Konftel Streamlines Conferencing for Controlled Thermal Resources

The ultimate achievement for any technology or manufacturing process is to improve performance and efficiency while reducing environmental impact. At Controlled Thermal Resources, a pioneering Southern California company that produces lithium battery products in a near-zero-emissions facility, sustainability is central to everything it does.

When the company opened an office and upgraded its meeting room video conferencing equipment, the drive to improve efficiency, quality and sustainability led it to Konftel. The Swedish technology company manufactures high-performance, easy-to-use cameras and conference phones for video conferencing and has made sustainability core to its company mission – a Climate Neutral Certified organization.

According to Controlled Thermal Resources’ Real Estate Manager Paul Magana, the company required an affordable, platform-agnostic video conferencing solution that would allow it to collaborate with Zoom, Teams, WebEx and any other service a client or partner might use.

After research and conversations with colleagues, Magana and the company’s decision makers chose the Konftel 800 conference phone and easy-to-use Cam50 1080P video camera with pan, tilt and 12x zoom capability. The first conference room to be upgraded has two of each, providing full-room coverage at a fraction of the cost of competitor’s solutions.

Magana said some other solutions considered would have required tearing up concrete floors to lay new wiring. The Konftel 800 conference phone, on the other hand, is powered by PoE (power over ethernet) and uses Bluetooth to provide a simple, fast connection.

In addition to the cameras and conference phones, Controlled Thermal Resources’ conference room includes an 85-inch wall-mounted digital display with an Apple Mac Mini mounted behind it. Through this combination of technologies, users can launch meetings without all the fuss of the former setup. Previously, meeting hosts had to connect their laptops to the room’s equipment and ensure everything was running smoothly before each meeting, which reduced efficiency and often required IT support.