FIRST TECHNOLOGY SCORES A FIRST FOR SA HOME LOANS
To ensure their headquarters enjoy the latest and best in audio-visual solutions they vetted various service providers. First Technology came up trumps for their “professionalism, expertise, experienced technicians and long standing relationship with SA Home Loans”.
That’s according to Kovilan Muthumanikam, Team Leader of Telephony Application at SA Home Loans. “André van Heerden, First Technology’s Head of Multimedia Solutions, met with us, and immediately understood our requirements. He then designed, and presented us, a detailed solution that indeed met the needs of SA Home Loans.”
First Technology is one of South Africa’s leading single-source providers of IT products and services. For this project André and his team designed and installed AV solutions for the Executive Boardroom, a Learning Centre, and two AV Rooms that can be joined to form one large AV room. They also installed projectors in two smaller meeting rooms and in an office area.
SA Home Loans’ requirements included relocation of their current equipment into smaller meeting rooms within the office areas, and the installation of 15 LCD screens for digital signage purposes, in the canteen and other areas of the headquarters. André and his team also did the installation of the Contact Centre and of the IT monitoring screens, including the fitment of terminal PC racks. Crestron and Kramer products were used for the control systems, scalers and switching gear. Elite Screen’s Evanesce motorised screens with ceiling recess boxes were installed, as were ceiling-mounted NEC projectors. The training room boasts a full audio system with wireless microphones (headset and lapel) for presentation purposes. The digital signage system is driven by NAVORI software, and all the rooms have analogue and digital inputs to accommodate legacy and HDMI. One of the challenges André and his team faced was the dimensions of the Executive Boardroom, which has low-hanging light fittings. His team worked around this by fitting a short throw projector and a very large LED display screen on the wall.
Kovilan was impressed with the standard of work: “During implementation scope creeps were attended to without hesitation. Technical expertise such as theirs is rare these days, and all work was carried out very carefully and tidily; they were meticulous.” Kovilan was also delighted with the follow-up work as First Technology was frequently on site after the December 2013 implementation to ensure a smooth user experience. Training was executed for each installation on both technical and user levels, and manuals were provided and presented in a simple yet thorough format. Kovilan wasn’t the only one happy with First Technology’s efforts, he notes: “User feedback has been an unqualified approval!”André was thrilled about the success of the job: “We are very honoured to have been part of such a big and successful project - the guys from SA Home Loans (Brent, Renil and Kovilan) are absolutely great to work with, and they gave us their full support whenever we asked for it. You want to walk the extra mile for clients like this.”