AV Industry Changed for Good

The Covid crisis has changed AV consulting and integration forever, according to Peter Hunt, CEO of AV consulting firm, Hewshott International. Peter has read the tea leaves and during a webinar organised by Sennheiser Australia, described things this way:

Peter Hunt, CEO Hewshott International: “The rate of change is accelerating. The rate of change that has historically been undertaken within the corporate sector or in the client sector has always been one of concepts and ideas, followed by a pilot, followed by learning lessons, followed by pilot No.2; and then a long period of thinking about whether they roll it out; how they roll it out; when they roll it out; and into which offices it will go.

“One thing that this this crisis has taught us is that actually that’s not necessary. Actually, what’s necessary is to bite the bullet and adopt the change and make it happen. And those companies which have done that, the rate of change that they’re seeing in their business is accelerating. Those sorts of organisations that do roll these changes out quickly; they’re the ones that are leading; they’re the ones that are in front.

“But then, they now leave a void in the wake of that change. There’s a group of people, of which we are one, that needs to provide the goods and the services to facilitate that for them. And that then has implications for who they trust to help them make those decisions.

Is the supply chain geared to supply equipment quickly enough? Is the historic Just-In-Time delivery model good enough anymore? Or do manufacturers and an integrators need to be holding stock so they can move quickly? Those are the challenges which I think we as an industry face, because the client side is going to continue to push things quickly because they’ve had experience of that now and they don’t want to go back to the way it was.

“I read an article recently where it talks about decision makers in businesses and how concerned they are about making the wrong decision for their business. So one of the benefits of what we’re going through is that people can be forgiven for making a decision which may not be perfect, because it’s a better decision than not doing anything. The other thing is that there’s solid research out there that shows you that between 20 and 60 percent of people in decision making roles are actually concerned about their future in the business they work for. So think about the people you’re dealing with: if half of them are worried about their jobs one of the things that’s going to cement their job suddenly becoming dispensable is making the wrong decision. And so we as an industry need to rally around these people and provide them with some support and some assistance and markets intelligence — all the things that we’re good at — to help them make the right decision to protect their position in their company and therefore protect our relationship with them.

“It’s a multi-faceted conundrum that we’re all in at the moment. But the one thing that is absolutely for certain is that the adoption rate has changed. And I think it’s changed forever. I don’t think we’re going to go back to a time when corporations sit on their hands for two years while they analyse technology because they’ve experienced what happens when they get on with it.”

This is an excerpt from a webinar organised by Sennheiser Australia.