Video Conferencing Across Multiple Branches, Without the Boardroom Price Tag

The Challenge

The client operates across 4 branches, plus one additional site that already had a large screen installed. Whenever a meeting needed people from more than one location, staff were travelling across Edinburgh to be in the same room — something that was happening regularly enough to cost a significant amount of staff time roughly every other week.

A full boardroom-style conferencing build, at the kind of cost that usually runs into the thousands per room, wasn't the right fit for what was fundamentally a simple problem: letting people join a meeting from the branch they were already at.

What Curly IT Planned

Curly IT has experience installing more advanced Polycom and Yealink conferencing systems, but this project was never about the most expensive equipment available. It was about creating usable meeting spaces at each site without a boardroom-sized budget.

Poly video bars were chosen because they combine the camera, microphone and speaker into a single unit that mounts below or alongside a screen, avoiding the cost and complexity of a full room system built from separate camera, microphone and speaker components.

The Installation

• ✓Poly video bar (camera, mic & speaker in one unit)
• ✓Wall-mounted TV as the meeting room display
• ✓Rolled out across 4 branches
• ✓Fifth site fitted around an existing large screen

Each room was fitted with a Poly video bar positioned with the TV, giving every location a proper video conferencing setup without turning each room into its own dedicated AV project.

The Same Setup, Repeated Across Sites

Rather than a different solution for each branch, the same Poly video bar and screen combination was installed at every site. That kept the rollout straightforward and meant staff didn't need to learn a different setup depending on which branch they were joining a call from.

Technology Used