Fintech Company standardizes on Wesco’s conference room as a service

In the wake of the pandemic, organizations around the world were forced to evaluate nearly every aspect of their business operations, including how the physical office and meeting spaces would support seamless collaboration and productivity for in-person and remote workers at scale. The shift to hybrid work environments highlighted the shortcomings and challenges of traditional audiovisual systems as companies struggled to recreate the in-office efficiency that employees had experienced connecting with colleagues when working from home.

Fintech, regtech and cyber security solutions, CSI prepared for the return of its employees across 11 offices. Kenny Blankenship, vice president of facilities, knew the legacy audiovisual technology in place would not support the demands of a new hybrid work environment. And it certainly won’t meet the expectations of employees who are used to seamless platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. To ensure a satisfied and productive workforce, the company prioritized a migration of AV technology. It sought to standardize on a more flexible and reliable platform as it prepared to reopen and welcome employees back to the office.

The technical challenge

Based on years of experience, Blankenship knew the traditional time-consuming, expensive and difficult task of rolling out conference rooms. They needed to deploy quickly and reliably with little or no disruption to productivity. Blankenship also sought a flexible platform that seamlessly enabled productivity and supported a distributed workforce’s new demands for collaboration and communication. With supply chain issues, he also struggled to find the products he needed. Blankenship turned to Wesco’s innovative Conference Room as a Service to effectively modernize meeting spaces across locations. It was unlike anything else he found from a total user experience, including equipment, monitoring portal and support services.

The conference room as a service solution

Wesco’s Conference Rooms as a Service, a subscription-based offering, is designed to support the comprehensive AV needs of most conference, meeting or cluster rooms and enable seamless collaboration between employees – at home, in the office or in another remote location. Unlike legacy AV platforms, Wesco’s as-a-service offering alleviates the typical IT shortcomings and related costs of traditional equipment.

Says Blankenship, “It was my top priority to identify and implement easy-to-use AV equipment across meeting and conference rooms to support our distributed workforce. Wesco’s Conference Room as a Service easily checked all the boxes—flexible, secure, reliable, and easy to use— and set us up for long-term success in supporting the new requirements for office AV systems.”

The advantages of the conference room

Wesco’s Conference Room as a Service uniquely keeps pace with ever-faster technological advances, eliminating the need for Blankenship’s team to regularly review, update or maintain existing equipment, ensuring they can stay focused on pressing facility-related needs. By relying on a service-based offering, Blankenship also avoids making significant capital investments to upgrade AV equipment, which helps save the company money.

With a lean team in place, service was critical to the project’s success. Wesco’s 24/7, on-demand customer service – including advance replacement, remote monitoring and live support – gave Blankenship the confidence he needed to standardize CSI’s meeting spaces with Wesco as a preferred partner in this critical infrastructure upgrade.

“Tackling this project was daunting with so many priorities in play as we transitioned to a hybrid work environment. We also needed assurance that the systems would work reliably as they would support meeting spaces across our 11 offices,” notes Blankenship. “Wesco ensured that we were up and running quickly. When we had questions, their customer support team was extraordinary – professional, responsive and resourceful – which made our job much easier. Knowing we could rely on them, 24/7, helped speed up the process and ensure employees had access to the tools they needed to work effectively from day one.”

By standardizing on Wesco’s Conference Room as Service, CSI is investing in a platform built for the future – flexible, reliable and secure – to ensure a productive and satisfied workforce – no matter where or how they work.