A very proud dad walked his eldest daughter down the aisle in Stockholm this summer—and if you ever get the chance, I thoroughly recommend a Swedish wedding, because they’re so much fun. And so it happened that during the five-hour session of marvelous food, speeches, and singing, I had my “a-ha” moment, though admittedly they were Norwegian. It was this quote that grabbed my attention: “Don’t sit and wait for the storm to pass, learn how to dance in the rain.” Perhaps it is time for us all to shake our stuff and get thoroughly soaked, because the AV industry is about to get funky and none of us are going to stay dry.
[Blueprint for Success: Learn from the Past, Shape Your Future]
First, let’s do some storm watching. Contrary to most financial analysts, in February I brazenly predicted there would be no recession in 2023, and as the latest job, growth, and inflation numbers attest, I should be proven lucky. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Federal Reserve and the markets won’t try their best, as “bust-to-boom” economics has proven highly profitable in the past.
Despite this macro safety net, there appears to be an abundance of caution in most sectors of the economy, and we’re feeling it in the AV industry, too. There’s certainly a lot of opportunity out there, but we’ve also seen delayed decision-making and rollouts and some downscaling of original plans.
We have made progress over the last decade, but it remains a reasonable certainty that most integrators are still not achieving the levels of profitability they deserve.
A lot of this is understandable given the uncertainties about hybrid work, return to office, and real estate utilization. However, just as with our analogous weather, behind the dramatic events, there lie fairly predictable causes. Just as climate change didn’t happen overnight, neither did the evolution of work—and although the pandemic put a spotlight on our fundamental issues, they have been present for a generation and long overdue for overhaul.
However successful our survival reflex during COVID-19, we cannot lock ourselves away and hope for a return to normality, as nothing appears to be normal anymore. Whatever storm is on the horizon, sitting it out is not an option. Let’s slip on our tap shoes and find our inner Gene Kelly.
[Viewpoint: A Meeting Equity Progress Report]
The general rule in times of uncertainty is to identify the things you can be reasonably certain of and those that you can control, and then focus management attention and resources to accelerate fundamental change. These are the “big five” that I believe not only integrators but everyone else in the AV value chain should focus on.
UCC and Cloud First
As if like magic, our customers have migrated most of their communication and collaboration tools to UCC platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom hosted in the cloud. Not necessarily new news, but a cloud-first strategy has deeper implications for integrators; we must mirror and match. Our kit bags for deploying, provisioning, monitoring, and managing our customers need to follow suit. Our programmers need to be app developers and our UCC offerings professionalized and priced to equivalent IT services.
Service Design Culture
Everything we do should be designed as a service, including how we procure hardware and stage for our customers. But here’s the thing: We can’t just proclaim, "We need to sell more services.” We must totally redesign their scope and simplify the delivery model so that we can scale at lower cost. This also extends to how customers pay. Our customers are used to subscription and enterprise licensing for their IT—why not their AV?
Hunting Out Inefficiency
No doubt, we have made progress over the last decade, but it remains a reasonable certainty that most integrators are still not achieving the levels of profitability they deserve for their hard work and expertise. It's easy to blame declining profit margins, but you can’t control that. Focus on internal operations and dysfunctions, recruit experts from outside the AV industry, and back them to transform your supply chain, shipping, processes, and cost controls. Then, watch the dollars flood back to your bottom line.
Sales Conversion
I’m not talking about closing rates here. We have some brilliant salespeople, many of whom are legendary, but in comparison to other technology markets, we have neither matured our sales methodologies and performance measurement, nor embraced omnichannel marketing to the extent we need. We need to migrate from transactional to lifetime value metrics, coach our people in strategic customer management, and create career paths for college graduates. This requires transformational sales leadership and substantial investment—but again, the returns in customer loyalty and recurring revenues are easily justified.
Throw Away Our Umbrellas
Whoever thought an Englishman would entertain such sacrilege? Without wishing to stretch our precipitation metaphor too far, think of an umbrella as a shield protecting us from the tough realities ahead. It’s easy for us to stay busy being busy, as there is still enough business out there to lull us into a false sense of security.
[On Your Business: Why Small Businesses Need a Leadership Team]
This is exactly the time that senior leadership needs to provide the vision, clarity, resources, and unwavering support for the business to make transformational investments, experiment with the new, chuck out the old, and above all else make allowances for some failures along the way. The future direction, sustainable growth, prosperity, and well-being of the AV industry and its community is entirely in our hands.
It is, of course, entirely possible that you don’t believe in my sense of urgency or indeed in the priorities I have set out here. You may have already transformed your business to withstand whatever projectiles outrageous fortune hurls in your direction; good, well done. Hopefully, you can agree with me on one thing: It’s not necessarily what you do, it’s the fact that you are trying something new, and you keep on trying come what may.
Stripped bare of its metaphors, “dancing in the rain” is an attitude of mind. For those of us more advanced in our careers, we owe it to the next generation of AV professionals to modernize and professionalize our beloved industry at a pace that should leave us all breathless. Promise me this: Next time there’s a rain shower, walk outside and stand in it until you are soaked to the skin. It’s amazing how refreshing it is.
