REWE digital uses Neat devices with Microsoft Teams to give 25,000-plus hybrid employees, including those in the company’s new Málaga office in Spain, more reliable, equitable, valuable video meetings.

Having flexible, equitable hybrid meeting rooms is very important to us, so whether someone is working from home or at the office, no one feels second-class.

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital

REWE digital, the IT division and technological backbone of the German retail chain REWE Group, is constantly evolving. It manages all of REWE Group’s in-house and in-store IT for its European retail operations, including its most recent new office in Málaga, Spain.

The Andalusian university city of Málaga is known for its culture, architecture, history, and now, through REWE digital Spain, technology. REWE digital’s “Home of IT” in Málaga, Spain, works with agility, excellence, focus, passion, courage, and cross-functionality on new developments for REWE Group. It helps develop innovative technologies and services that make shopping easy for people – or even possible in the first place. Simply put, REWE digital is creating the digital future of retail for millions of people.

Fostering a vibrant company culture

To help foster its vibrant “Home of IT” company culture, REWE digital’s primary goal is to use cutting-edge video technology to facilitate seamless, agile and flexible collaboration between its employees in Málaga and headquarters in Cologne, Germany. It strives to create the best possible working environment for its diverse people, projects, methods, technologies, and workflows to thrive.

REWE digital’s reach extends to over 400 hybrid meeting rooms in 70 European locations, a testament to the continuous growth and expansion of REWE Group’s numerous affiliated businesses and over 90 billion Euros in revenue. 

In the company’s continuous pursuit of optimizing the future work output of its 2,250-plus employees and maintaining a healthy hybrid work balance of working from home or in-office, REWE digital has deployed over 150 Neat devices on Microsoft Teams. The deployment includes rolling out Neat Bar Pros with Neat Pads, Neat Boards and Neat Board 50s. Neat’s part in this deployment is crucial to the company’s employees enjoying ever-increasing hybrid work success, and REWE digital is optomistic that our devices will significantly enhance its extensive work environment.

We chatted with the highly affable Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings at REWE digital, to get more insight. Kim oversees the company’s cloud-based technology. Much of what we discussed focused on Kim and his team’s experience equipping REWE Group’s new Spanish office in Málaga with a Neat Board and our latest Neat Board 50 device. REWE digital’s employees leverage Neat Symmetry and Neat Boundary on these devices to create more equitable, focused, flexible, and productive hybrid meetings.

Because our Málaga office is new, everyone loved the prospect of doing some crazy, innovative stuff with the Neat devices.

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital

Hola to Neat

First, here’s how REWE digital discovered Neat. Pre-Neat, REWE digital experienced various issues with unreliable multi-vendor, multi-component video equipment. Seeking a better-looking, more innovative, stable communications solution to provide its employees with seamless hybrid collaborationtools on Microsoft Teams, Kim discovered Neat through a colleague. After initially testing our all-in-one 65-inch touchscreen device, Neat Board, at REWE digital’s Cologne office in Germany and people loving it, the company reached out to its then tech provider, Cancom, to help scale more Neat devices across the organization. (REWE has since switched to the modern working and meeting solutions company, DataVision).

Kim’s initial response when receiving Neat Board was, “Wow. Hybrid meeting equipment can look awesome!” He went on to say that as people’s consumer devices always look good nowadays, they often get disappointed when they arrive at the office and experience big, ugly, clunky hardware devices with poor user interfaces. Not so with Neat. For example, compared to most other video vendor hardware, Neat Board is a thin, sleek-looking video device that entices people to interact with its well-organized touchscreen interface. Neat Board 50 is even slimmer and, some say, more aesthetically pleasing and interactive. “It’s extremely tasty looking!” Kim enthused!

If you have good design and people aren’t afraid to touch and interact with it, you’re halfway there to creating a magical experience for people.

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital

Saving time, effort, and money

One of the most appealing aspects of Neat devices is their simplicity. Kim and his team could unbox and set up the device, getting people to use it in 15 minutes. This straightforward process, which they could handle themselves, saved REWE digital time, effort, and money that otherwise would have been spent getting outside help.

Our employees love your devices so much, their simplicity and how quickly it is for people to join a meeting, that they now refer to our hybrid meeting rooms as Neat Rooms.”

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital

Reveling in more equitable, focused, and flexible meetings

As mentioned, REWE digital is reveling in more equitable, focused, flexible, and productive hybrid meetings thanks to our patented, pioneering, much-mimicked Neat Symmetry feature. REWE digital also revels in our patented Neat Boundary feature. REWE digital loves Neat Symmetry because it lets its in-office and remote employees feel like they’re in the same room by giving everyone equal screen space. It uses machine learning to make video meetings feel as natural as face-to-face meetings. For REWE digital’s hybrid-working employees, it’s especially effective for presentations, as people can gauge and follow everyone’s reactions better, making them feel more confident. See how Neat Symmetry works. 

REWE digital loves Neat Boundary because several of the company’s meeting rooms in Málaga, Spain, have glass walls. Hence, leveraging our pioneering patented Neat Boundary feature has proven invaluable. Anyone can set it up to create a virtual boundary to prevent the device’s camera from accidentally picking up people passing by or standing outside a meeting room, leading to less disruptive meetings. Learn more about Neat Boundary.

We set up the Neat Boundary feature in one of our Málaga office’s rooms. It’s awesome and works perfectly. As a result, people’s meetings are far more focused. 

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital

Remarkably good audio and video quality

Regarding the audio and video quality on Neat devices, Kim said it was way better than he expected, even from what he’d seen on our website. For example, when he received and tested the first Neat Board, he told people its audio reach was about six to seven meters in the room despite them asking him to place it in a twelve-meter-long room. Kim wasn’t sure if Neat Board would work in the larger room, but as it turned out, it worked great. People loved how it looked and the meeting experience it gave them. 

People said that Neat Board was perfect for 12-meter rooms, although eight meters is best for me. Then Bar Pro is good for larger rooms. 

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital. 

Despite Kim loving our 65-inch Neat Board, he became utterly smitten when he saw our 50-inch Neat Board 50 at ISE in Barcelona earlier this year. It’s smaller, but if anything, it packs an even more powerful punch than its bigger brother. Kim said that in Germany, many believe the bigger the screen, the better you look. But not so with Neat Board 50. “It’s the perfect size!” He compared people who want the best iPhone to those who wish for a Neat Board 50. “People want the best and latest tech available, which Neat provides.”

People want the best and latest tech available, which Neat provides.

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital.

Easy access for anyone, anywhere, to engage on video

Neat Board 50’s uniquely adaptive stand is another REWE digital winner. It enables anyone to access its beautiful, streamlined touchscreen by pushing the screen up or down to adjust the height. Or they can wheel the device wherever they need it next. The adjustable screen height lets anyone use the accompanying Neat Active Marker without any area of the board being out of reach. Plus, it allows for a single USB-C to share content.

As for future Neat-wants, Kim is excited to get his hands on our Neat Center companion device after also trying it out at ISE. 

I was extremely impressed with Neat Center because it takes meetings to another level. Heightening the Symmetry experience further enables people to chat over video as they naturally would if they were all in the room. They don’t have to talk to the camera, which nobody likes. Everything feels more normal.

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital. 

Saving on external support thanks to Neat Pulse

To wrap up a highly informative 45 minutes with Kim, we discussed REWE digital’s testing of our online device management service, Neat Pulse, to manage and monitor its Neat device deployment and how much money it’s saved the company in support tickets and time. Kim calculated that since they started onboarding, managing, and monitoring the company’s Neat devices through Neat Pulse six months ago, REWE digital has saved 50 person-days of support effort due to the low error frequency. That’s because the company no longer needs to call in any external AV specialists to help maintain and support its 130+ Neat devices in different regions of Germany and other countries. Neat Pulse empowers Kim and his team to control their Neat devices from the company’s HQ in Cologne.

It’s awesome for us in the IT department to manage and monitor our Neat devices remotely. I can see, change and configure any setting on one of our Malaga devices or anywhere else. It’s super-cool! 

Kim Schiffer, Product Owner for Communications & Meetings, REWE digital. 

Read more about REWE digital.

Read more about Cancom.

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