Site of the Week

November 29, 2000

I want to go home, or away is ok
Andersen Consulting
One Freedom Square, Reston, Virginia

By Gary Kayye, CTS

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Everyone wants to make his or her clients feel good, huh? We wine and dine until we establish a relationship with them as well as professional rapport, we try to make them feel at home on our turf and we certainly recognize them when they walk in the front door. Right?

Well, what about your own employees?

That's an easy one. Of course our employees feel at home, maintain a good relationship with the rest of the team and everyone recognizes each other - even if they may not knew each other by name. Right?

Well, not so fast.

What if you're a company with over 10,000 employees? What if your employees are ALWAYS on the road and come in to any given regional office for only a few weeks and never the same office twice?

Now, how do you make them feel at home? How do you insure the relationship that fosters teamwork (with a team of 10,000) and makes someone feel like an insider and not an outsider?

Well, Andersen Consulting's got the answer!

Andersen Consulting is one of the largest business organizational consulting firms in the world with offices in virtually every state and country in the world. Its consultants service client's needs that vary from IT (Information Technology), financial analysis, process flow, management reorganization, change acceptance and even teamwork training. Although consultants live and work all over the world, most of Andersen's team do not get the opportunity to work in their home town as business is everywhere. So, if someone in Hong Kong needs marketing analysis and the best team member for the job is in Chapel Hill, NC, then it's off to Hong Kong. They work on the client's turf whenever possible.

A plasma monitor displays assignment, welcome information and a schedule for the consultant. Click image for larger view.

However, in many cases the need for a "home base" or "office on the road" away from the client site is a must. It affords the consultant the opportunity to use Andersen's vast personnel and technological knowledge base. Sometimes these consulting "gigs" are arranged months ahead of time and sometimes they're finalized a day before they arrive.

But, it doesn't matter, as Andersen's got it covered. A new facility - dubbed One Freedom Square - in Reston, Virginia, is specifically designed to accommodate all those needs and a whole lot more.

It's designed to make the office away from the office feel like the home office.

It all starts as the Andersen out-of-towner enters. A plasma monitor that displays the client assignment, welcome information and a schedule, greets him. It informs the consultant where his or her temporary office space will be and how to use and find it. In addition, it includes details of the surrounding area like sights, hotels and eateries.

But, that's not all. This facility not only includes an office but it's a complete office park that includes training rooms, conference rooms, cubicles, a dining facility and even a videoconferencing center.

All this is for the out-of-towner to make them feel at home and give him the tools required to service that client the "Andersen way".

The Potomac Room is a conference room that looks like a boardroom and accommodates small and large meetings, videoconferencing and AV access to just about everything. Click image for larger view.

"This was a killer opportunity for us to see how this equipment we sell all the time is being used in a real-world service application," commented Kathy Brais, account executive for Chantilly, VA-based Hoppmann Communications Corporation, the design/build firm for Andersen. "The uniqueness of this job was that it was for people we may never meet. These people from Andersen will come and go as the jobs require and the facility will live for them."

With so many variables because of the varying technological educational levels of each consultant, the AV systems in each room had to be super-simple to operate and with virtually no learning curve.

"We chose to use equipment that was user-friendly and, of course, behind the scenes our system simplifier is a sophisticated control system by AMX (now called Panja)," pointed out RJ Townshend, Engineering Manager for Hoppmann. "We really worked closely with the facility manager to design a system that would be functional so that each user could do anything they would ever need to do, but also was easy to maintain. We picked reliable gear and manufacturers like Da-Lite, Sony, AMX, Gentner, Epson and NEC."

At the heart of it all is the ultimate conference room, called the Potomac Room. It's basically a conference room that looks like a boardroom. It can accommodate small and large meetings, videoconferencing, brainstorming and AV access to just about everything including PC's, laptops, VCRs and VTC feeds. Housed on the 18th floor of One Freedom Square, it's even capable of transforming itself into a training facility. Table

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mounted wall plate interfaces make it possible to tap any computer into the system by simply connecting it, and control of the room is simplified through an AMX ViewPoint color touch-screen. In addition, audio conferences or meetings may be recorded for archival purposes or even sent out to other rooms if required.

So, who get's the credit for finishing this job on time and on budget? Well, apparently it's Hoppmann's purchasing manager Ms. Bobbi Phipps. Over $400,000 worth of AV gear was all ordered by Ms. Phipps and installed in the 18th floor for Andersen.

When asked how it all went, her praise was for all the vendors who made her job easier. But, as for the Da-Lite crew, she had this to say, ""They've gone out of their way to help me out over the years and they're always very courteous and friendly."