How will your integration company stay relevant when the technology, talent, customer expectations and business models shaping the market may look different very soon?
That question should be top of mind for every industry business leader, and it’s exactly what NSCA’s 30th annual Business & Leadership Conference (BLC) will address on Feb. 23 to 25, 2027, in Irving, Texas.
What follows is a preview of the conversations that BLC 2027 will bring to the forefront, as well as the business disciplines that leaders must strengthen when relevance is a moving target.
From Disruption to Practical Action
AI will be a major part of the conversation as a business issue that demands leadership attention. Its impact could reach from how customers evaluate technology partners to how integrators estimate jobs, manage projects, communicate with clients and forecast results.
As AI’s capabilities and uses evolve, BLC will help leaders think about how to use it with intention: identifying where it can create meaningful gains, where safeguards and process changes are necessary and how it could alter the services for customers.
The opportunity is to make smarter decisions about where AI fits, how employees use it and how it can strengthen the value integrators deliver to customers — and BLC 2027 will help leaders turn those decisions into practical next steps.
Building a Company That Can Scale
For many integrators, growth creates a familiar challenge: knowledge, authority and customer responsibility remain concentrated in a few key people.
That makes it difficult to expand without overloading top performers and other team members.
BLC 2027 will explore how companies can move beyond these models to build organizations with deeper leadership benches, clearer processes, stronger accountability and more effective succession plans.
Companies in growth mode need to retain and develop employees, define meaningful career pathways and align their people strategy with business goals. But they also need to account for a changing skill mix.
As customer needs expand, firms will increasingly need expertise in IT, networking, programming, software and data alongside traditional technical capabilities.
BLC 2027 will examine how leaders can build the people, structure and leadership capacity required to grow without depending on a small number of individuals.
Turn Execution Into a Growth Advantage
Relevance depends on the ability to execute profitably. But growth can magnify weak processes.
Companies that establish strong operational discipline are better positioned to protect project margins, make better decisions earlier and deliver a more consistent customer experience.
BLC will help leaders focus on operational disciplines that enable integrators to understand where project margins erode and create more predictable outcomes.
Discussions will address practical areas to give leaders visibility and control to grow without sacrificing profitability, execution quality or customer trust.
Value Beyond the Transaction
As integrators look for new ways to grow, managed services and recurring revenue remain central to the conversation. But recurring revenue requires a meaningful offering, appropriate price, a focus on customer outcomes and the internal capability to deliver.
This also affects how sales teams engage. The strongest opportunities increasingly depend on moving beyond product-oriented transactions and toward consultative relationships.
Becoming a strategic technology partner will thus require changes in sales, operations, compensation and customer communications — and that’s what we’ll discuss at BLC 2027.
Put Relevance Into Action
No integration company can stand still while the market changes around it.
BLC 2027 will bring together critical conversations through practical education, peer perspectives and business-focused problem solving.
Register now at NSCA.org/blc.
Tom LeBlanc is executive director at NSCA. To learn more about becoming an NSCA member, go to NSCA.org.
