Collaboration technologies have become more important than ever over the past few years as a way for organisations to stay connected. As teams have adapted first to remote working, and then to hybrid, video in particular has become crucial for working effectively together.

For many organisations, including Maersk, being able to offer consistent, high-quality communication to customers – as well as between employees at multiple sites – is critical to business. This means that getting the right tools – both software and hardware – in place to provide effective collaboration has been key and will continue to be as hybrid working cements itself as the norm.

The need for unified collaboration
Maersk is an integrated container logistics company, with over 95,000 employees across more than 130 countries. With such a dispersed workforce, smooth communication between our employees, no matter where they are, is critical to driving the best services for our customers.

With the move towards remote and hybrid working, collaboration is ever increasingly taking place remotely. This has made it clear that video conferencing has become an important way to support continued lifelike face-to-face communication going forwards – whether between Maersk’s office workers and homeworkers or even between vessels and terminals.

With this in mind, Maersk was looking to update its meeting room technology, and find solutions that were both high quality and low cost, as well as being intuitive for employees to use and easy to deploy globally.

Ensuring full integration for a consistent experience
Maersk had already adopted Microsoft Teams in early 2019, but the existing video conferencing solutions being used weren’t fully integrated. In addition, meeting rooms had multiple solutions that were difficult to use, which deterred employees from using them.

When looking for a new solution, Maersk opted for Logitech’s video conferencing systems, including Logitech Rally and MeetUp, as they provided a complete solution at a competitive price point, whilst being fully native to Microsoft Teams. With its modular set-up, Rally proved ideal for Maersk’s medium and large meeting rooms, as it could be scaled up or down according to room requirements.

Ease of use for employees in the meeting rooms was also an important factor to consider, so Maersk installed the Logitech Tap Cat5E user interface into rooms, which allows users to join meetings with one touch and provide a frictionless and familiar Teams experience. With a single Cat5E cable – which delivers both power and data – being used from display to the table in a meeting room, Maersk has greater flexibility around where to install each Tap. In fact, a device can be located up to 40 metres from the meeting room computer, and reduce clutter under tables.

With many hybrid teams working together, there also needed to be a focus on ensuring the quality of the meeting experience was equal – regardless of whether participants are in the room or at home. To support this, Maersk also installed Logitech Scribe, an intelligent AI-powered whiteboard camera. Making an analogue collaboration tool digital, Scribe helps level the power balance in hybrid meetings, ensuring remote participants feel fully included.

Finally, to keep meeting rooms operating efficiently and ensure conferencing systems are up to date, Maersk also took advantage of Logitech’s Sync device management software. Sync allows us to monitor the health of our systems, flagging issues before they become a problem and allowing us to remotely push firmware updates, ensuring our investment into our systems is maximised. And as Sync is cloud-based, updates aren’t delayed by IT teams needing to be physically in the office.

Reaping the benefits
To date, Maersk has rolled out Logitech’s solutions with Microsoft Teams in 400 meeting rooms. The technology has been well adopted by users who love collaborating in the new spaces, who are also being well supported for flexible working. With the video-enabled rooms, hybrid and flexible working patterns are easier for employees to embrace, and there is one familiar, easy-to-use and unified solution that everyone at Maersk recognises and engages with.

As a result, it’s been possible to keep up the face-to-face communication that has always been highly valued at Maersk – regardless of where teams and customers are based.

Investment into video collaboration has been put firmly on the agenda for organisations, particularly those in IT and technology roles. In order to keep teams collaborating effectively, and to maximise the lifetime value of systems, considering options that are easy to use whilst offering both quality and value for money is key. In addition, thinking about other tools like a virtual whiteboard camera helps to support workers to work productively and stay engaged – no matter where they are based.

Nick Scott is head of productive and collaboration at Maersk.