Customer Stories and Enhancing Meetings with AI, Brad Hintze, Crestron

Brad Hintze, EVP Global Marketing at Crestron, shares customer stories about how Crestron enhances customer meeting room experiences.

• Examples from Puma, Fortuna Entertainment Group and Blue Water Financial Services
• Crestron's wide array of solutions cater to diverse meeting room setups from small huddle rooms to large boardrooms
• The growing significance of AI features such as transcription in meeting spaces
• The importance of superior audio quality when it comes to AI
• Developments coming in 2025, including advancements in visual AI, multi-camera systems

Thanks to Crestron, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support.

Transcript

Brad Hintze: I go into a conference room and, you know, you expect that same capability, right? And sometimes meetings like that are even more high stakes in terms of transcription and summary and all that, because you're in a brainstorming meeting or a big discussion and you're all in person. Those expectations have been set working individually, and they carry those expectations into the meeting room. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we have some customer stories from Brad Hintze, who's EVP of Global Marketing at Crestron. Brad always has a great perspective on what's going on in the space. And he took us through three customer stories and kind of what the commonalities are around their Teams journey, their requirements, and what Crestron are bringing to the table for those Teams customers.

Really great conversation. Thanks very much to Brad for taking the time and also many thanks to Crestron for being a supporter of Empowering Cloud. Really appreciate all their support. On with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Exciting one for the start of 2025. We're going to get into some of the Crestron customer stories.

And, uh, I've got Brad, who's putting me to shame on the social media at the moment with his awesome shorts. Hey, Brad how're you doing? 

Brad Hintze: Hey Tom, it's great to talk to you. Yeah, we'll see if we can keep it up, you know, maybe it's a one hit wonder going on here. 

Tom Arbuthnot: No, no, I think you've been doing really well lately. It's nice to, nice to see because you're all about all over the place.

I know you've been recently with the new Experience Center and it's nice to see what's going on with you guys. 

Brad Hintze: Yeah, it is. And it's been a bit of a whirlwind. The last couple of months I've been in India and Germany and Ireland and in New York City. Uh, but I love getting out there, uh, Chicago for Ignite, uh, we saw each other face to face.

Um, so I love getting out there and, uh, and then sharing kind of those perspectives is, is always fun. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So, uh, in the prep for this, we wanted to talk about kind of what you're doing specifically for Teams customers. I think everybody in our space probably knows the Crestron Black brand, but there's quite a portfolio that relates like both directly to Teams with the MTRs and, you know, the XIO and the OneBeyond and then also around that story.

So I think you've got some customers kind of to talk about potentially. 

Brad Hintze: Yeah, it's actually, it wasn't too hard to find some pretty interesting and compelling customers. Today, we want to talk about three of them. One is a brand we all know, Huma. Um, and, uh, it's a great, a great company, as we all know, uh, Fortuna and Entertainment Group.

They're a booking group out of, um, uh, Poland. Uh, and then the last is, uh, Bluewater Financial Services, which is more of a kind of a regional financial services group. And, you know, it's, it's great to see, you know, how many customers, um, have deployed Crestron Plus MTR and the way that it's driving their business.

So. I love talking about, you know, what motivated them and, and how they're, how they're addressing the needs of their employees too. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And with, with those customers, are they kind of Teams customers and they're coming to Crestron, like they start on Teams and then they're like, what can Crestron do? Or, or are they.

Often, Crestron customers who are also going on the Teams journey because you've got a big heritage in the space, kind of the enterprise space. 

Brad Hintze: We do have a big heritage in this space, particularly first around control, and then of course, audio video distribution. And then we moved into this UC space. You know, at the same time, we're also doing things like scheduling panels, right?

And coincidentally, scheduling panels was an innovation that we worked on really closely with Microsoft. To start to solve their own internal challenges related to meeting room scheduling. And so we developed that with them 15 years ago, something along those lines. So all of that, you know, compounds to these this broad set of enterprise solutions. 

And you can see the way that these companies are, are picking and mixing and matching these solutions to, to meet their needs. And what we have found is that there are plenty of customers that knew Crestron already relied on us for boardrooms and for a lot of their other spaces. And so, you know, then they're like, well, naturally, Hey, we're already invested in Crestron.

How can we use that with Microsoft Teams? So we see a lot of that, which is, Great. And that's the reason we invested down this path, um, uh, to, to help provide more solutions for our existing customers. We do see other customers too, that are brand new to Crestron, you know, being brought in after the fact that they've chosen Teams and then great, how do we deliver this within a meeting room and then land on, on Crestron, which is something we always like as well.

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And where, like, uh, is it typically big boardroom scenario? Because I know, again, that tends to be my kind of default thinking on Crestron is like the, the 1Beyond multi camera, press, press the magic button, the blinds go, the lights go, like the, the, the, the real fancy stuff. But I, I know in recent years, the portfolios widened considerably.

Brad Hintze: Yeah, it has. And I think that, um, the Puma example, uh, certainly they had a couple of large boardrooms. They had a training room that was Crestron and that's obviously a natural place to bring Crestron in because that's such a large environment. You want to make sure that it just works and that it's a really great experience for those.

walking into that space. And so that's very natural, obviously. But then Puma also took us to many other rooms within their office. And, you know, as you can read in the case study, they were using this regional office deployment as a blueprint for future office deployments too. But by bringing Crestron in to all of the spaces too, right, taking Crestron beyond just the boardroom and the training room into the small, medium, uh, meeting spaces, You know, that was a priority for the team over at Puma because they wanted one vendor across all those spaces.

It makes it easier to manage, right? Um, there's a level of consistency for the end users, uh, you know, those walking into the space every day. If the touchscreen is the same in the boardroom as it is in the small huddle room, you know, there's a level of comfort, right? 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. Familiarity. 

Brad Hintze: Yeah. And so that was hugely valuable for, uh, the Puma team.

You know, as they were setting out there. So, you know, I think that, um, it's good to see us go beyond that, uh, kind of boardroom and add value to these other spaces. But I think as organizations are wrestling with scale and taking these, uh, you know, how do you take Teams to many more rooms. Solving that problem of, okay, what vendor can help you do that is a critical one.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. And for those listening and watching, we'll link to these three case studies in the show notes as well. So if you want to dig into the, uh, the detail of what they deploy and how they did it, there's some really good detail in them as well. 

Brad Hintze: Yeah. Yeah. We have a great team writing these case studies.

They're always great. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It's awesome to have, uh, it's, it's, it's interesting, like having customers that are prepared to, you know, Talk about these things publicly is a real testament to their, you know, kind of success of the project slash it's one of my benchmarks when I talk to a lot of vendors, it's like straight away.

It's like, can you turn up some customers I can talk to that back you guys? And that's a really good litmus test when it's, you know, big brands, especially 

Brad Hintze: well, true. And, you know, actually on the Blue Foundry one, um, I actually spoke to the CEO. Um, Uh, myself, this was, um, I think it was about 18 months ago, maybe slightly longer.

And, you know, I love talking to the end customer directly and hearing what motivated them. And it's, yeah, it's extra interesting because so often, you know, you and I, we end up speaking to the AV manager, the IT manager, right. Head of IT, VP of IT, but generally always kind of in that IT space. And once in a while we're lucky we get to talk to some of the other department heads.

But, you know, to speak with the CEO for this company, right, he deployed, he chose Crestron and he set the team out on a mission to deliver a really great experience inside of the office, right? Easy to use technology, really advanced in terms of the capabilities that they provide for their employees.

That was to get employees into the office, but also attract and retain really great talent. And, and for that to be a priority for the CEO in a really explicit way is all certainly energizing. You know, we believe that you and I, we talk about things like this. All the time, but here was a real world example of the, of the CEO that was driving a mandate related to these things.

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's interesting. I was, um, I just, as we're recording, I recorded with Irwin Lazar from Metrigy yesterday. So I think that pod will come out the week before this pod. Um, and that was one of his big three things for 25 was like this back to work mandate and making the office experience worth the commute and how, um, AV and meeting spaces is such an important part of that.

Like it can't, it can't be the same as at home because you haven't given me a reason to come in. And for the people who are hybrid, making sure that hybrid beating experience is so strong. 

Brad Hintze: Yep. That's right. Well, I think that we've all talked about this ad nauseum, that sometimes you can, uh, in some, in, in person, you're at an advantage because you're in proximity to so many colleagues, but if the room isn't kitted out properly, then you're actually at a disadvantage.

because, you know, when everybody is remote, everybody has the same representation on the screen. But if you're in the meeting room, there's two or three of you in the meeting room, you know, unless you have the right technology, you aren't represented in the same way. And so it is important, really, to lay that out there, and to just create that overall vibe.

I think, too, that some people view these return to office mandates Um, and look, they're ramping up. We've seen headlines just today, right? Trump in the U. S. was saying, Hey, government employees, remote work is not optional. Or it is something you have to come into the office and you don't have a you don't have a choice.

And I think that some people assume immediately, Oh great, we don't have to solve this hybrid work problem, but you do actually. It's actually worse and because how many businesses, even small and medium enterprises How many of them have multiple office locations that they need to collaborate with? How many of them have outside vendors and or customers that they have to meet with?

And everyone has expectations for what you can deliver. So, I think that, you know, even as the topics shift from hybrid work to return to office, and Office Mandates and you know, to, uh, to, to a larger extent, you're still going to have to address these challenges. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And going back to the, the customers, um, part of that story is not just the MTR story, but it's things like FlexPods, AirMedia.

Can you kind of talk us through some of those other solutions that form part of the portfolio? 

Brad Hintze: Uh, yeah, absolutely. So, uh, Fortuna group, um, you know, that, um, the group, they have 6, 000 employees in there. They have a huge variety of sizes in all of their meeting rooms. Within the meeting rooms, if you have MTR as the standard, right, you have Teams Room as the software standard, um, and that, that platform that goes in there, and then Flex is the standard for the engine in the hardware, then you need the right peripherals, though, for the room.

And that becomes really important. A boardroom has different AV needs than does a huddle room, for instance. And so that's why we developed a variety of products. So for instance, FEG, um, they're using, um, AirMedia for wireless presentation and conferencing. It's super easy. You walk in, you plug your laptop in with the, uh, connect adapter and immediately you're sharing content.

Um, and it's such a great experience. We, we just had a global sales leadership meeting too, and we had four or five of those adapters around the room and we would just. Um, Hey, I have a point to make, you just plug it in, right? And it was so easy to share content that way. And so they wouldn't, uh, FEG mixes AirMedia with Flex on top of that.

And then in those spaces too, where you want the ability to easily mute a call and, or you need audio at the table, FlexPods is a really great solution to distribute the audio around the room on the tabletop. So you get great audio, you're closer to it, the microphone picks you up really well, but even more importantly, that ability to adjust the volume or mute and have that in front of a variety of people, um, is super valuable and that was something that they found was very important as well. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, being able to place those mics closer to the speakers, like there's some amazing mic technology with those ceiling tiles and beamforming on the, on the, uh, on the bars, but you can't get over the physics of closer is better and that gives 

you that opportunity.

Brad Hintze: Well, and increasingly, audio has always been important. We know that from loads and loads of research from all kinds of people that. Audio is actually one of the more important things that I've solved in a call, even over a video, but in a world of Copilot and AI transcription, uh, great audio is even more important, right?

Because if the, if the Copilot doesn't hear you well, And doesn't hear all of the words that you're saying in the diction and all of that clearly, then the transcription won't work really well. And everybody is starting to rely on these very helpful services, right? And so, things like Flexpods, um, Mercury Mini is a small form factor right on the table.

Again, really great audio, you know, to ensure that the experience is good. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I'm starting to hear that from the customer side for the first time at the tail end of 24, which is like, Oh, we've, we've invested seriously in Copilot. Like we're in the thousands of seats. That's accelerated our MTR journey.

We were on, you know, standard space, whatever. And now we're like, Oh, if we're, if we're serious about AI and transcription, we need the rooms to do that. And therefore the MTR journey is, has become more important. 

Brad Hintze: Oh, absolutely. I've lived it. Right. Because, um, two, I use Copilot every day and there are a lot of meetings like, Hey, can we transcribe this?

Um, but then I go into a conference room and, you know, you expect that same capability, right? And sometimes meetings like that are even more high stakes in terms of transcription and summary and all that, because you're in a brainstorming meeting or a big discussion and you're all in person. You know, those expectations have been set when I'm, you know, working individually, and they carry those expectations into the meeting.

The meeting room, and they have to, they have to deliver, right? 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's going to get even bigger with the things like the Facilitator Agent, where it's like doing joint notes and the project planning and the summary, like you're, I feel like it's interesting, we might even hit a point where if you're doing an all in person meeting, You still want to fire up a Teams room just to get the notes and the minutes because you're going to miss that as part of the wholeness of your data of what's going on in the project.

Brad Hintze: Yep, absolutely. I did that last week too. We were, we were meeting on some campaigns and campaign strategy. We were all entirely in person and I started a Teams call. Um, only to do that. Right. And 

Tom Arbuthnot: my theory is not unfounded then, that's good to know 

Brad Hintze: you're, you're out ahead and it's real. It is. It's really true because that's what I think is so transformative about things like Copilot.

It just becomes so naturally ingrained in the way that we get our work done both individually and as groups. And so you need that technology that can continually evolve. and bring those services into the room, right? And I think that's, you know, that's one of those things that Crestron has adhered to for a long time.

How do we make it so that we can, through software updates and upgrades, add additional capabilities without forcing someone to rip and replace? The hardware that they, they have in there. And so with Flex, you know, it's Windows based and you're going to get a lot of these Copilot features in Flex Rooms without needing to rip it out, which I, you know, is, is fantastic.

You know, it helps customers feel comfortable making the investment in Crestron products. Um, the same is true. We've done that with, uh, Air media when it first launched Air media was a presentation only we have added since the ability to do wireless conferencing as well. So you can walk into a room and, and do BYOM, uh, with the peripherals in the room, even in, uh, an an MTR space, right?

With, uh, with, uh, video R 70 our, our Android bar. Yeah. Then put an Air media in front of it, right? And, and use that as a, as a peripheral. Um, we've also done that with NVX, our AV over IP technology, which FEG uses. Um, I think they said they had a couple hundred different screens around, uh, the different campuses, and they use, uh, NVX to distribute content easily across all the screens and manage it, right?

And that's something that, you know, when we introduced that back in 2017, 2018, since then, we've had these major. milestone releases where we're adding new capabilities to that same hardware platform. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. I think this year, or no, last year, 24 and 25 now, last year you launched the, um, uh, the USB extender as well, didn't you?

That's another piece of the puzzle. 

Brad Hintze: Yeah, we did actually. It was just in, uh, October, uh, at, um, at, um, uh, at AV over IP week. So, yeah, the USB C, oh, sorry, there's the NVX with USB C and then there is the other USB C extender, so that's right, that was our lead last year, yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, nice. So, as we look out to kind of 25 Brad, right at the start now, what do you think are the big themes for the customers you're working with and talking to?

Brad Hintze: Yeah, I think the big things that we're hearing is certainly, you mentioned it, the acceleration of the MTR deployments. Um, I think that if you were to look at 23 and 24 as kind of resets post pandemic, uh, you know, what do we need exactly? Let's go, go, go, go, go. Now they're settled into what they need and now it's about accelerating that deployment, um, and really getting that out there.

So I think that's one. Uh, 2025 too, I think AI is certainly going to drive more meeting room adoption as we were discussing, right? Those meeting rooms have to just really, really sing, um, and deliver well to enable that AI experience. And I think that related to that too, we'll see beyond the transcription stuff, we'll see new great features added.

Uh, to these solutions, leveraging AI, right? So, for us, specifically, you know, we'll continue to add new capabilities to, um, Automate VX, our intelligent video, uh, platform, and our 1 Beyond Cameras. You know, specifically within Visual AI, that's the, the intelligent video AI that we have built into it, we'll add new capabilities.

One thing that we'll be releasing is, uh, Our facial direction stuff. I don't know if we've talked about this publicly too much. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It's 

alright you can wish it's just, just a few hundred friends on the podcast. So you can share some hints if you want. 

Brad Hintze: No big deal, but it is, it's super exciting. You know, the ability. for the AI to choose the best camera angle based on where you're looking, right?

And you can only get that when you're using a multi camera system that's built for this AI era, right? And built around leveraging AI, where a lot of other platforms are built around presets, right? Very complicated sorts of presets and very sophisticated. Um, that way, you know, Automate VX was built for AI and computer vision from the ground up, right?

Well before the world was totally enamored with ChatGPT, um, that team was working diligently about how do you use, uh, Intel, uh, computer vision and intelligent video to deliver a fantastic multiroom, uh, Multicamera Video Experience, and so we'll continue to see new enhancements with that as well.

Tom Arbuthnot: I'm really excited about that space because it's a chance, um, Multicamera is a chance for the OEMs to differentiate and innovate around those things like AI and Direction, and again, I'm fortunate to get a lot of demos, and there are definitely meaningful differences that all those experiences sound the same on paper when you get in the room and get the experience, and critically, You, um, get the remote experience, which I know your team will do like demos for people where they'll sit in the, in the room.

And actually you want the remote end experience to get a feel for how impressive that is. 

Brad Hintze: I do, which is not always like we just spend so much money building out this beautiful, spectacular place in New York and then we bring them in there. It's like, well, actually, the best experience is to see it from the other end.

Tom Arbuthnot: I've only seen one OEM do it. It was Shure actually in one of their, I think, one of their UK offices where they're like, they're like, look at all this stuff. Now go and sit in that end office and we'll do the audio demo in the fancy room. And it's like, yeah, you do need to have the remote experience. 

Brad Hintze: Yeah, that's right.

Exactly. Um, so yeah, I think a lot of, uh, continued innovation, uh, related to that. Um, which I think that, you know, 2025 will be another great year for, uh, the growth of these collaboration technologies. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to jump on the pod. Really great to get your perspective and, uh, I'll see you a few weeks from this pod in ISE, so no doubt we'll have some, some stuff to talk about there, I expect.

Brad Hintze: Yes, uh, yes, we will. And it's always great to speak with you, Tom, and I'm looking forward to hanging in person. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Thanks so much, Brad. Thank you.