The Challenge
Apex Tool Group (ATG) is one of the largest manufacturers of professional hand and power tools in the world, serving the industrial, vehicle service and assembly, aerospace, electronics, construction, and DIY markets. With a portfolio of innovative brands and tools that embody quality, innovation, and value, their commitment to creating a top-notch training and customer experience center at their Apex, North Carolina location comes as no surprise.
“ATG is focused on productivity and meaningful innovation, powered by a high-performance workforce delivering continuous improvement, efficiency, and value to our customers and end-users. Creating reliable and productive workspaces and training facilities enables us to live our core values,” said Stephen Marino Director, IT, Global Infrastructure for Apex Tool Group.
The ATG Executive Training Room serves an important role for the business, the large space has a range of uses from employee training to global executive meetings and quarterly business reviews. ATG uses the training center to showcase products and offerings in a learning and hands-on environment with clients. After a few months of use, ATG found that their existing audiovisual system was not living up to their expectations for in-room or remote user experiences. Challenges included poor audio quality, a control system that was hard to operate, and displays that were not large enough for all viewers in the room to see the on-screen content. Seeking a better audiovisual system design, ATG turned to the expert team at Avidex.
The Solution
A tight timeline required quick collaboration between the Avidex and ATG teams. Avidex introduced a custom solution that ensured a high-quality yet user-friendly and reliable experience. At the heart of this improved experience is the new Crestron touch panel control system with a custom-designed “easy-button” style user-interface to quickly launch Teams or Webex meetings with ease. The control processor is programmed with pre-configured audio and video settings providing a stress-free and consistent meeting experience for all users. The integrated Mersive Solstice Pod drives meeting productivity through wireless screen sharing and flexible collaboration features such as room calendar integration, digital signage playback, centralized monitoring and management, and analytics. The Avidex team also optimized the audio system to improve clarity and quality for both in-room and remote participants. The enhanced audio system now includes a Biamp Tesira Forte DSP for proper audio processing of 6 Crestron speakers, 8 boundary microphones, and several Shure wireless/lapel microphones. Much of the room hardware is discretely housed in a new podium rack system for easy serviceability and access.
To better accommodate the 50-foot room size, two existing room displays were replaced with an impressive 208” Dalite fixed wall screen and ultra-bright 12,000 lumen Panasonic laser projector. Now every viewer can comfortably see on-screen content from anywhere in the room.
“No matter where you are sitting in the room now, you have a massive screen in front of you and there’s not a bad seat in the house. You can easily see financial data on Excel worksheets or content on presentations with no issue. That problem has been resolved and it was definitely the way to go,” said Marino.
While upgrading the room, Avidex also repurposed and recommissioned two existing 90” displays for digital signage and collaboration outside the training room for added value.
The Results
In keeping with Apex Tool Group’s commitment to innovation and excellence, their newly “re-tooled” training center is helping company associates stay connected and productive across the globe by creating an inspirational training experience with measurable impact. “The original system design had both audio and visual challenges; we went from an overall satisfaction score of around 60% to at least 95% upon implementation and first use. Our associates and executives have been very pleased with the outcome. The quality of the audio and simplicity in the ability to quickly start a meeting has dramatically improved,” said Marino “The Avidex team did an excellent job, under the pressure of a tight timeline for implementation, to deliver an outcome that was meaningful for us.”
“It was very important to us, when selecting an integrator, to find the right partner with the AV industry experience and expertise to take this project on and get it done correctly. We certainly found that with Avidex. We were concerned with how to solve our challenges, but it became very clear in a few meetings with the Avidex team that we now had the right folks to help us,” adds Marino “So much so that we have asked Avidex to look at some of our other spaces, like our corporate headquarters, and a key manufacturing facility in Lexington, South Carolina to see how we can standardize and enhance our meeting and training experience for associates across the company.”
“The whole process of working with Avidex was refreshing. With a large team, everyone excels very well at what they do and their specific roles. Having a dedicated project manager, able to manage the work and set milestones, allows the design engineers and technicians to focus on the technology, infrastructure, and implementation to make sure everything gets done correctly. I appreciate that; it's good to work with a partner that is experienced and organized in that way,” said Marino.
Looking Ahead
The success of their improved training center has spotlighted the need for consistency across ATG’s locations around the globe.
“As our associates roam from site to site, or room to room, we understand the importance of having a level of simplicity and consistency,” said Marino. “We’d like to have a common look and feel across the different conference rooms, standardizing on the technology, so that whether they're walking into a conference room in one of our European facilities, Asia, or the US that they all share the same user-friendly experience. We feel that Avidex is the integrator to help us get there. Having a partner with experience in the AV industry, like Avidex that we can turn to, is immensely helpful.”
