Meet the 2016 CI Industry Leaders

CI recognizes the top integrators serving 11 key vertical markets and analyzes what keeps them at the top of their games.

CI Staff

One thing we, the editors of Commercial Integrator, have learned in our never-ending quest to understand what makes a successful integration firm is that it’s impossible to understand what makes a successful integration firm.

There are no two firms alike. There are no two customers alike. That, in a nutshell, is what makes the annual CI Industry Leaders our most satisfying editorial project of the year. At the core, it’s based on the premise that apples-to-apples comparisons aren’t possible in the integration industry.

A firm that is successful serving hotel customers doesn’t necessarily have much in common with a firm that kills it in the museum market. So our market-by-market CI Industry Leaders lists pay tribute to firms that completely understand their target customers and have built firms (or segments of their firms) that cater to their unique needs.

Meanwhile, in 2016 these industry-leading firms are adapting to how their customers’ and markets’ demands are changing rapidly. There are few firms like AVI-SPL and Whitlock, which have managed to build infrastructure and expertise to serve customers across almost every vertical market.

Most firms are more like Denmark-based Stouenborg, which is overwhelmingly focused on museum customers — and extremely good at it. As usual, we provide line-by-line data points on all of the 45 integration firms that participated in our 2016 CI Industry Leaders analysis.

We complement the statistical coverage with input from the firms deemed worthy of being followed. While we’ll never attain that goal to identify a formula that leads to success in a particular market, it’s easy to note that these 45 firms are customer-focused and take great pride in their processes. The other commonality: We can all learn a lot from them.

Click through the list below to meet the 2016 industry leaders in each vertical category.

Check out the complete report: Meet the 2016 CI Industry Leaders

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