Norwegian construction company Backe uses Neat devices with Microsoft Teams for simpler, more flexible and productive video meetings between its Oslo HQ, 16 offices, and 70-90 building sites, suppliers and customers.

Backe uses Neat Board, Neat Bar and Neat Bar Pro with Neat Pad on Microsoft Teams. It also manages all its devices through Neat Pulse. 

Backe is a Norwegian family-owned construction company consisting of three main companies: Backe Prosjekt, Backe Entreprenør, and Backe Eiendom.

Backe Prosjekt actively develops housing and commercial buildings, conducting developments alone or in collaboration with other partners, landowners, and investors. Backe Entreprenør oversees all contracting activities. It includes ten contracting subsidiaries and a bricklaying company, which operate as separate entities with detailed knowledge of local business and community life. Backe Eiendom ensures that Backe’s rented and leased properties are always optimally managed.

Backe has roughly 1,400 employees overall. Fifty percent work at its 16 office locations in Norway, from Trondeim southwards, including its new Lysaker headquarters just outside Oslo. Meanwhile, the other fifty percent work at the 70-90 building sites Backe controls at any time. 

Before discovering Neat and moving to its current Lysaker HQ, Backe had a mix of several years-old video conferencing solutions from several different providers, including Cisco, Creston, and Logitech, installed throughout the rooms at its old office. All of which, to be fair, worked, albeit with many peripherals.

However, leading to the Lysaker move and being “tech nerds,” as Gunilla Stussi, Head of IT at Backe, said, they aspired to acquire new video technology to complement the new premises. Importantly, though, there were two deciding factors. Firstly, Backe needed to ensure that the move to Lysaker was as “green” as possible by repurposing all its previous location’s monitors. Secondly, the company sought more flexible solutions to cater to having more meeting room freedom. Enter Norwegian technology supplier Adio AS to help Backe realize its vision of creating the perfect office environment.

Hanne and I are tech nerds. Technology is what we live and breathe. We immediately loved Neat when Adio introduced us to the devices. They looked good and had all the right functionalities. We like counting how many people use a room and the transcription in Teams. We’re also excited about Copilot for Teams. The Pulse dashboard is perfect for maintenance, too. Neat is the whole package. It grows on people.

Gunilla Stussi, Head of IT, Backe

Choosing the right video technology 

Adio is crucial to Backe’s technology deployment. As Gunilla put it, “Adio knows what they’re doing, can help us choose the right solutions, and help manage our deployments. They’re a company we trust.” For example, when Gunilla and her teammate Hanne Granum, IT Solutions Manager, asked, “Why is a Neat Board a clever thing to have?” What could they get from it, and what are the benefits and long-term effects of having a Neat Board in a particular room? Adio could give them the full lowdown.

Subsequently, before switching to its new Lysaker HQ, Gunilla and Hanne placed a Neat Board in a barely used meeting room at its old office as a test, and within two or three weeks, people had fully booked it. The room stayed the same, with the same furniture and layout. Even an old monitor was still on the wall. What had transformed the room was placing a Neat Board in there. “Everyone loved the tech,” said Gunilla.

Hanne and I are very tactile people, so the moment we laid our hands on the Neat equipment, we said, ‘OK, this is high-end stuff.’ Also, as a construction company, we are in the people business. We need and like partnering with passionate people who love their work so that we can keep delivering outstanding results ourselves.

Gunilla Stussi, Head of IT, Backe

Hanne echoed Gunilla’s sentiments when she said the following:

Once our people started to use the Neat Board we tested back at our old office, they were like, “How can I live without it?

Hanne Granum, IT Solutions Manager, Backe

Enjoying complete meeting equity 

Backe has successfully deployed Neat Boards throughout its new spaces in Lysaker, leading to the company deploying Neat Bars, Neat Bar Pros, and Neat Pads. Besides its Oslo employees loving the devices and their innovative capabilities, its employees on the far end of a video meeting also revel in better meeting experiences, whether based at one of Backe’s other office locations or one of its many building sites. Thanks to our pioneering, patented Neat Symmetry feature, everyone feels, as Gunilla put it, “like an equal partner.”

Neat Symmetry focuses on everyone in a meeting room, regardless of how far apart people are sitting or how far back they are from the front-of-the-room device. It presents everyone equally on remote meeting participants’ screens. Neat Symmetry detects, enlarges, and follows everyone in the room in full close-up, resulting in more natural, lifelike engagement. Discover more about Neat Symmetry’s leading-edge capabilities.

Helping people regardless of office location

As Gunilla and Hanne oversee Backe’s entire IT deployment throughout all its offices nationwide, communicating clearly and more naturally over video is essential. Their daily obligation is to ensure all of Backe’s meeting, focus and collaboration rooms are fully functional. They need to be able to help people regardless of their office location. Neat enables them to do that with another pioneering feature, our Neat Pulse service offering. 

Neat Pulse gives Backe a choice of which applications to run on its Neat devices, complete control of its deployment, premium support care and extended warranty coverage. Read more about Neat Pulse.

Neat Pulse is great and one of the primary reasons we love Neat. We can roll out Neat devices throughout the entire organization while having complete remote control over all our meeting rooms from here in Oslo. It makes our jobs as IT specialists much easier.

Hanne Granum, IT Solutions Manager, Backe

Looking forward to testing new devices

Gunilla and Hanne are eager to test our highly adaptable new Neat Board 50 device, which they’ve just received at the time of writing. They’re particularly keen for their project teams to use it as they seek ever-simpler ways to work and collaborate. Neat Board 50’s ability to house multiple apps is also a big incentive, as is its whiteboarding capabilities with our touch-sensitive Neat Active Marker for frictionless writing and sketching of ideas or quick illustrations. Neat Board 50’s extensive multi-touch LCD screen is perfect for Backe’s talented architects, designers and engineers when brainstorming or summing up new building concepts.

Finally, Gunilla and Hanne understand the advantage of deploying more Neat devices throughout Backe’s offices and leveraging them with the desk-scheduling and room-booking app Neowit integrated with Neat Sense. Capitalizing on Neowit and Neat Sense through Neat Pulse will help Backe eliminate ghost meetings, optimize space utilization, and enhance workplace productivity. It will also help manage air quality, room management, and people count better, keeping employees healthier while streamlining meeting room availability and reducing company costs. 

To wrap up our chat, we asked Hanne what she would say if she recommended Neat to a friend or business associate.

You have to choose Neat because it’s the best. It’s a Norwegian company that creates high-quality products. The audiovisuals are great, and so is Neat Pulse. We’re looking forward to seeing what comes next, as we believe Neat is way ahead in video innovation.

Hanne Granum, IT Solutions Manager, Backe

What more can we say, other than that’s what we call a future worth building on?! 

Read more about Backe.
Read more about Adio AS.

Discover Neat’s pioneering devices or see them in action in our live Virtual Demo – Neat Devices and Experiences. Better yet, book a demo and experience them for yourself.