Case Study: How Targus Provided Marsh and McLennan with their “Lightbulb” Moment

MMC, a global leader in insurance broking, risk management, and investments needed a docking station solution that would work with different devices, be able to power and charge those devices, and be a clean, simple solution for everyone involved. 

Leveraging Targus Universal Docking Solutions in their open workspace, MMC was able to successfully implement a docking solution that they are now looking
to roll out globally.

The Customer: Marsh and McLennan Companies (MMC)

MMC brings together the service capabilities of Marsh, Mercer,
Guy Carpenter and the Oliver Wyman Group to offer clients solutions in risk, strategy, growth and human capital. They are a global leader in insurance broking, innovative risk management and investments. The company has a presence in more than 100 countries and has over 60,000 team members globally.

The Starting Point: Criteria and Concerns

With a new set of office workspace principles guiding them, the MMC management team was looking to identify new technologies that would help keep the productive and efficient. MMC’s new SmartOffice Principles included:

• 100% open plan

• Seven desks for every ten employees

• Space usage to be equally split between collaborative and individual work areas

• Digital records management

• Ubiquitous connectivity between floors and stairs.

The project implementation team had no knowledge or experience with sourcing the technology they would need for a successful agile working environment, but they did know what user experience they wanted. With multiple devices being used on-site they knew a universal dock solution available at every desk via one cable was necessary.

They needed a tidy solution that sat under the desk rather than above it, that could be easily accessed by employees and able to cater to a variety of different devices.

A priority for MMC was that the solution would simply work and do everything that was expected of it from the beginning. It had to connect to the network, work across different devices, power and charge devices, connect to multiple monitor solutions, and do all of this in an easy to manage and easy to deploy way. They were on a mission to find a reliable dock product with suitable length cabling and a product that could offer a long-term tech solution without the need for regular hardware or software updates.

Most of all, MMC wanted to answer the problem of what to do with all their different charger tips. This is where Targus could provide a differential to other solutions – a neat, tidy solution that other suppliers couldn’t give.

The Search: Seeking a Solution

After extensive research, site-visits to 30 other offices (Optus, Fujitsu, Microsoft & Vodafone to name a few), troubleshooting, and trialing and testing of different headsets, chargers, wireless solutions and docking stations, and a chance conversation, the project team discovered the existence of the Targus 3-way hydra cable. This turned everything around for them. It became an obvious choice and was a “lightbulb moment”.

MMC’s Office Technology Manager, Peter Hurring, and the one tasked with seeking the technology solution, was first to endorse the Targus option.

The Targus 3-way Hydra-Cable is a simple extension to the Targus Universal Dock Solutions that provides up to three different power tips at any one time for the different devices being used by employees. Many more tips are available for this solution, but to have three available on the desk via one cable that would power devices was exactly the answer MMC needed.

No other similar solution was available on the market and this alongside the universal docking products made Targus stand out.

Many different power and dock products were found on the market - some were thinner, some had slightly different connections - but the Targus 3-way Hydra-Cable was the only one that could offer power. No other brands offered the same capabilities, the same quality and were unable to achieve the need for a tidy desk without excess cables.

Another consideration was ease – Targus included all the necessary screen adapters in the box, which was critical when there were 1200 monitors to be installed over a three-day weekend.