Each year, in an effort to stay on point, we work with the NSCA board of directors and countless others in the NSCA community to identify top priorities.
Integrators continue to have lots of reasons for optimism. Customers across every market covet the solutions that NSCA members offer. So many organizations need better communication, connectivity and security, as well as the general confidence that they’re providing their own employees and customers with efficient, safe and healthy environments. The sky is the limit for integrators in the remainder of this year.
But NSCA’s role isn’t solely to validate optimism. Although opportunities are great, profitability continues to be tenuous. The 2024 priorities presented here reflect a focus on helping NSCA members navigate opportunities cautiously, strategically and profitably.
Our resources, events, consultation and strategic planning are all designed to help integration companies thrive. NSCA — all of our staff, board members, volunteers and trusted partners — stands ready to address the most pressing issues you face. We want to make you aware of the valuable work going on at NSCA and, even more importantly, how it will affect your business.
This year, we’re committed to enhancing and developing the best business climate possible for your company. Our 2024 agenda focuses on the following key areas:
Optimizing Intelligent Risk-Taking
NSCA members face many forks in the road. Is this a good project, or is it a profit-killer? Is our demanding new customer worth the resources that they require? What is our role in the mergers and acquisitions market? Should our company be pursuing new customer opportunities? What investments are necessary to support them? Is a new hire worth it?
These decisions have a major impact on propelling companies forward versus setting them back. NSCA aims to help member companies become better at logical decision-making, as well as weighing risks versus rewards.
Through the breakout sessions at the Business & Leadership Conference (BLC), as well as by using NSCA’s Financial Analysis of the Industry report, NSCA wants to help members better understand things like margins, backlog and sales funnels. Then, members can utilize logical planning to avoid missteps, while optimizing growth.
Continually Improving Leadership Skills
Running an integration company wouldn’t be easy in any era. However, it’s increasingly challenging as integration leaders contend with what amounts to chaos.
How can leaders budget for what they can’t anticipate? How can they deal with chaos related to continuous staff training in a desperate effort to keep pace with fast-evolving technology? How can they maintain a strong company culture, pride and high accountability standards when so many employees require remote or hybrid-work flexibility?
Each day brings turmoil, making it difficult to find clarity. NSCA aims to elevate its support for integration company leaders, starting with leadership-focused sessions at BLC and extending throughout the year. A highlight will be a soon-to-be-launched leadership peer group and education program. After all, leadership focus is required to seize the great opportunities that this market presents to integrators.
Developing Next-Gen Talent and Leadership
Year in and year out, integrators recognize the need for new talent — both technical and back-office talent — as well as the development of future company leaders. This doesn’t make our industry unique, but we are uniquely challenged with a wide generation gap between those who worked so hard to elevate integration companies and the next generation of leaders who will follow them.
This year, NSCA is doubling down on developing next-generation talent. Our soon-to-launch Excellence in Business Operations (XBO) event leverages Next-Generation Academy principles to lead next-gen leadership discussions. This is unlike any other NSCA event: It’s a conference that is planned and led by the next generation for next-generation attendees.
Webinar: What Do Next-Generation Integration Leaders Need?
Meanwhile, our Ignite career awareness and internship programs will be highly prioritized this year. These goals are twofold: They’re not just about breaking through the industry bubble and hiring new and diverse individuals but also about NSCA supporting these individuals’ track to company and industry leadership.
Inspiring Code, Regulation and Compliance Vigilance
Your trade association is already seeing a steady stream of proposed laws and regulations this year that could potentially limit an integrator’s right to provide limited-power solutions (Power-over-Ethernet) to customers.
NSCA won’t let up in leading members through these challenges and working with the Connected Technologies Industry Consortium to advocate on behalf of the industry. In addition to limited-power regulations, NSCA tracks bills related to cybersecurity, school safety (in conjunction with the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools, or PASS K-12), sustainability to help integrators play a bigger role in creating healthy buildings and other subjects. Use NSCA’s portal to track legislation that might affect your business.
Providing Financial Leadership Support and Resources
In order for profitability to be achieved, integration companies’ financial leaders have never been more important. They need to take hard stances and set standards to make sure that projects have a chance to be profitable. They need to de-risk proposals.
Many integrators entered this year with strong backlogs. That opportunity elevates the need for an integration company’s financial leadership to be empowered to make sure these opportunities are indeed opportunities, rather than double-edged, profit-killing swords. NSCA will continually provide guidance on this topic through BLC, skills training, roundtable discussions and, perhaps most importantly, our recently released updated Financial Analysis of the Industry report, which provides industry-specific metrics that will help create business rules and put valuable KPIs in place.
Staying in Step with the Pace of Change
As well equipped as NSCA integrators are to evolve along with customers’ evolving needs, it’s still daunting to deal with today’s meteoric pace of change. Needs are changing and escalating. AI relevance is emerging. On the business side, integrators face challenging choices when it comes to margin erosion, compliance issues, industry consolidation, interest rates and much more.
Through training at BLC; monthly webinars and roundtables; our quarterly trade journal, Integrate; our recently updated Guide to State Licensing; articles by our Emerging Technologies Committee; and the new XBO event, NSCA continues to challenge members to position themselves to solve customers’ evolving business needs.
We want to thank our valued members who regularly leverage us for business resources, advice, data, news and workflow tools. We’re honored to help you manage issues that affect your organization, and we’re proud to be your voice in matters that affect our industry. NSCA is privileged to be the association you rely on for direction and guidance. We are your voice, your business resource and your trusted advisor.
Tom LeBlanc is the executive director of NSCA. To learn about becoming an NSCA member, visit NSCA.org.
