Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits combines Neat with Zoom to create a consistent and improved user experience throughout its meeting spaces for simpler, more reliable, and more cost-effective video meetings.

If Neat were a cocktail, it’d be a classic dirty martini. Simple, elegant, timeless!

Luis Arenas, Manager of the Video Collaboration Platform, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits uses Neat Bar, Neat Bar Pro, Neat Pad, Neat Board, Neat Board 50, Neat Frame, and Neat Center throughout its 100+ Neat and Zoom meeting rooms across the USA. The company manages its Neat devices through our Neat Pulse management and monitoring service.  

Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits distributes 8,600 brands, representing over 1,200 wine, spirits, beer and beverage suppliers. The multi-generational, family-owned company operates in 44 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. It also operates brokerages through its WEBB Banks division in the Caribbean, Central, and South America. Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits operates 41 distribution centers in a combined 15 million square feet of warehouse space, has 3,000 trucks in its fleet, and makes 7.1 million deliveries annually to more than 250,000 customers.

On a sunny Oslo afternoon, we very much enjoyed meeting over video with Greg Skrobar, Senior Director of Workplace Services, responsible for Southern Glazer’s user-facing technology, collaboration tools, and capabilities, and Luis Arenas, Manager of the Video Collaboration Platform at Southern Glazer’s, to discuss their Neat and Zoom set-up.

Consistent, simple, end-user experience

Before discovering Neat, Southern Glazer’s local facilities teams managed its tech deployment. Although they used Zoom, they deployed different combinations of video hardware, vendor parts, and products, causing inconsistencies in monitoring and availability. Then, 18 months ago, Greg and Luis’s IT team took the reins and immediately set about finding a more consistent, reliable, and resilient solution they could roll out across all the company’s Zoom Rooms.

After a rigorous reevaluation process that included Greg and Luis examining different AV suppliers, vendors, and hardware and testing multiple solutions, Southern Glazer’s settled on Neat as the company standard for its Zoom Rooms. Greg stated, “In terms of meeting room familiarity, Neat gave us that rinse-and-repeat consistency everywhere you go.”

This standardization of Southern Glazer’s Zoom Rooms has led to a consistent and predictable user experience across all its meeting spaces. Employees can walk into any Zoom Room and know precisely how to operate the equipment with minimal training or support. Reducing time spent on technicalities allows users to focus on their meetings and tasks, making them more productive and efficient. Coupled with the standardization of naming convention and the use of Outlook Room Finder, it’s simplified the end-user self-discovery of available Zoom Rooms, making it easier for users to find and book rooms that meet their needs.

Before Neat, our video conferencing solutions were very localized and lacked standardization across the enterprise. We had 40 video conferencing rooms with many configurations, making support very challenging. The Neat devices have enabled us to standardize our Zoom Rooms with a sleek, reliable, unified look and feel throughout.

Greg Skrobar, Senior Director of Workplace Services, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Easy to install, set up, and use

Greg and Luis find our devices incredibly easy to install, set up, and use. They appreciate the devices’ reliability. Greg explained, “If there’s a power outage, it automatically starts working without the need for manual intervention.” Additionally, Greg and Luis don’t have to search for mounts, stands, or screws for different setups. Everything they require is included in the box. For example, when using Neat Bar Pro, they simply need to attach the appropriate display, mount it on the wall, and they’re good to go.

Besides the physical interface, look, feel, and functionality, including various mounting options, and not worrying about different skews have greatly simplified our deployment schedule. When we get a Bar Pro, we know that 99% of our needs will be in the box, which is one less thing to worry about.

Luis Arenas, Manager of the Video Collaboration Platform, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

In terms of managing its Neat devices, Southern Glazer’s benefits from a well-defined 24/7 support model through our Neat Pulse service. Neat Pulse offers remote monitoring and management capabilities for the company’s complete Neat device deployment across its nationwide offices.

Centralized management and maintenance

In other words, Neat Pulse simplifies everything by enabling Greg and Luis’s IT team to centrally manage and maintain all operations from Southern Glazer’s Florida HQ. It allows them to standardize firmware, software, configurations, and presets across regions on one platform, reducing installation time from weeks to hours. Once the team installs a device and connects it to Southern Glazer’s network, they can create multiple profiles for managing and monitoring everything. They can configure Neat Pulse, input the Neat and Zoom activation codes, and make the room operational within minutes.

Neat Pulse allows us to manage updates, troubleshoot issues, and perform preventive maintenance more efficiently. Additionally, centrally monitoring and managing Zoom Rooms has allowed for proactive issue resolution and better resource allocation, minimizing downtime and improving the overall efficiency of our video conferencing systems.

Luis Arenas, Manager of the Video Collaboration Platform, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Neat Pulse has also proved vital in understanding how employees use the devices and features, a critical factor in creating productive spaces. Using data to drive decisions provides Southern Glazer’s with essential metrics on the health and availability of each room, offering valuable insights into how its employees use the technology and different workspaces. 

For example, the company found that almost everyone used the Neat Board configured for wayfinding and Zoom Workspace Reservation by the elevator in its Miramar, FL office. The data showed that employees valued mobility (i.e., not being tethered to one screen). Now, they can swiftly find flexible workspaces to fit their needs for different daily tasks and effortlessly locate their colleagues for collaboration.

Everyone has an equal voice at the table

Once operational, Southern Glazer’s employees can experience innovative features, such as our patented Neat Symmetry feature and unique auto-framing, that enhance meeting equity between individuals in a room and their remote colleagues or others.

Everyone got familiar with Zoom and felt connected during the pandemic when we were each at home on our computer screens. When people started returning to the office, adding Neat and Symmetry to the mix helped us seamlessly maintain that feel, even though we may have twelve people in a room while others are working remotely.

Greg Skrobar, Senior Director of Workplace Services, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Before, our rooms couldn’t leverage video in the same way. Now, it’s on by default. So, from room to room, site to site, we’re seeing people collaborate on Neat and Zoom, and everyone’s got an equal voice at the table. Neat Symmetry allows for a more fluid conversation and has been a game-changer for us.

Luis Arenas, Manager of the Video Collaboration Platform, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

From pre-pandemic to post-pandemic, whether Southern Glazer’s corporate head office communicates with its divisions or one division communicates with another, one thing’s for sure: in-office and remote employees feel much closer on Neat and Zoom than before, helping to strengthen the company’s culture.

As for other leading-edge features, in-office employees can use Neat Boundary in open areas and glass-walled meeting rooms to prevent the camera from capturing anyone walking past. 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 outside distractions don’t disturb anyone’s meetings.

Flexibility to meet anywhere you like

Greg’s favorite piece of Neat kit is our aforementioned all-in-one 65-inch touchscreen device, Neat Board. He likes “the Board,” as he describes it, because of its Zoom integration capabilities. Greg loves the flexibility you get with Neat Board, allowing Southern Glazer’s employees to create a meeting space anywhere they like. He also loves its digital whiteboarding capabilities.

Neat Board enables anyone to start a digital whiteboard. It’s transformative and delivers great value because you’ve got a storyboard to follow. If anyone has an idea, they can quickly draw and share it. Plus, they can save it and pick it up later on. It’s great!

Greg Skrobar, Senior Director of Workplace Services, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

In addition to Neat Board, Luis mentioned they are excited about deploying our new, slightly smaller yet highly adaptable all-in-one touchscreen device, Neat Board 50, on its rolling floor stand. Like its larger counterpart, employees can move it around various open areas at the company for impromptu meetings or social gatherings and activate auto framing and Neat Boundary to create a virtually enclosed meeting space.

Besides the boards, Luis loves our Neat Center companion device. He loves the camera but particularly adores the additional microphones. Southern Glazer’s wall-mounted Pro device microphones do a fantastic job. However, adding a Neat Center on or above the table will enhance the sound for anyone sitting at the far end of the company’s larger 25 to 30-foot-long meeting rooms.

Greg, Luis, and their team are also considering using external audio with Neat Center. This will enable them to use Neat as the anchoring device in some of its rooms beyond the 25 to 30-foot range while ensuring everyone hears everything clearly. 

We have some even bigger spaces of about 30 to 40 feet, where we think Neat Center will be a great fit with some of our off-board audio.

Luis Arenas, Manager of the Video Collaboration Platform, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

One touch to join, one to share content

In one of Southern Glazer’s locations that had yet to deploy Neat and Zoom, Luis recalls the company’s CIO, Ann Dozier, asking for a better solution: “She said, ‘Figure out how to get it done faster.’ And Thanks to Neat, we, as a team, got it done.” For Southern Glazer’s, choosing Neat devices with Zoom Rooms has meant cutting down 40 minutes to two touches: One touch to join and one to wirelessly share content.

Neat makes the physical installation of devices go from weeks to hours. Our teams can deploy Zoom, powered by Neat, in one day. That, for us, is huge.

Luis Arenas, Manager of Video Conferencing and Collaboration, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Historically, video conferencing has been big, ugly, and complex. But with Neat, it’s the complete opposite. It’s streamlined, incredibly simple, and intuitive to use. Neat truly knocks it out of the park.

Greg Skrobar, Senior Director of Workplace Services, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits 

As previously mentioned, establishing a Zoom Room pre-Neat was challenging, yet Greg and Luis recently set up 12 rooms in eight days. They had no concerns about whether they could get it done or if it would all work or appear online through Neat Pulse. Since discovering Neat, their team has established at least 100 Neat with Zoom Rooms in the past 12 to 14 months, with a further 80 rooms planned for 2024.

It’s been 18 months since we chose Neat. Looking back, I can honestly say we picked the right hardware partner to use with Zoom. We’re really starting to see the value and benefits of deploying Neat, especially the simplicity and ease of deployment. It’s been a huge hit with everyone here.

Greg Skrobar, Senior Director of Workplace Services, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

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