ISE provides a unique opportunity for thought leaders to share their views andconnect on the issues defining our industry.
Should AV be more subscription based?
Anders Hørlyk Jørgensen, Stouenborg
The short answer is definitely no. From a client based point of view, if you purchase a product, you have purchased that product. Why do you need to subscribe to be able to open up the software? Why subscribe to multiple things? I don’t see the need from an end client perspective, so as a consultant, we don’t see that need, and we try to avoid the companies that do that if we are able to.
Jane Hammersley, Blue TouchPaper
The AV industry won’t exist unless we move into a more subscription based model. Let’s not think about selling hardware, let’s turn that on its head. Let’s sell the contracts, deliver a great solution and user experience for our customer. There’s going to be some great AV hardware that’s going to be needed to drive those contracts, so we must become more subscription based.
Dale Bottcher, AVI-SPL
100% yes. More and more, the things that we’re providing to our customers are standardised and simple. Our customers are looking for flexibility, repeatability, and we know that life cycles have dropped below five years in terms of life cycle refresh, so it 100% makes sense to have a Software-as-a-Service facing business.
Robert Bryhn, ZetaDisplay
Absolutely! The simple reason is that service offerings are much more beneficial for the customer. The opportunity to get the right solution for the right price over time and generating revenue while you're doing it, particularly in retail, is absolutely phenomenal. This is where we see the future.
Can AV work better together?
Helen Hawthorne, Zoom
The past year we have been really leaning into our partner community because it’s the only way that we can be a success. Working out what our customers need, what the environment needs, and what our partners need to make their own businesses sustainable as well. For me, it's about discussing what those new cases look like in our industry. There’s different areas we’ve been working onto give customers what they need, which isn’t just one-off solutions, but cross-collaboration across one pane of glass so that we can all work together. Using our platform to get together and making sure that we are all partnering with each other. There’s a big world of customers out there, and we need to work together to make it easy for them, not to get them looking around and figuring out where they need to go.
Bahir Omar, Arc Studios & Banan Masri, MaktabiTech
We are both working indifferent angles, but we found a great opportunity to collaborate and create a new animation studio in Riyadh. Hardware is everywhere, so how to make experiences with meaningful content and to curate that using the hardware? That’s the difficult part, and we feel that this is a great opportunity for us to create an animation studio tailored and made for the region by people in the region. As Bahir said, we want to sell a customer experience, not just a product that is installed on a wall. You need the hardware, the integration, and content is king. Without the content, you cannot ‘show’ it to the customer, so it is important to make alliances with companies in different aspects so that you can be a one stop shop for your customer. This is what we are aiming to do and we are being successful.
Jeaneth Robøle Mørum, Kinly
In our industry, there are several trends that we are seeing that are important. Right now, it’s centred around sustainability, security, and innovation. I think that, in order to become better together, we need to become much more open about our discovery, our results, our insights, so that we can learn from each other and raise the bar collectively.
Isidoro Ermocida, A&ITS
Collaboration is key to progress in AV. Working closely with IT teams improves system integration. While stronger partnerships between manufacturers, clients, and integrators lead to better solutions. Sharing knowledge through industry standards, forums, training, all help to improve the overall quality of AV solutions.
Sustainability: Want or need?
Layla Hede Jensen,ZetaDisplay
It’s a necessity. It’s like Nike: Just do it! We all talk about it, we hear about the greenwashing. I’m glad that we have ERD and ESG, because now we need to report on it. We are now basing everything on facts and figures rather than just stating “I’m sustainable.” The most important thing is having KPIs at executive level, driving the business to sustainability.
Vicky Fox, PPDS
With our partners, we’re finding that it’s both a want and a need. Sustainability is increasingly at the top of the agenda for partners, and we’re working very closely with them to bring different things to the market such as take back schemes and more sustainably focused products to give them as many ways as possible to help their customers to be more sustainable.
Jenny Hicks, Midwich Group
It’s happening whether you want it, need it, or not. What everybody needs to recognise is that, coupled with our obligations to the environment to be better human beings, there is also the incredible rise in the cost of energy in the last few years and reporting regulations. What’s happening in Europe will have a knock-on effect to the rest of the world. Products will be redesigned, they will ship differently and be made of different materials. They’ll also be friendlier to the planet when it’s time to be recycled, so whether you’re in a country that has requirements for reporting or not, the knock on effects to how we work are coming regardless.
Ross Noonan, LED Studio
I think it’s both a want and a need. There is a want to drive down running costs and carbon footprints, but there’s also a need to reduce material usage and the stress that we put on the planet. We believe we do it with innovation rather than things like recycled boxes and solar panels on factory roofs. If we can make innovations that hand on sustainable benefits to our customers, that’s the best way to do it. We’re doing that with our Eclipse, it’s designed to cut power consumption when screens are in standby to zero, and that’s one of the easiest ways to hand over energy savings and reduced carbon footprints.
Carlos Clerencia, TD Synnex Maverick
Sustainability is absolutely a need. Regulations are becoming stricter every day, and the resellers, end users, and the rest of the channel has to adapt to it. We are carrying out efforts to make it simple. We are working to make carbon monitoring and reporting easier for the resellers, easy for the channel, to accommodate this so that the end user can be responsible.
Kelly Bousman, AVI-SPL
We’re talking about going green or going bust. When I think of going green, I think of doing it for the good of mankind, but when we think about going bust, then we need to think about building a sustainable business model. If we want to build a sustainable business, we have to start by thinking of our customers. Sixty per cent of the largest publicly traded companies on the planet have climate pledges or strategies. Seventy-five per cent of the world’s countries have climate laws or pledges. Combined, that is 93% of the world’s GDP, so if you’re a company that wants to work with those companies and economies, then you better have a way to best support and help those companies achieve their measurable sustainability goals. If you don’t, your company will go bust.
What skills will integrators need in 2030?
Riccardo Agostini, A&ITS
AV systems integrators will need to improve the skills over IT networks, cloud based solutions, and as a consequence, cybersecurity. AV and IT are two worlds that are more strictly connected than ever before. Artificial intelligence automation will also help the customer with an easier way to use technology.
Khalid Alsheikh, MaktabiTech
There are plenty of skills to learn, but mainly IT and networking skills. More and more, we are converging with the IT industry more than anything else, so it is preferable that AV integrators on teams have the skills in networking and IT, as well as the other skills such as video blending, projection, or audio specialisations such as Dante, AVB, and so on.
Simon Watson, Kinly
There are a lot of new skills that we are going to have to develop in house, or go to market to discover. Those will be anything from security, which is becoming more important to the role of the AV integrator, sustainability to build managed services, and the big one that is XR immersive experiences and looking at the skillsets that need to be wrapped into them. This could be Unreal Engine programming, Notch programming, there are plenty of new skillsets that will need to be filled in the next five years.