One of Hong Kong’s largest ‘private-client’ financial service groups has implemented “Touch Screen” technology from U-Touch to create a corporate multi-media presentation facility.
 

BACKGROUND

The Henley Group Limited is one of Hong Kong’s largest independent ‘private-client’ financial advisers and the largest specialist in advising expatriates.

The organisation has been operating in Hong Kong since 1991 and over the last 15 years has grown to become the preferred advisor of the country’s top professionals, including lawyers, accountants, investment bankers and independent entrepreneurs.

Today the company provides a wide portfolio of services from individual financial planning, investment advice, mortgages and insurance protection, extending to a 360û concierge and property service (including holiday home searches, investment property location, financing and ownership options through to property management).
 

THE IMPORTANCE OF IMAGE

The group is focused on building long-term client relationships, not on transactions. It’s important because most of their new business comes from existing client referrals. Clients need to be so happy with the service they receive that it will become second nature to refer their friends and colleagues to the company.

Henley is committed to providing the highest quality of service and the best possible advice to its clients. The company deals with senior executives and professionals from a broad spectrum of industry sectors, all of whom are highly successful in their chosen field. The skills, expertise, courtesy and efficiency of its staff are critical to the group’s continued success. Image and presentation are also extremely important. The layout, interior design, equipment and furnishings of their office, all contribute to the perception a client gains about the group and ultimately impacts their inclination to refer family, friends and colleagues.

Henley has been as careful in its selection of offices, communications facilities, Information Technology and working practices as it has in the selection of the services it provides and the training of its staff - adopting an attitude of ‘only the best will do’.
 

BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS - BORADROOM MULTIMEDIA FACILITIES

Around the same time that Henley decided to revamp the hospitality and presentation facilities in their Board Room at their company headquarters located at 3208 Nine Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong, the group also decided to significantly expand the Property division of their business.

A key stage in the revamp involved a search for new ways to present their services to clients and prospects using the latest in interactive, audio-visual, multi-media, technology.

Other considerations included use of the Board Room for periodic staff training and the appeal of being able to ‘annotate’ and ‘navigate’ through a variety of different media simply by touching the screen rather than having to return to a keyboard or mouse. A “plug & Play” feature was also desirable so that anyone with a laptop could simply plug into one of the sockets mounted on the board room table and immediately make use of all the available audio-visual (AV) facilities.

Consequently, the technology needed to include a large, high quality display (screen) able to show presentations, live data feeds and photographs in a resolution sufficient for details to be clearly visible from the back of the room. The environment also needed to remain uncluttered with keyboards or other AV controls whilst allowing high impact media to be presented with seamless switching between video, pictures, PowerPoint presentations and live data feeds from the internet. For client presentations and staff training, one final requirement was the ability to turn the display into a ‘whiteboard’ and to annotate onto any media being displayed to highlight key points.
 

THE SOLUTION

Henley quickly realised that to achieve all of these objectives cost effectively they needed to make the display “touch sensitive”. This would enable navigation through, and moving between, different types and formats of data (static images, live data feeds, video etc.) all to be controlled simply by touching the screen with ‘an executive finger’.

The Group approached U-Touch Ltd, an established leader in ‘touch screen’ technology and asked the company to review their list of requirements and come up with a proposed solution.

Use for presentation and training necessitated a minimum screen size of 50” to enable content to be clearly visible from any part of the room. A 50” plasma screen from Panasonic was chosen as the display screen due to its reputation for quality, reliability and resolution. To convert the screen into a ‘touch sensitive’ display, U-Touch then added their 50” (UT50-SF4) touch-screen overlay. The overlay was provided with the necessary controllers and with U-Touch’s optional suite of presentation tools to allow easy annotation and highlighting of the content being presented along with the ability to use the screen as a fully featured ‘whiteboard’ from which contents can be saved to disk or printed.