Versatile, Secure, Wireless Presentation…Made Easy
Riverside County, California pairs more than 100 wireless presentation systems with large interactive displays, enhancing communications with zero learning curve
Riverside County, stretching east from Los Angeles to the Arizona border, is a mixture of diverse communities, scenic beauty, thriving businesses and economic strength. Once the birthplace of the California citrus industry, the area today is one of the fastest-growing regions in the state. Its largest employer, the County government itself, includes 22,000 public servants who contribute to its residents’ safety and welfare, helping make Riverside County a great place to live, work and play. Recently, the scale of communications required to do these jobs effectively caused the county to rethink the way it presents information to its employees and the public. They resolved to make a strategic change to their communications infrastructure.
Supporting the Team that Supports the Public
Supporting the technology needs of these public servants is the job of more than 500 county IT professionals, including infrastructure engineer Mike Corona, who led the successful upgrade of the county’s presentation technology. Riverside’s previous system was built around ceiling-mounted projectors which were expensive and time-consuming to maintain, with frequent lamp changes and a constant need for troubleshooting. Plus, they required every user to download drivers for their devices to get them to work with the displays, causing frequent calls to IT from all over the huge county. That’s why Riverside decided to update their presentation technology, setting out to investigate the new generation of wireless presentation systems and large interactive displays with an onsite feasibility test.
Corona immediately noticed a major difference among his options in terms of the IT support needed for each solution, whether it required an app, and if the system allowed non-notebook devices to connect. “I tested competing products, and found some I liked, but they required you to download software for them to work. The users were unhappy about that, and it defeated the purpose of looking for a new system,” said Corona. “Another system was too flaky, and I got too many calls because it never worked.” Other systems didn’t support the new “bring your own device” mode of working that has quickly become standard. After careful consideration, Corona chose as his go-to solution the BenQ InstaShow S WDC20 wireless presentation system paired with BenQ’s RP Series 86” 4K interactive displays.
Across the entire county, Riverside standardized on these complete BenQ solutions for ease of use, installation, and support. They purchased 100 of the InstaShows and almost 150 of the interactive touchscreens, along with dozens of BenQ DVY23 4K digital zoom conference cameras. Corona said, “They’re installed in various training rooms, conference rooms and meeting rooms all over the county, and there’s no need to have a PC set up with the system. You can bring in any device, sit at the table where the dongles are, plug in your device and just present. Nothing else needs to be connected.”
“Our biggest department is Public Social Services, who use the systems in classrooms to train new hires. In other training rooms, they bring the public in to learn how to use their benefits. In conference rooms, you might have staff meetings where they use the systems to go through slideshows. And InstaShows have been installed in a huge room at a Sheriff’s training facility along with a projector, where they do their tactical training.”
Plug-and-Play Security and Simplicity
Built from the ground up to eliminate modern security threats that most wireless presentation systems can introduce, InstaShow takes a practical and effective approach to eliminating these risks. Flexible and affordable, it’s the first all-hardware, plug-and-play 4K presentation system to make meetings and collaboration truly intuitive, simple, and secure. Users no longer need to awkwardly pass around a single HDMI cable, run risky third-party software, install drivers, or acquire network access to share their screens during meetings. Instead, a physical button offers the ideal combination of functionality with ease of use by employees and visitors using notebook computers, tablets and smartphones – anything with an HDMI-out port. As the perfect complement to the InstaShow systems, the BenQ RP Series of 4K interactive cloud whiteboards fosters meeting collaboration and presentation with intuitive ease-of-use.
Corona said, “I like the InstaShow so much because there is no software to download. It’s just plug-and-play. A lot of the other products I was testing, you needed drivers. If there’s a presenter coming in, they don’t want to waste time trying to download software. Often, they don’t even have access to the network to download anything. So InstaShow was a no-brainer. You just plug your device into the HDMI dongle, wait five seconds for the light to turn green, push the button and you’re presenting. It’s pretty slick, pretty easy.” With no need to download software or connect to the network, the Riverside County IT security team were big fans of InstaShow as well. “I just had to run it by our security team one time, and they gave me their blessing. We haven’t had any security problems at all with the InstaShow.”
The RP Series interactive displays have also been very popular with the county’s employees, who like to go to the boards to take over control of the laptop for their presentation. “The boards sell themselves,” said Corona. “The county employees are using them daily, and they especially like to use all the touchscreen annotation, notes and drawing features. They have pretty much replaced all the projectors, unless it’s a very large space. Plus, we train them one time, and then we never have to go back. That’s how easy they are to use. Everybody just loves them.”
As Easy-to-Install as They Are to Use
“I’m currently replacing projectors with the BenQ interactive displays and adding the BenQ conferencing cameras on them with some microphones at the rear of the larger rooms,” said Corona. “The county has noticed a dramatic savings in terms of lamp replacement time and costs. With projectors, if the lamp went out, sometimes it would be months before we got a replacement. With BenQ’s five-year advance replacement warranty, if something does go wrong, we know we’ll have a new panel up in a couple days.”
What really sealed the deal for Corona was BenQ’s superior customer service. “They went above and beyond,” he said. Riverside had just started its testing in November of 2020, but needed all units delivered and installed across the county by the end of the fiscal year, in June 2021. BenQ made it painless, and delivered all the boards on time. “It was a really easy installation. Our cabling subcontractor did the low voltage structured wiring and my team hung the displays on the wall, mounted the InstaShow units behind the boards, and plugged in the power. Now that the BenQ systems have been in use for a few months, I rarely get a call back. The customers need very little training. They just take off with them on their own.”
