Skipton Building Society
Established in 1853, Skipton Building Society is the UK's 4th largest building society and has over 1.1 million members and 88 branches, with its head office located in Skipton, North Yorkshire.
Skipton Building Society is also the head of the Skipton Group – which is creating an impact at the centre of the housing market. The Group is made up of key businesses from across the housing and financial industry which includes Skipton Building Society, the UK’s largest estate agency and property services provider - Connells Group, which helps over one in ten of individuals buying and selling homes; offshore finance capability Skipton International; Skipton Business Finance and Jade Software Corporation
The Brief
SBS needed 24 Microsoft hybrid meeting rooms to enable hybrid working within their head office and allow remote workers to collaborate and feel engaged within meetings. The key to their success
and easy adoption is to provide a standardised user experience within the meeting room, no matter the size of the room.
SBS have three meeting room sizes: small, medium, and large. The small rooms needed excellent picture quality displays, cameras and audio solutions designed for business to ensure everyone could feel like they were in the same room and fully engage with each other. These rooms also had to facilitate easy content-sharing and collaboration.
The medium meeting rooms had to include immersive room-filling audio and advanced camera capabilities for an inclusive boardroom experience with no unnecessary and hazardous cables cluttering the space. With high-quality cameras and audio solutions, participants could get the feel-like-you're-there interactions necessary for a sensational hybrid work environment.
Immersion, connection, and co-creation are the principal outcomes needed from the larger meeting rooms. For this, cutting-edge intelligent cameras, audio, and time-saving automation were paramount. The standardised spaces would guarantee anyone could start or join a meeting quickly and easily.
Why Carillion?
Carillion Communications were one of the first in the UK to be awarded Authorised Device Reseller status by Microsoft for the Surface Hub; as of today, we are the only Microsoft Approved Service Provider in the UK for the Surface Hub. Our select team, with unrivalled expertise, are trusted by Microsoft to act as an extension of their Internal Technical Specialist team and provide end-to-end maintenance and repair for the Surface Hub. Additionally, we are one of only a handful of UK companies recognised by AVIXA as an Audio-Visual Provider of Excellence.
Our audio-visual services, provided by our professional, friendly consultants, handle everything from bespoke design to user training, ensuring all SBS’s aspirations were met. In many instances, ongoing
maintenance is essential to the smooth integration of hardware or software; our lifecycle services and commitment to exemplary customer service ensure our team is on hand to resolve any technical matters that may arise.
Solution
The initial approach was to deploy three different-sized meeting rooms as a Proof of Concept to determine if the hardware was appropriate and utilised. This consisted of a Sony Bravia Professional Display with Logitech Rally Bar and Tap for the smaller meeting room, Poly X50 and Sony Bravia Professional Display for the medium room and Poly E70, TC8 with Shure and QSC microphones/processing for audio and Extron automated control for the large room.
For the small meeting room, SBS wanted their teams to experience being together without having to be in the room together; therefore, the Sony Bravia Professional Display was a valuable component of Carillion's design for the room. Allowing rich, lifelike detail to seep into the room and engulf the group in the office with crystal-clear, energy-efficient imagery. Paired with powerful audio and sharp optics from the Logitech Rally Bar, everyone is absorbed in this new meeting reality and ready to collaborate. The final piece of the puzzle was the meeting room touch controller, Tap from Logitech, enabling one-touch joining and easy content-sharing.
A Sony Bravia Professional Display was also deployed in the medium meeting room, combining 4k HDR imagery, easy operation and versatile integration with the high-performance video and audio bar, Poly X50. Ensuring everyone attending meetings in person or virtually would be seen, heard and captivated. Presentations can be shared with sharp detail and precise graphics, so there are no missed or overlooked numbers, points, or facts.
A Poly E70 smart camera with Poly DirectorAI smart camera technology and 20-megapixel 4K sensors was installed in the POC larger boardroom. This unrivalled, first-of-its-kind smart camera allows those in the boardroom to communicate effortlessly with their team wherever they are and get the most out of hybrid meetings with a choice between framing the group, people, or the speaker for a more engaging conversation and enthralling experience. Coupled with crisp, top-quality audio from Shure and QSC microphones, everyone can hear and be heard. The TC8 Carillion installed from Poly allows for one-touch joining and sharing, ensuring simple co-creation as SBS can focus on the task without worrying about launching meetings and complicated systems. Married with automation from Extron, meetings become a breeze, as SBS can streamline their presentations and operate core infrastructure.
After running the POC for several months, it was discovered the uptake on the rooms was high and deploying more rooms across the business would entice staff to return to the office with the hybrid work methodology. Therefore, Carillion fitted the remaining spaces with the correct technologies and solutions for their size.
On completion, SBS and Carillion wanted to ensure the spaces were utilised to their full potential. As a result, an SBS tech focus week was delivered to numerous groups of users over the period to provide successful user adoption.
Supplied
- Microsoft Surface Hub
- Sony Displays
- Poly Video Conferencing
- Shure Microphones
- QSC/Shure Audio Processing
- Extron distribution
The outcome
SBS can communicate inwardly and outwardly with ease and collaborate in fully immersive spaces for true-to-life team contact and interaction. They have been provided with an immense, functioning, hybrid workplace and training, ensuring everyone can work how and where they are most comfortable and still be part of an engaged team.
