Munich Re uses Microsoft Teams to transform worldwide offices for a new era of hybrid work

Munich Re is one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, primary insurance and insurance-related risk solutions. With multiple business segments and a capital investment company under its umbrella, Munich Re operates in all lines of the insurance business.

As a global organization with nearly 40,000 employees and offices on almost every continent, personal connections are vital. And cultivating trust with the company’s clients is especially important. Munich Re needs to ensure its people have the right meeting technologies to stay connected to each other and to its worldwide client base. For instance, team members need to be able to run a meeting with a customer and pull in other Munich Re experts, regardless of where they’re located.

The company had adopted online meeting technologies early, first with Skype for Business Online and then with Microsoft Teams. However, its conference rooms didn’t offer as streamlined an experience as Munich Re needed. They used a mix of technologies, at times leaving participants confused about how to get started. They’d walk in and find multiple cables with a conference phone, a camera, and a monitor—and would have to try to figure out what cable to connect where. Not all rooms had the same equipment. Munich Re wanted to take an improved approach on this.

On a quest for the ultimate conference room

Munich Re had a vision: a state-of-the-art, effective meeting room experience for hybrid meetings, in which a mix of remote and in-person participants could come together seamlessly. As part of this, the company wanted to create meeting spaces where participants could walk in and get started immediately. It also wanted identical conference rooms that could be deployed in any office in any country and would work the same way. 

The company recognized very early on that effective conference room design doesn’t just entail having the right technology; the architecture of the space also makes a huge impact on functionality. As a result, the IT and corporate real estate departments joined forces to come up with an overarching meeting room architecture that combined modern technology with the right structural elements, which included furniture, lighting, and integrated cable management. The company was so sure of this approach that it started with five of the busiest conference rooms at its Munich headquarters, including a room for board members.

The team also sent out a user survey to validate its approach, with results that confirmed at its core: ease of use and reliable functionality needed to be the focus. 

"We have always been guided by these basic requirements but have also consistently pursued high standards of excellent sound and image transmission," says Tilmann Fulda, Senior Consultant Digital Solutions for Munich Re's Central Division Corporate Real Estate and Services. "We were convinced: the meeting room of the future not only needs easy-to-use technology, but must also integrate remote participants as if they were together in the same place."

Fulda also notes that high availability and reliable operation also requires automatic remote monitoring of all components. 

Choosing the right technologies

The decision to use Microsoft Teams Rooms was a natural one. “We didn’t want to have to come up with additional interfaces to connect different solutions together,” says Maximilian Forst, Head of Sub-Section Smart Meeting Room for Munich Re. “We use the Microsoft ecosystem on the collaboration side, and that’s where the Microsoft Teams Rooms solution fits in perfectly. And from an operational perspective, it’s simple to deploy.”  

The search for the right devices was a much larger effort because Munich Re was a very early adopter. After a lot of experimentation and discussion with device manufacturers—ranging from where microphones should be located to what the best camera is—the team refined exactly what it wanted. In turn, this kicked off a new—and extremely detailed—search for precisely the right hardware, right down to specific model numbers and hand-picked cables.

Take monitors, for example. “From the beginning, we wanted the system to switch on automatically when you enter the room,” says Fulda. “We needed to find monitors that would wake up at the exact right time as the MTR device.”

It may seem exacting, but there is a purpose to this approach. “The simplicity is really the key,” explains Forst. “People shouldn’t have to add or press several buttons to get the monitor to come up. It should come up immediately.”

A move towards complete standardization

The company ended up creating three different blueprints, one each for small, medium, and large rooms. Each of these blueprints covers every single aspect of the solution, from devices and speakers to hidden details others might not think about such as cables and adapters. “Standardization is critical, especially if you want to run a global environment,” explains Forst. “These are the details that matter for the stability of the system.”

The result is that there’s no room for error. It streamlines purchasing and inventory. All the wires and cables are completely hidden so there’s no desire—or need—to change things. As a result, conference rooms are straightforward to deploy and offer a consistent user experience.

Rolling out new conference rooms worldwide

Munich Re had started its conference room revamp before the pandemic, but when lockdowns started, it used the time to press forward with deployment. The company started with about 100 conference rooms in its headquarters and then extended to another 300 rooms globally, which took less than nine months. “We started with Munich because we had all key stakeholders there,” explains Fulda. “A structured approach using Microsoft Teams Rooms led us to a perfect deployment on a global scale.” Forst adds; “And it provides capabilities like auto-remediation so that we can ensure high availability and uptime without sending someone on site.”

A key aspect of this phase was using Microsoft Teams Rooms Managed Services, which is a cloud-based IT management and monitoring service that keeps Microsoft Teams Rooms devices and their peripherals up to date and proactively monitored. At its heart is a focus on intelligent software that enables delivering built-in best practices, automatic updates with problem detection and resolution, and the ability to tailor its operations to specific room environments.

 “Munich Re decided to use Managed Services for Microsoft Teams Rooms because of the speed and global nature of its deployment, coupled with its desire to standardize meeting rooms across all its real estate properties,” explains Kim Matlock, Principal Program Manager for Microsoft. “As part of the engagement, we worked very closely with the Munich Re team on all aspects of the solution, providing Microsoft expertise and assistance ranging from device choice to customizing backend operations.”

Teams Rooms Managed Services also integrates with the company’s ticketing system, and even kicks off notifications to external service providers if auto-remediation can’t fix an issue. The result is that deploying new conference rooms has been an easier process—and keeping them fully operational now and in the future is much simpler. And it doesn’t matter if the conference room is in the United States, Argentina, or India. It’s all managed by the global Munich Re IT team.

Shaping a global response to flexible working styles

Although the rooms are only being used in a limited fashion due to the pandemic, Munich Re’s standardized approach to Teams Rooms has already started paying off by enabling hybrid meetings and shaping a new culture of flexibility. Hybrid meetings bridge the gap between people working remotely and those in the office with a meeting room solution that allows everyone to be seen, heard, and fully participate from anywhere.  

It’s also easy. “Due to the simple handling, people treat the Smart Meeting Rooms like a phone,” says Forst. “It just works, without any downtime accepted.”

And after months of working from home—where turning on video has become the standard to stay connected—these new conference rooms will deliver the experiences employees expect as part of their newly adopted work patterns. Fulda notes that employees coming into the office have been pleased with the solution because of its seamless ease of use. “There’s really no traditional training needed because it’s so easy,” he says. But just in case, the company has also created six 90-second videos to cover other use cases, such as starting a meeting from Teams on a mobile phone or other device. 

Now, the company is ready to handle those meetings on a global scale when the company’s workforce returns to the office. The team is now looking at adding functionality like whiteboards in additional spaces, such as collaboration rooms and boardrooms, to further develop the workplace solutions of the future.