What is Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM)?

You’ve probably heard of ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD), you may even be utilising it, but have you heard of Bring your Own Meeting (BYOM)? Probably not.

A relatively new term and an extension of BYOD, BYOM enables staff to seamlessly connect with the existing conferencing hardware using their own devices. Regardless of which conferencing platform is being used, it enables a unified and consistent experience.

With the accelerating world of remote working and huddle like meetings on the increase, BYOM is a new way of working which encourages spontaneous, effortless collaboration.

Like BYOD, BYOM uses the idea that workplace productivity increases when staff are familiar with the technology or software. They tend to avoid working with equipment that they don’t understand or find difficult to operate.

With the BYOM model, staff who wish to host a conference call from their personal device using their preferred communication tool – like Teams, Webex, Zoom, or any number of alternatives – can do so. It also allows them to connect and use the preexisting hardware within the meeting room to help boost the efficiency of the collaboration.  

When multiple meetings require different UC platforms, BYOM has you covered there too. Irrespective of the UC platform or communication tool, BYOM enables connection to external meetings from your meeting room with ease.  

Never has there been a time where this model was more relevant.

With increased remote working and a reduction in face-to-face meetings, BYOM allows staff to use the tools they are familiar with to host or attend a highly collaborative meeting from the office meeting room.

Previously, most meeting rooms included a NUC PC or VC codec that would host the meeting. But as the use of workplace meeting spaces adapts, a BYOM supported room will ease the transition for onsite workers to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders.

BYOM allows:

• Staff to collaborate from the meeting space with colleagues and customers
• Individuals to use their own device to connect to the meeting room equipment while using their preferred communication tool, resulting in increased productivity
• A reduction in office noise as employees utilise meeting spaces rather than their desks for collaboration or discussion
• Contractors and interns to effectively contribute and collaborate with the business
• Flexibility for employees to choose where and when they work – boosting satisfaction
• Flexibility of workspaces to be used for different tasks or purposes
• Removal of the need to touch communal devices

While the IT department generally likes standardisation or a uniform AV solution within unified communications (UC) or meeting room equipment, this can cause long waiting times, bad connections, poor video quality, and struggles to join. This in turn impacts staff productivity.

BYOM removes these struggles by giving employees the choice when hosting their own meeting as well as ease of connection to the display, audio, projector, mic etc. It also supports nearly all videoconferencing providers, so you’ll never have to worry about compatibility.

Given the improvement this makes to productivity, you can see why it is the next strategic step for personal empowerment and collaboration.

Here at Midwich, we have BYOM ready solutions available to help staff stay connected. If you are considering swapping your meeting room systems out for BYOM supported solutions to help smooth the transition back to working in an office, contact your Midwich account manager to find out more.