St John Ambulance Victoria partners with Ricoh to upgrade the meeting room technology in its new HQ
Products and Services
Microsoft Teams Rooms with Yealink Video Conference Solution
Key Benefits:
Improved meeting experiences for all participants
- Easier to establish two-way video connections with other locations and readily share digital presentations.
- Staff and volunteers no longer need support from the IT team to configure equipment or establish connections.
- Video panels at the entrance to each meeting room displaying the current status of the room and allowing people to make future bookings.
We know that, with Ricoh as a technology partner, we can continue to expand our meeting and collaboration capabilities as our requirements grow. The value that this project has delivered to our organisation has been profound.
Established more than 138 years ago, St John Ambulance Victoria provides support to people throughout Victoria. With 700 employees and 1,200 volunteers, the organisation delivers medical, training, and transport services.
Challenges
With staff dispersed across Victoria and a large group of dedicated volunteers, St John Ambulance Victoria relies heavily on a range of regular meetings to keep everything on track. With an increasing need for people to join meetings digitally, the organisation realised there was a need to upgrade the facilities in each of its meeting rooms.
When a decision was taken in 2022 to shift the organisation’s headquarters into a new building in Melbourne, it was seen as a perfect opportunity to replace legacy meeting room equipment with a solution more appropriate for an increasingly digital world.
Indeed, the equipment that the organisation had in its meeting rooms was no longer providing the level of capability and support that participants were requiring. Whether people are presenting to others in the same room or connecting with participants in multiple remote locations, the organisation needed a solution that was intuitive to use and always reliable.
The Solution
Rather than putting the same equipment into each meeting room, Ricoh carefully assessed the size and layout before recommending a suitable hardware configuration for each individual room. As a result, Ricoh has replaced the legacy telephone network with certified Microsoft Teams Rooms in eight rooms, all installed with Yealink video and audio hardware. The solution is also integrated with Microsoft Outlook to make booking meeting rooms easier.
Benefits
- Easy to establish multi-location meetings
The new Microsoft Teams-equipped meeting rooms have removed the complexity that had traditionally been a feature of many meetings at St John Ambulance Victoria. Participants can now quickly establish two-way video connections with other locations and readily share digital presentations. The standard interface provided by the Yealink tablets makes meeting management easy. - Meeting room status panels
As part of the upgrade, Ricoh also deployed video panels at the entrance to each meeting room. These display the current status of the room and also allow people to make future bookings and, as a result, the management of meeting rooms is now much more streamlined. This also avoids double bookings or people being disturbed while working.
