Telstra has opened a Customer Insights Centre (CIC) in Sydney tonight. Spanning 3600 square metres over the second level of Telstra’s 400 George Street office in Sydney’s CBD, the CIC houses a 300-person auditorium with 78 LED displays, 4K-ready broadcast studio, workshop and collaboration spaces, partner pop-up installations, a restaurant, and hands-on technology demonstration areas featuring business solutions all ready for our clients and partners to use and collaborate with Telstra staff and our technology services.

The CIC is about bringing all those elements together and co-creating the right solution to give our customers a competitive advantage.

The new precinct is the perfect space for design thinking, collaboration and solution design with clients and partners. The centre follows the Pacnet acquisition, the Blue Jeans Network partnership and investment in Docusign.

At the heart of the space is the aforementioned “Insight Ring”, a nine metre, 360 degree interactive circle-shaped platform that surrounds visitors with digital insights mined from Telstra’s knowledge of markets, customers and industries.

There is an immersive 1080p@60fps video conferencing infrastructure to provide for 10 collaboration rooms.

The network can handle 100 simultaneous video calls via Telstra IP Telephony, while more than 48 fibre ports provide high speed content distribution.

The theatre has the first Meyer sound constellation system which enable the acoustical properties to electronically altered to suit the nature of the event. It also has a 8.5 by 6.2m 4k screen. The broadcast studio and theatre will be rented out when it is not being by customers and partners.

Alongside all this, is “The Exchange”, an in-house restaurant to entertain our customers and partners. It was designed to reflect Telstra’s history and contains devices from the Telstra museum. Head chef Lauren Murdoch has previously worked at Atlas Bistro, Rockpool, and the Concourse Restaurant. She also opened Felix Bar and Bistro.

On opening night of the CIC we invited 300 clients and partners to experience the centre in operation. I was tucked up in the Forum area and was lucky enough to interview State of Origin coaches and superstars of Rugby League Laurie Daley and  Mal Meninga on sports innovation and collaboration techniques.

Laurie played over 240 first grade games, won three Grand Finals with Canberra, captained his State of Origin team 13 times and he’s only one of two men to both captain and coach the Blues to victory over Queensland last year. Mal also won three Premierships at the Raiders and coached the Maroons to victory 8 years in a row and he’s a colossus in the code.

Telstra built this Customer Insights Centre so businesses could collaborate, and share their ideas and come up with better ones. We learnt on the night when you are coaching sports team the same rules apply that the environment and the collaboration process between players and coaching staff gives you the winning edge.