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Excavator on construction site  

Best Line Equipment is an authorized dealer for over 60 major equipment manufacturers, supporting the construction industry with rentals, sales and professional services at 16 locations throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. A family-owned business for more than 35 years, Best Line Equipment is known for providing the best rental selection and customer service in the region.

Challenge

With staff deployed at several locations throughout the two states, the Best Line Equipment team relied on conference calls and face-to-face meetings to stay connected. However, efficiency and collaboration were lagging. With hundreds of team members out of the office at once traveling to in-person meetings and no real-time document-sharing capabilities, Best Line Equipment’s IT team looked at replacing their conference call system with a video conference solution.

Best Line Equipment Logo

“Six months into using Lifesize, our CFO guaranteed that it had paid for itself.” 

— Phil Raker, IT Director at Best Line Equipment.

Solution 

The team secured demo equipment from the top video conferencing solutions in the market and evaluated each based on several criteria including ease-of-use, screen-sharing quality, and sound integrity. The solution also needed to be cost-effective and easy to manage at all 16 of Best Line Equipment’s distributed locations. 

At the end of the evaluation process, “Lifesize checked all the boxes for what we needed in terms of call quality, usability and management,” said Phil Raker, director of information technology at Best Line Equipment. 

During the initial rollout, the team deployed Lifesize® Icon™ 450 video conferencing systems in conference rooms at six Best Line Equipment locations for leadership meetings and key sales calls. However, it quickly became clear that more systems were needed. “People were fighting over the conference room. We went from everybody being on the phone to one Lifesize system per office not being enough,” said Raker.  

Three years into deployment, the company more than doubled their fleet of Lifesize systems, further expanding with Lifesize® Icon™ 300 video conferencing systems, and a plan to deliver Lifesize access to the entire sales team by the end of 2019. In addition to team and customer meetings, Best Line Equipment now also uses their Lifesize systems for monthly safety trainings, which are recorded and available to employees unable to attend. 

The ease-of-use and integrated features Lifesize offers have also freed up I.T. trouble-shooting time and enabled users to schedule independently to avoid conflicts. “The Lifesize systems were so popular that conference rooms would be double booked at times,” says Raker. He tapped into the Lifesize integration capabilities with Microsoft 365 and added a meeting room app to iPad minis outside of each conference room. “Now team members can schedule meeting rooms in a way that’s visible to the entire team.” Extending collaboration a step further, Best Line Equipment implemented Lifesize® Share™ devices on integrated screens in I.T. and marketing departments for daily, wireless collaboration outside of and meetings. 

Outcome

The Best Line Equipment team initially implemented Lifesize for 2-3 meetings each week, and now uses Lifesize daily for meetings, trainings, sales conversations and collaboration outside of meetings.

“Six months into using Lifesize, our CFO guaranteed that it had paid for itself,” says Raker, noting the vast efficiencies and expanded team collaboration he’s experienced first-hand. “Windshield time is dead time, and before Lifesize we were having 26 or 27 people drive up to 3 ½ hours to attend a meeting in person.” 

Today, Raker estimates the company is saving over $12,000 per quarter by using Lifesize systems for core internal meetings alone. “Our meetings have also gotten more concise due to collaboration tools built into Lifesize, with our weekly leadership call time cut nearly in half,” notes Raker.