News Flash

Uniforms supplier reaps benefits of Polycom Telepresence

12 Feb '10

5 min read

Once UniFirst selected Polycom, the company wasted no time in implementing its comprehensive visual communications network. The team went live with 75 Polycom HDX 7000 telepresence systems at each of its plant locations across the U.S. and Canada within the span of just one month. They also use the Polycom RMX 2000 real-time media conference platform to support multisite calls and Polycom's Converged Management Application (CMA) 4000 to centrally manage the video collaboration network.

A Polycom RSS 2000 provides on-demand recording, streaming, and archiving of UniFirst training sessions. UniFirst also plans to expand video collaboration to additional UniFirst facilities and leverage the Polycom CMA Desktop video software client to deliver leadership training on a more one-on-one basis.

Brian Doiron, UniFirst senior IT manager for UniFirst Network and Computing Services, said the video network is easy to manage from an IT perspective and UniFirst employees have rapidly adopted the technology with very little training required.

"Because the visual communication solution is integrated with our Lotus Notes scheduling system, we can easily schedule and manage video conferences," said Doiron. "Our employees simply schedule meetings in Lotus Notes as they have in the past, and all they need to do is designate the meeting as a video meeting in Lotus Notes. Everything else is handled automatically. This capability has encouraged the rapid adoption of our video conferencing systems with very little support required on the part of IT."

From the network management perspective, Doiron said, "The CMA has made managing and upgrading our Polycom HDX endpoints a simple task. With the CMA, we're able to manage the amount of bandwidth that the HDX endpoints use for each meeting. It also allows us to schedule upgrades of our HDX endpoints off hours, automatically reducing downtime and staff."

UniFirst's O'Leary noted that employees at all levels of UniFirst are finding uses for video collaboration beyond training. "We've had a number of regional vice presidents use video for meetings where they discuss things like budget issues, operations, or sales with their managers or supervisors. We're even seeing recruitment interviews now being done using video. We're definitely finding additional ways to maximize the ROI of the network."

With the help of Topsfield, Mass.-based integrator Totalcom Solutions, UniFirst has also installed a customized training studio at their Wilmington headquarters to further enhance their capabilities to deliver corporate training classes. "Right now, about 75 percent of our training is delivered in a traditional classroom setting, but within 18 months, we expect that to switch dramatically. We'll have 75 percent of our training over video and the remaining 25 percent in person," said O'Leary.

UniFirst Corporation

More UniFirst Corporation News... More Information Technology News - United States Of America...