Government-owned Northern Ireland Water uses Neat devices to great effect with Microsoft Teams, controlling the company’s entire Neat device deployment through Neat Pulse. 

Northern Ireland Water uses our devices, Neat Bar, Neat Bar Pro, Neat Pad, Neat Board, and Neat Frame, with Microsoft Teams throughout its rooms and spaces nationwide. These are all monitored and maintained through our device management platform, Neat Pulse, which the company’s IT specialists control via their laptops and mobile phones.

Northern Ireland Water is a government-owned company that provides water and sewerage services to everyone in Northern Ireland. It supplies 560 million liters of clean water a day for almost 1.8 million people and treats 320 million liters of wastewater a day. Northern Ireland Water has around 1,800 employees based throughout the company’s five central office locations of Belfast, Portadown, Londonderry, Omagh, and Ballykeel, as well as many water treatment sites across the country. It has 58 Microsoft Teams rooms, with Neat devices installed in 90% of them.

Finding a simpler, easier-to-use solution

Before discovering Neat via its trusted third-party technology supplier, Niavac LTD, many of Northern Ireland Water’s employees found its original video technology in its Teams’ rooms overly complicated, cumbersome and difficult to understand. With too many bars, cables and peripheral devices, David Dunwoody, IT Service Manager, Lisa Toogood, Desktop IT Manager, and their engineers struggled to determine what appliances were causing an issue when things didn’t work. Thus, they were relieved to find a simpler, easier-to-use solution. 

With Neat, you’ve got your Bar, Pad, or all-in-one device, and that’s it. There are no extra cables besides an HDMI. All anyone has to do when they enter one of our Teams’ rooms now is touch the device to start a meeting, and away they go. It’s brilliant.

Lisa Toogood, Desktop IT Manager, Northern Ireland Water

Enjoying the flexibility to place devices in new and old spaces

Whereas Northern Ireland Water had to have things mounted in certain places and cabinets positioned in specific areas in its spaces with its previous technology, Neat is the complete opposite. The company didn’t have to refurbish or redesign rooms to accommodate Neat’s video technology. The plug-and-play simplicity of Neat devices enables Northern Ireland Water to place them anywhere, be it an old historic room in one of the company’s water treatment works or a new space in one of its primary office locations.

As a result, Northern Ireland Water has deployed different Neat devices according to requirements. Meetings typically range from one to two people to 14 to 15, depending on a room’s size and specific function. For example, it has Neat Bars with Neat Pads in many small to medium-sized spaces. Then, the company uses Neat Bar Pro with Neat Pad in its larger spaces and pairs the system with “two enormous screens” so people can see everyone in the meeting and content more clearly, even when sitting towards the back or sides of the room.

Adapting to a room’s space or layout

Neat Board especially gives Northern Ireland Water the flexibility to adapt to a room or space’s layout. For example, deploying a Neat Board on our wheeled floor stand throughout the company’s slightly smaller, ad-hoc “Collab” spaces enables people to move or angle the device to suit their needs. The Collab spaces aren’t a specific room but a series of soundproofing panels that people can place in an open-plan working environment and adjust at will for greater privacy. In other words, aligned with a Neat Board, they provide the perfect impromptu meeting space.

I have some photos of what our rooms looked like with the old devices in them and then with Neat. The difference between the two is day and night! I love the design and functionality of the Neat Bars, Pros, and Boards and how they fit into our spaces. Everything feels special.

David Dunwoody, IT Service Manager, Northern Ireland Water

Remotely managing devices – even on a phone!

Since installing our devices, Northern Ireland Water’s employees have responded overwhelmingly positively, with people remarking, “It’s neat, tidy, and always works.” As for the cutting-edge capabilities of Neat devices, David and Lisa both agree that everyone loves Neat Symmetry because “it gives our employees an everyone in the room feel.” When asked what her favorite Neat feature is, Lisa quickly responded, “Neat Pulse.” Neat Pulse gives David, Lisa and their team complete remote control over Northern Ireland Water’s entire Neat device deployment from anywhere.

That means they no longer have to send an engineer to one of their remote locations, which was anything up to a 160-mile round trip, only to change a setting, the time zone or show someone how to join a Teams meeting. Nowadays, David and Lisa can monitor the status of all of their Neat devices, whether a Bar, Board, Pad, etc., take over from a user and change whatever settings they need to on the fly. “Nine times out of ten, the issues people are facing are just user errors or something similarly simple to correct, so Neat Pulse has been a Godsend in dramatically reducing our company overhead costs,” said Lisa.

Easy-to-understand dashboard

Thanks to Neat Pulse and its sleek, easy-to-understand dashboard, Lisa can also categorize rooms and take screenshots to keep her engineers in the picture if it’s essential they deal with a call out. Plus, she can use Neat Pulse on her mobile phone to enroll and control devices, so no lugging around her laptop when she’s out of the office. She’s even helped roll Neat Pulse out to the company’s service desk, further unburdening her and David’s team and making things easier for everyone.

Neat Pulse is my favorite thing at the moment. It gives me complete control of all our devices. When somebody calls with an issue, I can quickly and easily enroll devices or change the settings on my laptop or, in emergencies, my phone. It’s easy peasy, done in two minutes.

Lisa Toogood, Desktop IT Manager, Northern Ireland Water

Testing new devices and apps to boost video engagement 

Next, David and Lisa plan to upgrade 40 rooms by installing Neat Pads as scheduling displays. They also look forward to testing our Neat Center device, enabling remote meeting attendees to feel increasingly closer to their in-office teammates so they don’t miss a thing. Finally, David and Lisa plan to deploy Neat Frames as virtual receptionists in some of the company’s office waiting areas. They’re also super-keen to discover how they can use apps in their daily meetings through Neat’s app hub and what further advantages they could bring to Northern Ireland Water to improve its service and overall work efficiency.  

I love the Frame, and I love its size. We’d like to put it on a stand in some of our office lobbies and display our company logo on the screen to welcome people.

 David Dunwoody, IT Service Manager, Northern Ireland Water

Neat provides an essential service for us

As a fun way to round off our conversation with David and Lisa, we asked them, “If Neat were a water brand, what would we be and why?” Lisa replied, “Tap water. Because just as we deliver fresh tap water to everyone, Neat provides an essential service for us.”

Wow, we love that. Talk about ending our discussion with David and Lisa with a splash! It definitely deserves a pint of Guinness. May your glass be forever full, as they say in Ireland. Cheers!

Read more about Northern Ireland Water.
Read more about Niavac Audio-Visual.

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