Waterman’s philosophy is more holistic than simply providing exceptional workspaces for small-business people. Their centres have been designed to not only encourage connection but also contribute to the wellbeing of the people who use them.
They have consciously blended the practical elements that a first-class business centre must have with a range of features intended to help the people who use the centres feel good about their day ‘at the office’.
Their clear intention is to build a sense of community, with a common positivity, and a feeling of being supported and nurtured.
Mozaix shares their belief that a well-equipped, smoothly-functioning, happy and healthy environment will help small-business people prosper.
In fact, such is the synergy between Waterman and Mozaix that the Narre Warren centre and then Caribbean Park were the perfect fit as our office space and the alignment has helped our business grow.
It wasn’t hard to get on board and be inspired to accompany Neville Waterman on his mission to help small business thrive.
Neville recognised that “being able to have our centres function at the highest level, from the audio-visual side, is a key part of us building exceptional centres”.
That starts with the ambience. The fittings, furnishings, proportions, and lighting are carefully considered, and we have added a premium background sound system that allows the centres to program suitable music to enhance the mood of the people across their day.
The system is managed centrally so that it’s consistent across all centres and, as much as possible, is automated (with the capacity to override the pre-sets).
One of our main challenges was the ability to cater for users with a broad range of equipment and operating systems. Someone using a Dell is likely to be alongside another on a MacBook, with the Microsoft Surface users right next door.
We were determined to make it as simple as possible for anyone to walk into a small meeting room, a large meeting room, or even one of the auditoriums (there’s a theatre-style training room at each centre), push one button, and get connected.
That meant implementing a system where you could BYOD – Bring Your Own Device.
For example, in the premium meeting spaces – called the Waterman Suite at each centre – there’s a large screen integrated with a USB camera and a USB speaker-phone, enabling any user to simply plug in their own laptop and run a board meeting or significant presentation with videoconferencing for remote attendees.
These training rooms are also equipped with dual large-screen projection and wireless microphones all managed from a wall-mounted touchpanel or the staff’s mobile phones.
At the same time, we wanted to ensure that each centre had the same setup, allowing users familiar with one centre to seamlessly operate at another.
An additional consideration was ongoing support, maintenance, and expansion. By being able to monitor systems remotely, we can circumvent potential issues, make any necessary tweaks, and assist Waterman staff in meeting any unusual requests.
The software that allows us to have a high degree of remote control, automation of processes, flexibility, and oversight is Q-SYS from QSC. It’s extremely scalable and adaptable, and we plan to make even greater use of its capability to integrate AV assets and IT systems in the new centres that Waterman is building.
The wireless connectivity is based on Mersive’s Solstice, an intuitive, app-based collaboration platform. Its strength is how it allows users on any device to engage dynamically, and it’s extremely robust on an enterprise level, with many different users.
Most importantly, it’s very user-friendly, with simple prompts for first-time users.
Because everything is constantly in use, and being ‘tested’ in real-world scenarios, we’re continually maintaining and tweaking to improve performance across the board, and we’re making the entire setup better all the time, thanks to the amazing scalability of Q-SYS.
It’s an incredibly exciting partnership because we share Neville Waterman’s vision to offer a level of quality, service, performance, connection, and collaboration that’s unequalled, to fully support, motivate, and energise small-business people.
