‘We hear you,’ AND our dealerships
Ken Garff has built their brand on the concept of “We hear you,” - a slogan based on the ideals of stronger customer transparency and trust. With limited video conferencing - previously done via Apple FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and basic Skype, the automotive group had limitations on how much their own dealerships could hear each other. Trainings and meetings were accomplished through travel - which was both expensive and time consuming for the traveler.
“We wanted to make the company able to feel a little smaller and a little more connected bring everybody a little closer together without breaking the bank and flying people around,” says Randy Riches, Ken Garff’s Director of Communications, “It doesn’t matter if you’re coming or going, you’re going to lose a day if you’re traveling to another state.”
To solve this problem, Riches turned to VLCM.
After previously working with VLCM on a successful Office 365 roll out, and having a positive experience with a Crestron Mercury all-in-one tabletop conferencing unit in their former corporate office, Riches says that “working with VLCM was an obvious choice to build the new solutions for our new building.”
Connecting a nationwide company
The automotive industry as a general rule runs very lean on IT and communication. While Ken Garff wouldn’t settle for the cheapest solution, they also didn’t want to break the bank. Knowing this, the VLCM’s Communication Technologies team set out to outfit Ken Garff’s seven meeting rooms with A/V and conferencing technology that would get the job done effectively - without all the bells and whistles.
“The challenge at Ken Garff was that they had AV needs in different types of rooms varying from training rooms, board rooms, small and medium size conference room and executive offices,” explains Paul James of VLCM’s Communication Technologies team. “We were tasked with coming up with solutions for each of the different type rooms that was easy for the user to use while providing a quality and consistent experience for both local and remote users. To do this we turned to Crestron and other partners as we designed solutions for each individual room. With these partners we were able to customize a solution for each room type that met both the functional and pricing needs for the customer.”
Game plan for the smaller conference rooms
For the smaller conference rooms, VLCM installed Crestron Mercury units - the only UC and A/V all-in-one tabletop solution that supports and web collaboration application. Alex Hoyt from VLCM’s Communication Technologies team said, “We often turn to Crestron Mercury because it enables people to work together regardless of location or conferencing application. You can present, call, and collaborate seamlessly across locations, solving a big pain point for Ken Garff.”
Crestron Mercury units also boast crystal-clear microphone and speaker quality, onscreen room availability and meeting details, and has Bluetooth capabilities so you can pair the audio with your mobile phone. It is priced to meet tight huddle room budgets, and is securely connected to the network for cloud-based provisioning and management.
Game plan for the large conference rooms
“With more seats and a larger space, the large conference rooms at Ken Garff were outfitted with Shure tabletop microphones, large LG TVs, Crestron ceiling speakers, Crestron equipment to manage the room. Room scheduling was also incorporated to allow users to schedule rooms either from their Office 365 calendar or from the room scheduler itself.” says James.
“Our team goal was to give them tools that would allow remote locations to communicate and feel part of the bigger organization.”
Bringing the team together
Since partnering with VLCM on this project, Ken Garff has been able to save on travel and collaborate more with their 54 locations than they ever had before.
“One great moment when we knew this would have a tremendous impact on our business was when we needed to connect the Garff family for a meeting when several of the members were out of town,” recalls Riches,
“As people were connecting to the conference, you could see faces popping up on the screen and they were like, ‘Oh! We can see everyone here!.’ When you’re able to bring everyone together and just see the smiles on everyone’s faces - that was a big deal for us. We can talk about saving money on plane tickets all day, but the user smiles really make this special for us.”
“If you’re looking for a true all-in-one communication vendor, I would encourage anybody to see what VLCM can do for them.”
“As for VLCM, we are delighted to work with companies like Ken Garff,” says VLCM General Manager Mike Linton. We are adding greater expertise and bringing in more software and hardware vendors to effectively respond to our customer’s needs. It’s our goal to Get IT Right for every one of our customers, and we are thankful to have worked with such a great Utah company like Ken Garff.”
