The continued emergence of IT in the A/V world offered some good lessons for a record-setting crowd of more than 230 people at the recent 13th annual NSCA Business & Leadership Conference, many of whom have already started applying them at their firms.

While much of the discussion during the conference focused on how integrators can thrive in an environment becoming increasingly touched by the IT world, some believe IT has already fully infiltrated the A/V marketplace and it’s time to embrace that.

Make Way for IT
Kelly McCarthy, president of Genesis Integration Inc. in Edmonton, Alberta, plans to up his company’s representation at next year’s BLC after bringing home a couple of key nuggets from this year’s discussions.

“The IT industry is the 900-pound gorilla that companies across all scopes of the low-voltage industry are having to deal with,” he says. “There were two events at BLC that identified keys to growing with the IT industry. The first thing that I learned from the Paul Cronin session is partnering. We have been the wheel for a very long time and now we are going to have to learn to become a cog in the wheel. That is a very difficult concept for most people in our business who are used to owning their customers.

“The second thing that we learned about IT from the ‘Beer and Bull’ session is that the distribution model is changing and will continue to do so. There is a business efficiency reason for this change so figure it out and figure out where we plug in,” McCarthy says.

Kourtney Govro, vice president at All Systems Designed Solutions, Inc. in Kansas City,  says her firm, which caters to health care, corporate/industrial, education, and government clients, has been working toward the IT-centric model for five years.

“It has changed to an IT world and we have to accept that,” she says. “We’re in an IT-centric world right now.”

Govro was joined at the 2011 BLC by her brother, All Systems president Gary, and her father Gary Sr., the firm’s CEO. She’s become a big fan of the annual economic discussion at the conference and always enjoys the networking opportunities.

“I saw this year as less about doom and gloom and more about opportunities,” Govro says. “This is the time for us to begin applying innovation to what we’ve been doing.”

First-time attendee Allen Allen, director of integration services at Technology for Education in Hewitt, Texas, was pleased to learn that many of the best practices being bandied about during the conference have been in place as his firm has moved from a cabling and IT focus to full integration over the past three years.

“It wasn’t a lot the heartbreak stories you usually hear,” he says. “I found myself in a group of people who are successful and that made for a good discussion.”

At Technology for Education, owners sit with all 85 or so employees individually each year and talk about the direction of the company, where things can improve and how. That process takes about a month, he says. This year, the owners also reached out to about a dozen clients and eschewed typical comment cards for face-to-face sessions.

“It’s not so much about technology as it is about the relationship with the client, the employee and the co-worker,” Allen says.

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D. Craig MacCormack

Craig MacCormack is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years experience covering local and national news and sports as well as architecture and engineering. He joined Commercial Integrator in January 2011. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigMacCormack.

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