Meadows Office Interiors recently moved their Manhattan headquarters to the iconic Lipstick Building. The executive management team, consisting of CEO Sheri David, COO Marissa Allen, and Chairwomen Rosalie Edson, designed a state-of-the-art working showroom facility including conference space, as well as formal and informal meeting spaces to showcase the beautiful and seamless integration of technology and furniture.
The Tech Decision
Adding sophisticated collaboration technology with video conferencing capability was an important component. Meadows needed a powerhouse solution that could perform triple duty: support intra-office multi-party design collaboration, host interactive sales presentations and demonstrate, first-hand, how collaborative technology could work in dynamic, real-life office environments.
“As we began to design the showroom, our intent was to enhance our own employees’ experience as well as demonstrate to customers, by example, how the right technology enhances collaborative spaces,” says Sheri David, CEO of Meadows. “We didn’t want a system that required users to be tech-savvy to take advantage of the tools. User adoption was important. I wanted to be able to show people how to use it once and then walk away knowing they’d be comfortable with little or no additional support.”
The Solution
Meadows was already familiar with several video conferencing products and had evaluated a number of whiteboard products. After experiencing InFocus technology, the Meadows team selected Mondopad, which is both a video conferencing device as well as interactive whiteboard, for their conference and meeting rooms, and JTouch for open space areas where only interactive whiteboards are needed.
“The sheer volume of technology standard in Mondopad doesn’t compare to the others,” says Marissa Allen, COO of Meadows. “You simply can’t get that all-in-one feature set elsewhere. We don’t even talk about Mondopad while we are using it for sales presentations and real-time brainstorming. It’s perceived as a tool we use internally to great effect. Eventually the customers become curious and want to know about the touchscreen. At that point, it sells itself.”
With multiple spaces for conferencing and collaboration in its offices, Meadows deployed some rooms with digital screens that could be hooked up to PCs—a decision they came to regret. “We track which rooms are used most frequently and those are always the Mondopad rooms. No one wants to go old school by hooking their laptop to a screen,” says Marissa.
The Impact
Meadows uses InFocus Mondopad to collaborate with employees, design firms, architects, and customers, crediting the technology for considerably reducing its sales and design cycle.
“Ours can be a really long process with lots of back and forth,” says Marissa. “Mondopad lets us brainstorm with all parties, in real-time, in a really effective way. Putting a face with a voice through video conferencing adds another level of interaction and engagement. People can collectively view renderings, furniture catalogs and floorplans, providing instant feedback, and collaborate on edits in real-time from any location once they are dialed in to the Mondopad. This greatly expedites turnaround and instantly sends revised information to all parties.”
The Meadows team also appreciates how seamlessly Mondopad integrates with their infrastructure right out of the box, appearing as just another PC on their network. “An employee can open a ticket and get another program added— sky’s the limit,” Marissa says, reporting that Mondopad is easy to service, easy to modify and easy to integrate into any office setting.
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