the people who really matter, your employees.

First, they have streamlined the teleconference meeting. An iPad outside each conference room takes care of the scheduling so meeting members will never end up in the wrong room. In addition, the system does all the work for you so your not spending the first ten minutes of your meeting trying to work out the last minute details of the call. The most useful feature of all though, is the feature that saves and tracks any file changes made during the meeting so you can always look back in time and see what progress has been made. This also makes it easy for any absent employees to catch up when they return.

So maybe it still sounds and smells like infrastructure, but it certainly doesn’t act like it. Rather than making life more complicated, Control Group’s solutions make work seem easier, possibly even bordering on fun. For more examples of innovative workplaces, check out some of our Workplace Wednesday features like “Epic Workplace Design,” or “Amazing Offices Don’t Have to Break the Bank,” and stay tuned each week for the latest in flexible workplace design.