ESSENTIAL HABITECH

from Essential Install April 2022

TOGETHER FOR CINEMA

RESIMERCIAL: MAKE IT MEANINGFUL!

Capitalise on the surging demand for high quality VC experiences in postCOVID WFH spaces

Designed for 360° comms, Wyrestorm’s Apollo conference hubs offer crystal-clear audio and up to 4K video passthrough in all workplace scenarios

Habitech can help you to profit from the boom in homeworking with peerless product and project support says Technical Sales Manager John Perry…

Marketeers love to throw words together to sell a new concept. ‘Infoedutainment’ is a typically ghastly example. A similar ‘portmanteau’ creation is the bonding of residential and commercial into the cringeworthy ‘resimercial’. But even though you may wince at the word, there’s never been a better time to embrace the idea. Because the surging demand for high quality Video Conferencing (VC) experiences in soaring numbers of post-Covid ‘Work From Home’ (WFH) spaces amounts to a meaningful new buying signal for your business.

And given the overwhelming consensus online, it’s an opportunity you can’t afford to ignore. Type ‘homeworking’ into Google and you’ll discover a welter of studies confirming the advent of a ‘new normal’, in which WFH is not only accepted in the work schedule, it’s positively encouraged. One from last year by the ONS found that 85% of new homeworkers favoured a hybrid work environment split between home and office. Another by the OECD revealed that 63% of UK employers intended to introduce or expand hybrid working, with 45% planning to enable total homeworking. Yet another survey by ACAS found that 55% of employers expected the numbers of WFH staff to increase substantially, while a Yahoo Finance study reported that a whopping 78% of senior managers believe remote working to be the future of their companies. All this represents a seismic shift in work/life attitudes post-COVID, underpinned by the view that homeworking can yield increased productivity and employee wellbeing, and more fundamentally by easy, inexpensive access to the technology that makes it all possible.

STEP ABOARD THE VC ROCKET SHIP!

If anyone is entitled to see a silver lining to the pandemic cloud, it’s Zoom’s Eric Yuan. During 2020, Zoom app downloads saw a 30x increase to 485 million and its business customer base grew by over 470%. In the last year Zoom software has recorded over 3.3 trillion annual meeting minutes, and 45 billion minutes of webinars. In fact, the platform is now so mainstream that it’s treated as a verb - ‘to Zoom’ - confirming the elevated status of video conferencing at the heart of today’s business and social comms. Sharing the VC starlight, Microsoft Teams added 95 million users in 2020 alone, helping to boost its customer base to somewhere near 150 million. No wonder a survey by management app builder TeamStage found that 75% of CEOs now consider audioonly conferences to be a thing of the past.

ADD IT TO THE PLAYBOOK

In the face of this incontrovertible evidence, it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Zoom and Teams have transformed the viability of remote working. But these platforms are just part of the new workspace picture. Just like Netflix or any cloud-based service, they rely

on a wider ecosystem of supporting products for success. In this respect, home workspace design is no different from the internetconnected home entertainment systems you install every day. For instance, each discipline needs fast and stable web access, powerful Wi-Fi networks and heightened internet security to be truly productive. Most of all, they need the highest performing, most reliable and userfriendly hardware support to deliver the best customer experiences, as per page one of the CI playbook. So, when a rapidly expanding cohort of Zoom-tethered homeworkers demands the best WFH experiences, your skillset is ideally placed to provide it, especially with Habitech on your team.

This is because our Pro division is ready to support any and every workspace project end-to-end with the best products, expertise, training, demonstrations and stocking levels. As the design energy shifts between office and home, we’ll work with you to deliver optimum performance at any scale, from WFH to huddle spaces, to conference/boardrooms, to large presentation spaces. When your network brings you opportunities to pitch for commercial projects or when a home cinema customer invites you to transform the workspace in an adjacent room, Habitech will be with you all the way through planning, design, installation, and commissioning. It’s in our value-added DNA.

AT YOUR SIDE

We’re backing our peerless workspace product line-up with hands-on training and no fewer than three demonstration spaces. For project planning and specification, we’re ready to contribute over thirty years of experience in microphone, sound reinforcement and video systems design, supported by CAD services such as Ease and Visio. What’s more, we’ll guarantee the integrity of internet access via unbreakable Ruckus Wi-Fi and WatchGuard security. Whatever the scale and sophistication of your workspace project, we’ll help you deliver the highest performance to your client, end-to-end.

OUR PRODUCT PROMISE

Choose from Yamaha Commercial Audio’s vast array of proven speakerphones, huddle systems, speakers, mics, amps, processors, switches and complete Dante-enabled room solutions; Sennheiser’s innovative wireless mic and conference systems; Vaddio’s excellent conference cameras and mics, and Wyrestorm’s ultra-reliable cameras, mics, speakerphones and Network HD streaming architecture. Together we’ll make sure that your system design fits the application and budget perfectly. But you don’t have to take our word for it.

Yamaha’s compact YVC-200 USB and Bluetooth speakerphone connects with PC or Mac, smartphone or tablet

KOHLER MIRA CASE STUDY

Late last year we helped Michael Neale of Candor Electrical Ltd transform a large 30m x 20m presentation area at Kohler Mira, Cheltenham with high performance VC and background sound. We’d worked together on cinema projects, but this was his company’s first large commercial venture with Habitech as a partner. Mira had used VC and video wall tech before but weren’t happy with the performance. As Michael says, “they didn’t need it and it wasn’t on their radar, but I presented the idea to them, and they liked it.” So, we invited Michael down to Basingstoke for a demonstration of all the recommended options, including, for the background sound, Sonance PS-P63 pendants and Yamaha DSP/control/amplification, and for the VC, a Sennheiser ‘Team Connect’ Ceiling Array mic, ‘Speechline’ wireless mics for the presenters, a Vaddio AV bridge/RoboShot camera and Yamaha VXL column loudspeakers.

Michael, PJE and Mira are delighted with the results. Says Michael: “I found the visit to Habitech extremely useful and the team’s product knowledge invaluable in specifying the right products for the job from all the options available. “And with the help of a little training and on-site backup, the systems proved easy to install and set-up”.

Offering simultaneous IP (H.264) and uncompressed USB 3.0 streaming, Vaddio’s RoboSHOT VC cameras are ideal for spaces requiring a wide angle of view

MAKE IT MEANINGFUL!

Our ambition is to help resi integrators like you deliver similar performance quality and ease of use with similar efficiency to the new legions of home workers within today’s more flexible hybrid workplace scenarios. Whether working from home or hotdesking from the office, they’re demanding mirrored VC and AV performance way beyond the PC as part of the post-Covid contract. It’s a lucrative new gateway for your skills and enterprise, and with our powerful product lines, advice, design and technical assistance, we’ll help you to profit from the opportunities. So, whenever residential meets commercial, you’ll know who to call.