Ricoh Australia has been working alongside CHU to enhance and expand its company-wide video collaboration capabilities.

Since opening its doors 44 years ago, CHU has grown its expertise in insurance underwriting. With policies covering almost a million properties, the company's 240 staff service clients nationwide.

CHU has a comprehensive portfolio of products, including landlord insurance, contents insurance, and residential and commercial strata insurance. The company also offers a 24/7 claims and emergency assistance service.

With staff around Australia, CHU relies heavily on video conferencing tools to support effective collaboration. These resources became particularly important during the protracted COVID lockdowns when many staff were required to work from home. 

Paul Sassella, Head of IT at CHU, says: "Unfortunately, our existing Windows-based Logitech platform was not providing the level of support that we required." 

"Staff found it difficult to operate without IT support and connecting with remote workers was unreliable."

As staff began returning to offices in mid-2022, a decision was taken to find a replacement for the company's existing video collaboration platform. Several options were evaluated to determine the most effective fit for the organisation.

Sassella says that, after conducting a review, a decision was taken to deploy a solution offered by Ricoh. This involved creating Microsoft Teams Rooms equipped with hardware provided by Yealink in each company office. 

"Ricoh conducted an assessment of each meeting room to determine the best configuration of microphones, speakers, and video screens," says Sassella. 

"They then undertook the deployment before handing over the completed infrastructure. The level of support they provided to us was exceptional." 

As a result of the successful deployment of the new Teams Rooms, CHU is now enjoying an easy-to-use, integrated video conferencing platform that streamlines staff collaboration, improves productivity, and reduces the need for business travel.  

The new Teams rooms remove the complexity of establishing multi-party video collaboration sessions. A standard and intuitive user interface allows calls to be established quickly without needing in-depth knowledge of the technology. 

"We no longer need to have support from our IT team to get collaboration sessions up and running. Everything just works!" says Sasella.

With a flexible hybrid working model now a permanent strategy for CHU, the new Teams rooms infrastructure allows those working from home to participate in collaboration sessions as easily as their office-based colleagues. 

"It has made it much easier for staff to collaborate which helps to boost both efficiency and productivity," adds Sassella.

The collaboration platform has been integrated with Microsoft Outlook to book meeting rooms easily. This avoids double-ups and ensures staff can access workday collaboration tools.

Sassella says CHU will deploy additional Teams Rooms across its office network next year. As well as improving staff availability, this will allow the company to reduce the required business travel further.

"Thanks to Ricoh, we now have a scalable, reliable, and easy-to-use collaboration platform in place," says Sasella.  

"At the end of the day, it just works, and that is what is most important for us."