6 Integration Firms the Entire Industry Can Learn From

Bold decisions, rethinking project management, sticking with custom roots and reevaluating everything about the integration business, we look back at a year’s worth of CI Profiles.

CI Staff

‘Custom’ Isn’t Dead

After covering two firms that epitomize a willingness to change, covering Toronto-based Westbury National may have been our nod to the concept of knowing what you are and being great at it.

“Our strength has always been our technical capability and our technical expertise,” says Brock McGinnis, sales manager at Westbury since 1998 and part of a three-person leadership team that includes director of design and engineering Andrew Foord and systems installation manager Guy Wallace.

During a time when many integration firms are focused on creating more repeatable, some say “cookie-cutter” solutions, Westbury has a different approach.

When it responds to requests for proposals or submits bids on projects it finds intriguing, one thing is consistent: the company will never be the lowest bidder, and that’s exactly the way they want it.

westbury national

“There are two prices to a customer: the price of the system, which is what they pay for that system; and the cost of the system, which is what it costs to use the system for its life,” says McGinnis. “A better engineered system using better hardware is going to cost the customer less over time.

“Technology is changing so fast and AV systems that don’t have flexibility are very expensive. We like to assume products will become obsolete simply by changes in consumer behavior. People want to use familiar devices and familiar systems. We [AV integrators] made them so complicated just because we could. Simplicity is also more reliable.

“We strive to thoroughly engineer, plan, test and program systems before installing them on site. This narrows the number and type of problems we’re forced to solve at the last minute,” he says.

Foord adds that Westbury knows before getting involved whether they should bother bidding on projects.

“If we’re only competing on price, we may take a pass,” he says. “Sometimes it’s a simple matter of executing on the timeline of a project.”

A lot of Westbury’s work comes through the interior design channel, says McGinnis. The company prides itself on not being a cookie-cutter solutions provider.

“We’re not one-size-fits-all,” says McGinnis. “No two clients want the system to do the same thing. They tell us what they want, we tell them what’s possible, then we agree on the scope of work.”

Lesson: The “race to the bottom” is voluntary, and some firms are able to rise above it.

Read Westbury National’s entire CI Profile here.

        Return to

Page 2

        for more on Synergy Media Group
        Return to

Page 3

        for more on Unified AV Systems
        Go on to

Page 5

        for more on Casaplex
        Go on to

Page 6

        for more on Genesis Integration
        Go on to

Page 7

      for more on Dasnet

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our digital newsletters!