2024 presented plenty of opportunities for vendors in the world of team collaboration. Zoom announced the release of its AI Companion 2.0 which will infuse AI capabilities into every aspect of team collaboration. RingCentral, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco WebEx also had some exciting updates in 2024.
In 2024, team collaboration providers were more focused than ever on leveraging AI and machine learning to increase productivity across industries.
Rapid Change in the Workplace Has Impacted Productivity
In 2024, Gartner conducted a study reveling that the uncertain economic climate combined with the rise in hybrid work and the introduction of new technologies has caused many employees to suffer "change fatigue" which can have a big impact on performance and employee satisfaction. According to the study, 44% of workers who experience change fatigue ending up leaving their place of employment.[*]
To combat change fatigue, many team collaboration providers are focusing on employee engagement and hyper customization so that the technology works for the team members and supports them in a variety of ways.
Collaboration Platform; Continued Innovation
In 2024 at it Zoomtopia event, Zoom launched AI Companion 2.0, a generative AI assistant that provides post-meeting summaries and highlight reels to keep everyone on the same page. AI Companion even includes a chatbot that employees can chat with during the meeting to get caught up on anything they missed or ask questions about what was said. Zoom's AI Companion can also be used to draft or edit in-meeting messages, emails, or team chat messages.
Cisco's AI Assistant, which already summarizes meetings, tracks actions items, and allows users to search for keywords, will soon be able to automatically generate a recap for an individual customer that includes a summary of every chat and call-even the ones that are dropped.
Microsoft Teams' AI assistant also received some upgrades in 2024, including the ability to search both meeting transcripts and the in-meeting chat to answer queries from team members about the meeting. Additionally, meeting recaps and artifacts can now be shared on Outlook automatically.
Leveraging AI More and More
Of course, no outlook would be complete without considering the impacts of artificial intelligence on technology. In this instance, we're looking at AI - which will continue to shape how folks collaborate in 2025.
It already helps in finding the most optimal time for meetings, eliminating the annoying "send me a few available times" email that gets sent out to dozens in some cases- leading to endless back-and-forths. AI can even send post-meeting follow-ups and work to ensure action items are delivered - not merely forgotten.
2025 could very well be the year vendors understand that they don't need bells and whistles, but rather; the tools needed to make work less annoying. Convenience is and has always been the name of the game in collaboration. Reducing turnover and burnout could lie in; ensuring tools are robust enough to foster only the best experiences.
Of course, it will also take the work of willing HR and management, along with others, to hire the right tech-savvy talent - or at least those willing to conquer bleeding-edge technologies. And that is what these tools are, after all - as their development continues to unfold before our eyes, sometimes with features that make you go "wow" while others are questionable at best.
In 2025, there's no room for (superfluous) collaboration tools - only the ones that help employees pull off feats previously unimaginable - at least before the pandemic.
With the consideration of working from anywhere - this task seems increasingly difficult, but the collaboration superstars will manage with grace - and little-to-no friction as they have the right teams in place and are listening to what customers/users demand.
