Ultra-premium drinks distributor Edrington uses Neat devices with Microsoft Teams for simpler meetings, remote device monitoring and global management of its entire Neat deployment.

Edrington uses Neat Bar Pro with Neat Pad, Neat Board, Neat Board 50 and Neat Center with Microsoft Teams throughout its small, medium and large meeting rooms. 

Edrington is a privately owned international spirits company based in Glasgow, Scotland. It crafts and sells premium single malt whiskies such as The Macallan, Highland Park, The Glenrothes, Naked Malt, and The Famous Grouse blended Scotch whisky. Also, Wyoming Whiskey, No.3 London Dry Gin and Brugal rum. 

The company has over 3,000 employees and offices in 18 countries, including the UK, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the US. Edrington supports and encourages hybrid work, offering employees a healthier work-life balance. People work 50% in the office and 50% at home. 

Bringing more simplicity to meeting spaces

Edrington’s Neat journey started with the company wishing to bring more simplicity to its meeting spaces after employees found its previous video tech confusing and unreliable. Also, its IT guys, Calum Murray, Service Desk Analyst and Paul Clugston, Service Desk Manager, were often swamped with support tickets because people would enter a room, change the cabling, and plug and unplug devices but neglect to put anything back after their meeting. As a result, Calum and Paul would have to constantly service the rooms to get them back up and running for whoever wanted to use the room next. What they sought was consistency. A simple, reliable, recognizable solution that everyone identified with and could quickly and easily use.

So, after hearing and reading about Neat’s “beautifully simple video devices” through nuvideo, one of the UK’s leading experts in integrated audiovisual solutions and Edrington’s trusted AV advisor and installer, they started testing our 65-inch all-in-one touchscreen device, Neat Board, in their Queens Street Glasgow HQ. Duly impressed, Calum and Paul deployed more Neat Boards to test and, after rave employee feedback, decided to go all-in with Neat and deploy multiple Neat devices across the organization.

Neat’s ‘beautifully simple’ slogan stood out. It was exactly what we were looking for, and I was surprised by how easy everything was. Now, we enter a room, and it just works. It’s very intuitive. There’s no faffing about with cables or anything else. You can jump directly into a meeting and stream content straight to the screen.

Calum Murray, Service Desk Analyst, Edrington 

As Calum said, it’s all very intuitive. Neat has removed many hurdles regarding people hopping from one meeting to the next. It’s helped cut our support tickets down to practically zero. There’s now only a small number of rooms in Glasgow without Neat, and those are the rooms where we still get issues logged.

Paul Clugston, Service Desk Manager, Edrington

Innovative, robust solutions for Microsoft Teams

Nuvideo has specialized in video conferencing technology since the 90s. It has a long history of providing clients like Edrington with high-quality integrated videoconferencing solutions. 

When Microsoft Teams became the communications platform for most UK organizations, we proactively sought an innovative, robust solution to meet our clients’ demands. That’s when we discovered Neat. With its constant software updates, we can ensure clients like Edrington always have the best possible experience.

Michael McNeil, Sales Manager, nuvideo

When we asked Calum and Paul what features and experiences they like and use, they praised our patented Neat Symmetry, which enables greater meeting equity between their hybrid teams. They’ve also started to test Neat Center, combining it with Neat Symmetry to make their meetings even more immersive.

When I first show people a Neat Board in one of our rooms, I always get a ‘wow’ when I activate Symmetry and the camera equally divides the screen.

Calum Murray, Service Desk Analyst, Edrington

Calum and Paul also found our patented Neat Boundary feature a practical solution. In their recent office installations with glass walls, they shared that it’s enabled employees to maintain meeting focus. Neat Boundary prevents the device’s camera from capturing external activities, ensuring outside distractions don’t disturb anyone’s meetings. By setting a virtual width and depth to define the meeting space, the camera intelligently avoids detecting, auto-framing, and following people who aren’t part of the meeting.

Ensuring a top-rate audio experience 

Paul also praised Neat’s voice isolation, a feature that Edrington’s employees have come to love. This feature removes any distracting background noise, ensuring a top-rate audio experience for everyone. Paul further emphasized that the clarity and crispness of the audio are a testament to the quality and reliability of Neat products, instilling confidence and peace of mind in the company’s employees.

Furthermore, the design aesthetic of Neat devices plays an active role in how Edrington presents itself. As the company is in the ultra-premium drinks industry, everything Edrington strives to achieve reflects that. Its offices are modern and comfortable, and its office equipment is “modern, good-quality and in line with our ambitions,” as Paul put it. So, it’s essential for the company that its meeting rooms follow suit. Neat’s streamlined Nordic-designed devices blend perfectly into modern, flexible working environments like Edrington’s, providing a minimal, sleek, elegant look and feel.

We want a consistent look and feel across all our meeting rooms, and Neat enables us to do that attractively. 

Paul Clugston, Service Desk Manager, Edrington 

In IT, you don’t often get a lot of comments from people when things are working. It’s only when things go wrong that people voice an opinion. But several people, even from senior management, have stopped me to say thanks for making our meeting rooms so much better.

Calum Murray, Service Desk Analyst, Edrington

Creating multiple global device profiles 

Edrington manages its entire Neat deployment with a Neat Pulse Pro plan, creating multiple global device profiles. For example, when some of Calum and Paul’s US colleagues recently ordered several Neat Boards, once the pair onboarded them through Neat Pulse, their US colleagues could create their own profiles with specific US time zones and test any newly announced features on a selected device before implementing it more widely. 

Neat Pulse enables Calum and Paul to track where each device is, what it’s doing, its serial number and any other vital stats they need. They have total visibility of every device globally in all of the company’s locations, from Scotland to France, the US, Hong Kong and all other regional offices and areas where Edrington lacks local IT support.

The ability to remote access devices has been brilliant. It’s so easy to set up and manage singular, grouped or multiple devices without being at the location where we’ve installed them. With Neat Pulse, I can onboard new devices, change settings, enable check-ins, etc., in any of our device locations from right here in Glasgow.

Calum Murray, Service Desk Analyst, Edrington

One of Edrington’s brands is Wyoming Whiskey, whose distillery is in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. They have a Neat Board, but without Neat Pulse, it would take Calum or Paul days to get there to set it up, configure it or deal with any issues employees may be having. So, logging on, replicating the screen and seeing what’s happening has been a big bonus. It saves Edrington unnecessary travel costs. As Paul said with a laugh, “Scotland to Wyoming is a long way!” More to the point,  it also upholds Edrington’s commitment to halve its carbon emissions by 2030 and get to net zero by 2045.

Adopting Neat as standard practice worldwide

To help employees at all global locations, Calum and Paul have created a guide for everybody on what Neat devices are best for what size rooms or spaces. Then, people can read about each device, learn the price and organize everything with their nearest Neat distributor. Generally, at Edrington, Neat Bar Pro is for large rooms, Neat Board is for medium-sized rooms and Neat Board 50 is for small rooms.

We’re encouraging all our brands worldwide to adopt Neat as standard practice. Neat saves us a lot of time and effort by keeping everything simple. In our eyes, Neat is the Apple of AV.

Calum Murray, Service Desk Analyst, Edrington

To top off a fun and informative Friday chat with Calum and Paul, we asked them if they preferred their whisky neat or on the rocks. 

I prefer my whisky neat, and when I think of our video solutions, I definitely prefer them not to be on the rocks!

Paul Clugston, Service Desk Manager, Edrington

Cheers, Calum and Paul. We’ll drink to that!

Edrington purchases its UK Neat devices through nuvideo, one of the UK’s leading experts in integrated audiovisual solutions. For six years, Nuvideo has helped Edrington with its hybrid strategy and AV requirements. 

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