Gene Oudes and his Waikato District Council team only had days to respond. In fact, you could almost measure it in hours.
After Covid hit, almost overnight everyone in the council's 500-strong staff was sent home.
Oudes is the council's Infrastructure & Support Lead and had the job of keeping everyone
working. He had to swiftly move all the council's office staff away from desktop machines to laptops and Microsoft OneDrive.
As the Covid dust settled, the council realised that the days of everyone coming into the office at the same time were officially over. One whole floor of its Ngaruawahia HQ had its desks and cubicles ripped out and transformed into ad hoc meeting spaces.
Once the executive team had set the course for hybrid working, Oudes had the task of investing in AV technology that would support them through their new way of working.
He wanted to allow for easy collaboration, ensuring council staff stayed connected within their new flexible working structure, giving them freedom to focus on things that really matter to the community.
Staff was struggling with the existing meeting room technology; it was far too difficult and clunky to use.
Canon New Zealand, print services partner for the council for a number of years, understood their range of meeting room technology addressed the need for an efficient, intuitive and easy to use solution for the council's remote workers. Only a long-lasting, future-proofed solution would
suffice.
After much market research, eliminating systems that tied them to a specific platform, one product stood out with a compelling value-proposition – the InFocus Mondopad.
A software-agnostic Windows-based interactive panel which allows the use of any application you choose for video conferencing, it also has the essential ability to add the latest software to keep up with ever-changing technology. Although Microsoft Teams and Zoom are the main platforms used for meetings now, the council didn't want to be limited to that in the future.
"From a business perspective, we can see the real potential of what the Mondopad will offer us in the years to come," says Oudes. "Wireless presenting and whiteboarding are the main uses for the Mondopads right now. Staff up-take has been excellent; it's rare to see them sitting idle."
Making sure the solution suited their staff was also really important, which the Mondopad does with its intuitive layout. Unlike the previous meeting room technology, the Mondopad enables council staff to log in directly to their Office 365 accounts, giving them access to everything they need.
"Staff know exactly what to look for and how to operate platforms, everything just makes sense," says Oudes. "This has reduced a lot of time previously wasted setting up for meetings and navigating the platform.
"Canon is a long-term partner and we know they are constantly looking into what the market is doing and where technology is heading."