NSCA hosted its 2021 Pivot to Profit (P2P) conference in September, but the business transformation conversations continue. The articles in the Pivot to Profit+ section of the Q3 2021 edition of our quarterly trade journal, Integrate, keep the discussions going. This column by P2P sponsor Liberty AV Solutions discusses adapting to succeed.
Integrators are no strangers to the need for continual evolution. In the post-pandemic market, NSCA members are once again faced with the demand to pivot.
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed our industry. Remote and hybrid work have sharply increased demand for touchless control, automation, and collaboration products. With corporate campuses closed, companies are purchasing technology for home offices instead of installing videoconferencing systems. Providing customers with the support and service they need has never been more challenging for an integrator. It requires continual evolution.
But even before the pandemic, our industry was undergoing a paradigm shift from AV and IT to information communications technology (ICT). Pro AV has become increasingly networked, cloud-based, and integrated with traditional IT systems. HDMI matrix switches are giving way to IP video distribution. The integrator awarded the project is increasingly determined by IT leadership. IT solution providers, AV integrators, and security contractors compete for the same projects. End users demand standardized, scalable solutions that can be remotely managed and monitored like other IT assets. Expectations for how systems are designed, purchased, and supported continue to evolve.
As integrators, you had to adapt to succeed. You pursue continual evolution. You hired technical resources: people who understand network infrastructure and firewalls. You learned to design and deploy lower-cost, lower-complexity solutions at scale while preserving margins. You rebuilt your service teams to provide customers with remote monitoring. You established relationships with new suppliers. You learned how to sell to new kinds of buyers. Every day, on every jobsite, you work to do it better than last time.
But you don’t have to do it on your own.
Continual Evolution with Industry Partners
Liberty AV Solutions has always designed products for integrators. Our goal is to provide hardware, software, and services that make it easier to design, deploy, and support systems for your customers. We are committed to the channel and invested in helping you grow.
We’ve continued to expand and improve on our collaboration products. Our new TeamUp+ series of USB cameras, microphones, and HDMI/USB switchers offers excellent quality at a surprisingly low cost. We added new products to our line card like Sennheiser, Atlas, Bose Professional, Ashton Bentley, Mimo Monitors, and SimplyNUC. And we designed preconfigured solutions for the conference room and the home office with our Room with a SKU.
We developed software like CX Detect (which won an NSCA Excellence in Product Innovation award this year) to manage and monitor soft codecs, hard codecs, USB peripherals, and other IoT devices in a single tool. CX Detect also supports desktop clients for Zoom and Microsoft Teams, so your customer is covered whether they’re in the office or working from home. With CX Detect, you can even remotely remediate many issues in real-time. Don’t roll a truck tomorrow when you can save the meeting today!
We launched CX Support+, a global 24/7/365 help-desk offering. Whether your business is large or small, you can provide your customers with expert support whenever and wherever they need it.
We partnered with Teleportivity to make it incredibly easy for your customers to get support. Your customer simply scans the plaque on the wall with their phone and instantly connects to the help desk. Manuals, how-to-videos, technical documents, and other content can be available at the press of a button.
We offer a range of value-added services. Bundle any hardware into a kit orderable as a single SKU. Asset tagging, firmware updates, and other tasks can be completed before the product leaves our docks. Need help selecting the right products for your job? No problem. Our team is always ready to help!
We work with GreatAmerica Financial Services to enable our customers to offer AV as a service to their customers: hardware, software, support, installation, and remote management for a single monthly payment. And the best part is that GreatAmerica makes it quick and easy to transact!
Need to help your customers with licensing and subscriptions for Zoom, 8×8, RingCentral, and other UCC platforms? We have you covered. We partnered with AVANT Communications to offer these services. Their experienced, knowledgeable team will work with you and your customer to scope their needs and provide multiple options to meet them. They also offer cloud, connectivity, SD-WAN, security, and data center services.
With Liberty’s Inventory Services (LIS), you can have the product you need on hand without paying for it until you need it. Easily check product in and out of your consigned inventory. Track costs by order and/or project. Add product from any of WESCO’s 30,000+ suppliers. Use an LIS account for a long-term project so that it’s cash positive from start to finish. You can even use LIS to power consignment programs for your customers.
Each of these offerings is available separately, but more powerful together. We’ll help you design standardized solutions, source hardware, services, software, and licensing, and bundle everything into a single orderable SKU. We’ll kit it all up for you, consolidate packaging, and add it to your consigned inventory or ship it anywhere it needs to go. We’ll help you manage and monitor your customers’ assets, and support end users anywhere, anytime. And whether your customer wants to buy, lease, or rent, we’ve got you covered.
Navigating evolving technologies, shifting customer expectations, and uncertain market conditions is tough. But whatever changes tomorrow brings, Liberty is ready to help you adapt and thrive!