The Scenario: Clarity is always welcome at Jewelers Mutual insurance, whether it’s the quality of a precious gem or that of the spoken word. With the completion of an extensive remodel and expansion of its Neenah, Wisconsin, headquarters, this worldwide insurer of jewels and jewelers found itself in need of all shapes and sizes of audio conferencing equipment and turned to ClearOne for the answer.

“This place is meeting friendly,” says Senior Technical Analyst Casey Hawkinson. “We do a lot of conference calls with vendors and having six people huddled around a speaker phone in a conference room wasn’t conducive to good business. We went thru every conference room and revamped all of the technology.”

Jewelers Mutual relies heavily on audio conferencing, not video, since it has a single headquarters and most of its field agents work from home. “We also wanted the ability to communicate effectively with our off-site employees,” says Hawkinson. “When they would call in to a meeting, we needed very high audio quality.”

Green Bay, WI-based AV integrator Camera Corner found a ClearOne audio conferencing solution for all of Jewelers Mutual’s needs - over 20 conference rooms, a boardroom, a training room, and a 200 seat auditorium.

Good Things Come in Small Packages: Camera Corner equipped each of the seven smallest conference rooms, called “huddle” rooms, with a ClearOne single pod MAX Wireless conference phone. Diminutive in size, this single pod offers all of the advantages of more complex audio systems, but is designed for a smaller environment. A trio of built in microphones provide 360 degree coverage. Echo cancellation, ambient noise reduction and first microphone priority are all part of ClearOne’s HDConference™ technology suite and serve to guarantee a signal so clear, participants feel like they are in the same room.

“When people first step into our rooms and fire up the phone, the other person comes across loud and clear as day,” says Hawkinson. “There are no echo problems. The sound is clear and crisp.” The battery-operated pods offer 12 hours of talk time per charge plus secure conferencing technology built right in.

Double Take: Camera Corner equipped each of nine medium-sized conference rooms with dual-pod MAXAttach Wireless phones, one for each end of the table. Wireless pods make for easy setup without loss of signal quality. “Our old system was all wired and you’d have to drag the pods to the table leaving wires stretching across the floor,” says Hawkinson. “People were always tripping on them. Now, with these two pods charging on the rack, you just unplug them, put them on the table and you’re set to go. It’s really slick.” Each medium-sized room is also equipped with an LG 42 inch LCD monitor for in-room presentations from a laptop or DVD player.

Making a Commitment: Camera Corner permanently installed even more sophisticated systems in each of the five largest conference rooms. “The Converge 560 is an intermediate system,” says Earl Neville, company president. “It’s a little more sophisticated than a tabletop system and can handle up to nine additional microphones. We put ceiling microphones in to handle audience questions, in addition to lapel and table mics.” The Converge 560 comes with its own control system included. Panasonic ceiling-mounted projectors and electronic wall screens provide the video here and in the boardroom and auditorium where ConvergePro 880T systems manage the...