Panasonic creates an innovative visual communication and collaboration space at AIB Group

The installation of about two hundred digital signage and video wall screens are part of this technological project, whose objective has been to improve communication and collaboration between the five hundred employees who work in the new offices of this bank in Dublin.

With workers in Ireland, United Kingdom and United States, the commercial bank of Ireland Allied Irish Bank, better known as AIB Group, faced a common problem in many large corporations: How to give your staff the ability to communicate more efficiently across offices and borders.

Precisely when it was time to move more than five hundred helpdesk employees to one of the seven new buildings located in Central Park, a 10 Km. South of Dublin city center, The company's managers saw the opportunity to start from scratch and design a plan that adapted to the needs of the staff and improved internal communication..

“Collaboration is at the heart of the way we work at AIB,” explains Muiris O’Sullivan., project manager of this banking entity-. We wanted this to be efficient, both at the local level, using audiovisual technology within the office, as remotely through videoconferences”.

Many of the equipment installed in the company's new building in Central Park are part of the entity's technical and digital department., “so they had experience with the types of technologies available and knew what would work best”, O'Sullivan points out.

Seven floors and two hundred digital screens

For this project, AIB has installed about two hundred professional screens and two Panasonic on its seven floors, which has designed and integrated McKeon Group, The application of the technological plan is already being considered in three other spaces of the company, which will bring the total number of screens to more than five hundred.

A Central Park, each floor has a minimum of four meeting rooms. Depending on your size, each one has one or two touch screens 55 or 75” from Panasonic. Besides, Ten rest spaces have been created on each floor, which mostly have 43” touch screens.

“The feedback we have received so far from our workers has been very positive regarding the ability to actually use technology and the advantages it offers them through collaboration in work spaces”, subraya Muiris O’Sullivan.

Digital signage technology predominates throughout the building, with the installation of 54 Professional Full HD displays of the Panasonic model TH-43LFE8E, located both in the common areas, like in the company restaurant, like in the offices.

This is what this manager points out: “When we went to Central Park we wanted to improve the staff experience in the workplace.”. To achieve this, we consider a connected digital signage solution., that allowed local or corporate messages to be transmitted to staff, thus avoiding sending mass emails about an event, information of interest, etc.”

Change in work culture

One of the main changes at the audiovisual level that has modified and improved AIB's work style has been the incorporation of several banks for multimedia devices on each of the six office floors., each of which has a touch screen 43 inches.

“Media benches provide a space for teams to hold informal meetings.”. The idea is that there are several spaces on each floor where people can meet., without occupying traditional meeting rooms - points out O'Sullivan -. We still do not have information about the use of the different facilities, but talking to the staff they have given us very good reactions to this technology and, definitely, “The use of video conferencing has been really impressive”.

A video wall is also used in the reception, made up of nine screens, to show . corporate brand content, in addition to being used to inform internal presentations and CEO announcements.

Thomas McEoin, director general de McKeon Group, explains that “AIB wanted us to offer them a flexible workspace so that their staff could work together.”, both informally and formally. The number of rest spaces is very large. The installation of Barco ClickShare allows staff to use any device to display content on screen, while with annotation software, “Teams collaborate to make changes to said content”.

This project “has been enormously important for the bank, and the AV solution was always going to be key to its success - O'Sullivan emphasizes -. It is the first time in a long time that we inaugurate a new building of this size, so being surrounded by people with a high level of professionalism and experience made the work enormously easier.. We wanted a technological brand of world prestige and for reliability to be the key element of the technology., but we also had to ensure ease of use. “Panasonic was the most natural choice”.

The launch of this technological project in the Central Park building, “will serve as a model for the implementation of audiovisual systems at the headquarters”, concludes this director.

Regarding the audiovisual and projection systems installed, The display carried out corresponds to the TH-43LFE8 and TH-43LFE8 screen models. (con 58 y 60 units, respectively); TH-49LFV8 (9 systems); TH-55LFE8E-IR (54 units); TH-75BQE1 (10 units); TH-55LFE8 (6 units), along with two projectors of the PT-RZ970 model, with a power of 10.000 lumens each.