A meeting room can be perfectly equipped yet still frustrate users if its booking, occupancy and building systems don't talk to each other.
Dan Drogman, CEO of Smart Spaces, argues that is the challenge facing the connected workplace: joining technologies around the people who use them.
Ahead of his appearance at WORKTECH26 London, where he'll explore what happens after someone enters a building, Inavate asks why AV integrators need to think well beyond the systems they install.
Inavate: When clients talk about creating a “connected workplace” today, what systems are they expecting to work together?
Dan Drogman: Increasingly, they mean the whole workplace experience, not just a series of connected devices.
That starts with identity and access, but quickly extends into room and desk booking, visitors, lifts, occupancy, environmental controls, digital signage, AV and workplace communications. The expectation is that these systems share enough information that the user experiences them as one environment rather than ten separate technologies.
The important shift is that people don't really care which system is doing what behind the scenes. They expect the building to recognise who they are, understand what they're entitled to do and make the experience simple.
I: Are you seeing clients expect more integration between workplace platforms and meeting-room AV than they did a few years ago?
DD: Absolutely. A few years ago, AV was often treated as a fairly self-contained discipline. You designed the meeting room, installed the screens and conferencing equipment, and that was largely the end of the conversation.
Today, that room exists within a much bigger digital ecosystem. If somebody books a meeting room, there is an expectation that the booking platform, occupancy data, signage and the technology inside the room all understand the same event.
The client doesn't necessarily think about that as an "AV integration". They just expect the room to work.
I: Even if an AV integrator is not responsible for deploying a platform such as Smart Spaces, how important is it that they understand what workplace systems the client already uses?
DD: It's becoming essential.
You don't necessarily need to be responsible for every technology in the building, but you do need to understand the environment you're designing into. What manages identity? What manages rooms? Where does occupancy data come from? What systems are authoritative, and where are the APIs?
Otherwise, you can design something that works perfectly in isolation but creates a poor experience when it meets the rest of the building.
Discovery therefore needs to move beyond asking, "What AV do you have?" to asking, "How does this workplace operate?"
I: What problems can arise when AV is designed without considering the wider workplace technology environment?
DD: The biggest one is fragmentation.
You can end up with duplicate room data, different interfaces showing different availability, several applications asking users to perform essentially the same task, or occupancy information that exists in one system but can't inform another.
It also creates operational problems. Facilities, IT and workplace teams then have multiple systems to maintain and multiple sources of truth.
The irony is that you can invest heavily in technology and actually make the workplace more complicated. Good technology should remove friction, not add another layer of it.
I: Are there particular areas – room booking, occupancy, signage, access or user interfaces, for example – where the boundaries between AV and workplace technology are becoming especially blurred?
DD: Meeting rooms are probably the clearest example because so many systems converge around the same physical space.
A room might have a booking panel, conferencing technology, occupancy sensors, environmental controls and digital signage, while access to that space may also depend on the user's identity or permissions.
Occupancy is another interesting area. Once you know whether a room is actually being used, that information can influence booking behaviour, workplace analytics, energy consumption and even cleaning or facilities operations.
So we're moving away from thinking about individual products and towards thinking about events and experiences: somebody arrives, somebody books a space, a meeting begins, a room becomes vacant. Multiple technologies may need to respond to each of those events.
I: Who usually takes responsibility for joining these systems together: AV integrators, IT, facilities, smart-building specialists or someone else?
DD: Typically, the smart-building consultant is responsible for defining and managing the technology strategy through the construction process, making sure the different systems are considered as part of one overall design.
The MSI then has a critical role in implementation, actually bringing those fragmented systems together and making sure they can communicate and operate as one environment.
So the consultant sets the direction, but the MSI is often the party responsible for turning that strategy into a connected, functioning building.
I: Do you think connected workplace technology represents an opportunity for AV integrators to extend their services? If so, where are the most realistic opportunities?
DD: Definitely, particularly around networking and the infrastructure that allows different workplace systems to communicate.
There is a natural opportunity for AV integrators to extend further into the connected workplace, but there are also limits. Security and BMS are both huge, specialist industries in their own right, and moving too far into those areas can quickly take an AV integrator outside its core expertise.
So the most realistic opportunity is probably to strengthen capabilities around networking, integration and interoperability, while working alongside specialist partners where deeper security or building-management expertise is required.
I: What additional skills or partnerships would an AV integrator need if it wanted to take on more of this work?
DD: The biggest change is probably software literacy.
Understanding APIs, cloud platforms, identity, data architecture and cybersecurity becomes much more important when you're connecting workplace systems rather than simply installing individual technologies.
But I don't think every integrator needs to build all of those capabilities internally. Partnerships will be critical.
The strongest proposition is often an ecosystem where the AV specialist, smart-building platform, access-control provider, IT team and other technology partners understand how their systems interact and can design around a common architecture.
I: Looking ahead, do you think understanding workplace platforms will become a normal part of AV discovery and system design, even for integrators that never actually sell or deploy those platforms?
DD: Yes. I think it becomes unavoidable.
The same way an AV integrator today needs to understand the client's network environment, they'll increasingly need to understand their workplace technology environment.
You may never deploy the workplace platform yourself, but it could determine how rooms are booked, how users are identified, what occupancy information is available and what experience the client expects across the building.
Ultimately, clients aren't buying AV, access control, workplace software or building controls because they want more technology. They're buying an outcome.
The companies that understand how their part contributes to that overall experience will be the ones that remain most relevant.
The challenge of delivering that joined-up experience will be explored further at WORKTECH26 London, where Drogman will join Dominic Bruning, director of strategic alliances, EMEA, at HID Global, for a fireside chat titled Beyond the Door: What Happens Next in the Modern Workplace?
The discussion will move beyond individual building systems to examine how identity, access, location and workplace services can work together to make buildings more responsive to the people using them. With personalisation, privacy and security all part of the equation, the session promises to tackle some of the more difficult questions facing those designing tomorrow's workplaces.
WORKTECH26 London takes place on 17 November 2026 at Together, 88 Wood Street, London. Drogman and Bruning's session is scheduled for 11:15.
More info and tickets