Customer
Frasers Property Rhodes NSW
Challenge
To increase the efficiency of collaboration technology and reduce travel expenses.
SMART Solution
SMART Room System
Result
Reduced travel time and unnecessary business expenses, resulting in enhanced employee work/life balance
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Customer
Frasers Property is a business that requires a lot of face time with their clients. Unhappy with the inefficiencies of their existing collaboration technology, combined with increasing travel expenses to facilitate meetings, the company turned to an innovative solution from SMART Technologies to facilitate a better way of working.
The Challenge
Frasers Property is a truly global business; one that operates in 80 cities globally. In Australia alone, it has 600 staff that operate across five separate states, making it a highly geographically diverse company.
Given the intensity and frequency of meetings with clients and business stakeholders, many of Frasers’ staff found themselves spending a great deal of time on the road. Taking into account the travel time to get to meetings, this resulted in a lot of “dead” time for the company to compensate for; a staff member might be travelling for two hours to attend a one hour meeting, and then need to travel for two hours on return.
The existing technology installed in the Frasers offices made it impractical to move these meetings to video conferencing. AV setup was a laborious process, the technology wasn’t as easy to use at it needed to be, and it lacked functionality; employees would still need to scan marked up documents and send them through for approval after a meeting was concluded.
“We were constantly grappling with late meetings and needing to take into account travel time,” Frasers Property IT Operations and Technology Manager, Prabhat Govind, said. “It was having a significant impact on our budgets.”
Consequently, Frasers Property started to look around for a more efficient solution that would allow the company to collaborate better across states, and with clients anywhere in the country. As a secondary benefit, Frasers wanted to better represent to its clients what it could offer by designing its own working space in a modern, efficient manner.
The Solution
Frasers Property embarked on a comprehensive refresh to the way it does business. Not only would it overhaul its collaboration technology, but it would engage closely with SMART Technologies to also make sure the technology would fit in with a broader shift in company culture towards a more nimble and efficient organisation.
“Frasers Property wanted to create a space that is both inviting to a younger generation of subject matter experts and is highly conducive to collaboration. We were brought in because we understand that collaboration is optimised when an organisation takes into consideration technology, space, and culture,” SMART Technologies Regional Sales Manager, Nick Benoit, said.
“You cannot have one or two of the three (technology, space and culture) and expect a successful solution. Mission critical for all organisations determining their collaboration strategy, is to consider how to achieve the cultural changes they need, how to create spaces in the
The Results
It is now possible for Frasers Property staff to hold meetings with clients anywhere and, through Skype for Business, and the SMART Meeting Pro SW, make notations and designs changes while gaining instant approval or feedback.
This has, according to Govind, led to many benefits for the business.
“We saw an immediate cut down on travel to weekly meetings, which could sometimes take a half day for a one hour meeting. As a result, we’ve also seen a reduction in travel expenses, both interstate and locally. As a bonus, we’ve also been able to cut down on our customer travel expenses; we calculated ROI purely on reduction of internal travel expenses, so this was a nice bonus in itself!
“Morale in the workforce has also improved, because we’ve enabled a healthy work life balance in our teams by cutting down on some weekly interstate travel.”
There has also been significant amounts of time saved in the management of the technology itself, allowing it to be used more frequently and by more people. Where once there was a 15-minute (or longer) AV set up process for a telemeeting, now staff can be away in as little as 10 seconds.
“We used to allow 15 minutes for IT/AV setup at the beginning of our board meetings. However, with the newly-installed SMART technology in place this time can now be used for productive discussion” Govind noted.
ABOUT SMART TECHNOLOGIES
SMART Technologies is a leading provider of technology solutions that enable inspired collaboration in schools and workplaces around the world by turning group work into a highly interactive, engaging and productive experience. SMART delivers an integrated solution of hardware, software and services designed for superior performance and ease of use, and remains a world leader in interactive displays. Specialties include – Interactive Whiteboards, Interactive Displays, Student Response System, Wireless Slates, Interactive Learning Software, Document Cameras, Collaboration, Interactive Projectors.
Transforming how people work and learn, worldwide.
• 3 million classrooms worldwide
• 5 million software downloads annually
• 200 Fortune 1000 customers
• 300,000 SMART lab users
• 100% year-over-year revenue growth in interactive displays
• Working in partnership with Free the Children
