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Contributor: Peter Yoo

You probably know that tabletop cable management systems, such as Crestron FT2 FlipTops™ cable management system, make it easy for people to get connected, do that cool cable retraction thing, and keep conference tables clear of clutter. But you may not know FT2 FlipTops offer a whole other layer of smart functionality you’ll love, especially if you’re a facility manager.
 
Think about the number of man hours spent by your staff making the rounds every night to reset meeting rooms and to do an overall maintenance check of cables and connectors. Let’s say your facility has 100 meeting rooms and this takes about 2 minutes per room. That’s 200 minutes, or a little more than 3 hours a day. Multiply that by 261 – the number of workdays in a typical year. That’s 783 man-hours of maintenance, or 32 days per year, just resetting meeting rooms at the end of the day. That’s a lot of valuable time your staff could spend on more time-sensitive and demanding service and support issues. Fortunately, there’s a better way.
 
In addition to cable management, we designed Crestron FT2 FlipTops to make meetings simpler for office workers and to help reduce labor hours spent on basic maintenance. To do that, we had to design FlipTops to be smarter (they are) and more connected (they are) than other traditional cable management systems on the market.

With their highly modular design, FT2 FlipTops can be configured to meet the specific needs of any meeting space and, with individual component replacement, can be easily updated as your needs change. The FT2 Pass-Through Lid adds the benefit of concealing all connections, so cables can be fully extended while the FlipTop is in use.

The programmable buttons on FT2 FlipTops not only enable meeting participants to switch between any connected source with one touch, but they also give you the ability to automate cable retraction. You could program them to retract at the end of every workday for all rooms, say at 11:30PM. Or after a designated amount of time after every meeting, say after 20 minutes of no video being displayed in the room. It’s entirely up to you and whatever best suits your business needs. Utilizing this automated cable retraction capability, you can reduce labor time by weeks every year, as well as the number of broken cables (they’re more susceptible to damage when left out on the table).
 
While cable management is a great thing, your cable management system could be working a lot harder for you and making meetings simpler for your in-house and visiting staff and guests. With FT2 FlipTops it’s easily done.

Learn More on Crestron FlipTops and checkout the FlipTop Configuration Tool, to effortlessly design the right solution for you.