“It’s a wireless presentation tool that requires zero IT interaction after the program is deployed.”

About Spartan Motors

In 1975, a small group of automotive engineers who had just lost their jobs banded together to create Spartan Motors. Within a few months, they had created their first fire truck cab and chassis. Today, they are one of the world’s leading manufacturers of chassis and aftermarket parts for emergency-response, recreational vehicle (RV), defense and specialty vehicles.

Industry

Automotive

Company Count

3500

Problems:

Guests with atypical laptops had difficulty connecting their devices to the screen and had to call IT to help them out.

Solution:

Deploying Ubiq in the Spartan conference rooms allowed both internal and guest users to connect their laptops to the projector instantly.

Result:

Since 2015, every presentation in a Ubiq-enabled conference room has been delivered through the Ubiq Hive.

Prior to switching to Ubiq, Spartan Motors used cables in their conference rooms, and like all companies that rely on cables in the BYOD era, they encountered connectivity problems on a regular basis. “Not all laptops have the same connectors,” explains Bryan Harris, a Chief Engineer at Spartan. “The most common problem was trying to find the right connection, the right cable, and the right setting on the TV. So for people who had non-typical laptops or people that didn’t come in everyday and didn’t know what settings to use, that’s where we’d have some down time.”

All of that down time took its toll not just on the end users, but the IT department as well. “We’ve got a fairly tech-savvy group here, but no matter how well we think we know all of the equipment and combinations, there always seems to be one monitor or cable combination that’s unique. We’ve called IT many times to resolve those kinds of issues,” recalls Bryan.

As luck would have it, the first wireless solution Spartan turned to was Ubiq, and it solved all of their connectivity problems right away. “Ubiq is very reliable,” says Bryan. “You can literally show up a minute before the meeting starts and have the confidence that it’s going to connect without issue. I’d say it’s fairly bulletproof.”

In addition to its reliability, Bryan was also impressed by Ubiq’s ease of use. “It takes less than 10 seconds to connect. When we used cables, we always had to switch it back and forth between HDMI to VGA depending on who the last person to use it was. Now the TV is always configured correctly. It’s literally just a few seconds to switch on the Hive and enter a 4 digit PIN code. The signal is so strong that we can pick up the Hives on other floors, but because of the unique identifier, we don’t have to worry about someone on the second floor taking over our presentation.”

Bryan’s enthusiasm for the new device was shared by his colleagues, who embraced it immediately. “They all seem very impressed with it,” he says. “It takes just a few seconds to explain how to download the app and explain the general functions of it. The uptime is good. It’s simple to use. It makes connecting to the presentation a no-brainer so users can focus on the material and not the setup. We’ve never gone back to cables.”

Instant, seamless connectivity wasn’t the only thing about Ubiq that appealed to Spartan. “The other thing that’s kind of a bonus—we don’t do it too often—but occasionally if you’ve got two or more laptops and you connect them at the same time, you can see what one person has on their screen versus another for a better collaboration,” says Bryan. “That’s a nice function that you can’t do with cables.”

Since installing the Ubiq Hive in 2015, the device has rarely been off. “We probably use it 50 times a week. It’s always on and always connected to someone’s presentation. We haven’t thrown the wires out yet. We keep them as a back up. But we’ve never had to use them since getting Ubiq.”