The way organisations invest in meeting room AV is changing fast.
Where once it was common to fit out just one or two premium video conferencing rooms, the expectation today is that every space should support hybrid collaboration. But as the demand for universal video capability grows, so does the pressure on budgets — and not every room is worth the same level of investment.
This raises a critical question for IT and workplace teams:
Should you aim to video-enable every space at a lower cost per room, or focus investment on fewer, higher-quality rooms that offer a better experience?
From One Room to Every Room: The AV Shift
Not long ago, most businesses had one or two high-end boardrooms kitted out with the latest video conferencing technology. Today, there’s growing pressure to ensure every meeting room supports remote collaboration.
But this transformation doesn’t come cheap. It raises key challenges:
- Can you maintain a high-quality AV experience across all spaces?
- Will every room actually be used for video meetings? If hybrid meetings happen rarely in a certain space, perhaps a laptop would suffice.
- How do you avoid wasted investment or inconsistent user experiences?
Why Fewer, Better Rooms Often Deliver More Value
If budgets are tight, the temptation is to go for low-cost kits across every room. But spreading your investment too thin can backfire, leading to:
- Inconsistent user experiences
- Frustrating reliability issues
- Poor adoption from employees
Instead, many businesses are rethinking their strategy. They’re prioritising fewer rooms—but equipping them properly with the right video conferencing equipment, acoustics, automation, and user-friendly interfaces.
The result? A better experience, higher usage, and fewer support tickets.
Let Data Drive Your AV Decisions
Meeting room analytics are now a powerful tool in AV planning. Before rolling out equipment across your entire estate, ask:
- Which rooms are used the most for video calls?
- Are small huddle spaces being used for hybrid meetings, or just one-to-ones?
- How many participants are in the average meeting per room type?
To gather this data, low-cost presence sensors can be installed to provide an accurate view of room occupancy and usage patterns. These can be deployed independently or as part of your AV setup, with many modern devices offering built-in analytics capabilities. By using these tools, you can understand which rooms are approaching capacity, identify underutilised spaces, and make proactive decisions about how to optimise your meeting room strategy.
With this insight, you are better positioned to make well-informed AV investments:
- Focus your AV spend on rooms where video is most needed.
- Design spaces to match actual usage—no more underused 10-seat rooms or overstuffed huddle pods.
- Plan for growth or change using real behavioural insights, not assumptions.
Balancing Coverage, Cost, and Experience
In short, for many organisations, not every meeting room or space needs to be video-enabled—but the ones that are, need to work flawlessly. A poor AV experience can derail meetings, frustrate teams, lower user adoption, and, ultimately, lead to wasted budget.
Final Thoughts: Choose the right spaces, not all
When it comes to AV investment, more doesn’t always mean better. By focusing on fewer, high-quality video-enabled spaces, designed around real usage data, you can deliver a better experience for your teams and greater ROI for your business.
If your budget means choosing between every room with a mediocre setup vs a few, carefully chosen rooms with a premium, easy-to-use setup, our AV consultants would recommend the latter most of the time. Ultimately, for most clients, meeting room AV shouldn’t primarily be concerned with equipping every space. Instead, the focus should be on equipping the right spaces with the right AV equipment.