Why Can’t A/V, IT Guys Just Get Along?

Integrators have to learn that the decision makers are changing as IT and A/V converge.

Consider this an intervention, because I don’t think commercial integrators recognize how out-of-hand the situation has gotten.

Ask a commercial integrator (CI) what it’s like to work with clients’ IT directors — a group that has evolved into typical point persons on commercial system integration projects — and you get really odd, passive-aggressive answers:

“They’re not bad.”
“It takes some getting used to.” 
“Some of them are good.”

It’s the sort of thing a dad might say about his son’s favorite rap artists. Well, it’s time to get over it. According to our State of the Industry research, an IT professional is the point person on 10 percent of projects. That figure would be a lot higher if we removed vertical markets in which an IT person is rarely involved, such as houses of worship and bars and restaurants. In corporate facilities projects — a category that includes office buildings, banks, etc. — IT directors edge out company owners, facility managers and chief technology officers as the most common point person on projects.

As the decision makers have changed, so have the system demands. Integrators can learn the easy way or the hard way, says Bradford Caron in our CI Profile on Signet Electronic Systems. The industry veteran readily admits that his company had to play catch-up after the convergence of IT and A/V. “There were a lot of problems,” he says of when his technicians weren’t on the same page as IT directors, and the problems would linger and create finger pointing.

Mark Coxon of Orange ProAV agrees that there are intricacies involved with working with IT directors. “If navigated properly they can be great allies. If handled incorrectly, they make IT your worst enemy to actually getting the job. IT people are very territorial in my experience. They are protective of their network, have definite opinions on technology, and can see A/V integrators as someone trying to do their job. Positioning ourselves as a part of their team, and proactively ‘involving’ them in A/V decisions can go a long way to help.”

Signet now expertly navigates the IT world using processes for integrated IP projects. It finds the client’s IT director and determines exactly how it set up its network and works within that framework. Not doing that, Caron says, basically led to unsatisfied clients. “The system would be crashing; a lot of errors would be popping up. [The client] would be pointing the finger at themselves and we didn’t know enough at the time to say it’s network-related and it’s how we set it up on your network. We learned the hard way. We got a few black eyes, but we learned that we have to have this information well before we even set foot on a job site to do work.”

Part of integration giant AVI-SPL’s solution to this issue has been hiring more IT certified technicians and giving its existing technicians IT training, according to Joseph Thomas. That, he says, bridges the communication gap between CIs and IT directors because they end up talking the same language.

OK, the intervention is over, but I would like to hear whether or not you think there is a communication gap between integrators and IT directors. If so, how have you handled it? Please set us straight in our CI Forum on this topic.