In 2021, the road goes through a new AV landscape – is your business ready for the journey?
By Frank Papayianis, President, Atlantis Partners
Every year on the AV calendar, the “road to InfoComm” is a busy one for Atlantis Partners, as the big show looms large in the spring. We don’t “exhibit” at InfoComm, we’re power attendees so to speak, as well as committed AVIXA members year-round. But like many of you reading this, the show is crucial to our business – some of us can meet with more AV industry folks that week than in the rest of the year combined. Not only is the event important in its own right, but the “road” to get there is, figuratively speaking, an exercise in business planning for the entire first half of the year, and beyond. I’ll be sharing AV industry lessons learned along the way, in this new series of AV industry thought leadership articles on the “road to InfoComm.” (And let me know your thoughts – we’re anxious to know your thoughts.)
This year like any, the “road to” InfoComm is important – in fact more important this year than ever. The fact that we’re looking at
A slightly different InfoComm this year – in a very different part of the year – underscores the need for a new, and better, kind of business planning for a changed pro AV landscape.
2021 is now in the midst of a new mini-boom, for AV equipment procurement and AV installation, but careful planning is needed to grow your company while mitigating risk. Good news is, the late-in-the-year InfoComm gives us all an opportunity to focus on this new boom all spring and summer, with no distractions. What are we busy doing, at Atlantis Partners, on this new and now busy road that spring ‘21 has opened up?
Atlantis Partners is growing, and actively hiring highly skilled AV pros. The U.S. economy needs AV professionals in 2021 more than ever. The only bottlenecks you might see in the AV market this year are due the historical lack of market-smoothing mechanisms. What does that mean? It’s an economist’s way of saying: in the past, in AV, it’s been a challenge to get the right people to the right AV installation at the right time – nationwide. So yes, our response to that challenge: we’re ramping up. But this is about more than just a “we’re hiring” message, it’s really about the broader picture: there is more opportunity this year to create a more national AV installation strategy. We’re on the front lines, and have the resources to do that, to help your AV integration firm ramp up for jobs.
Training: The importance of product and installation training in the AV installation market has done nothing but grow and become more urgent over the past 10 years. Key drivers have been compressed timelines on job cycles and installation windows on the job site, and rapidly evolving technology categories such as DvLED (direct view LED) that are trickier to install correctly – on time and on budget. The new reality? The industry needs more and better training for AV technicians. And the pandemic only fast-tracked all those trends. The bottom line for 2021: we’re doing more and more product installation training. We recently hosted and conducted major AV product/solution training sessions at our Fairfield, N.J. headquarters, and we’re already planning more training sessions for the rest of the year.
Circling back to InfoComm – and in a larger sense, AVIXA itself. We’re super-involved in more ways than just keenly anticipating and planning for the big show in October. One example, and an important one: our involvement in the AVIXA Independent Technical Service Providers Council. One of Atlantis Partners’ key execs, Mark DelGuidice, is in fact the Chair of the ITS Council this year. He works year-round in the volunteer position (that he was elected to) to organize, promote, and execute the goals of the Council, which serves AVIXA member companies that provide “technical services” to other AV companies. (Atlantis Partners is of course a good example of that: we provide labor/tech services to AV integrators – and there are a growing number of companies that provide services of other kinds to AV companies. The AVIXA Independent Technical Service Providers Council is indeed getting more attention, more urgency, coming out of a disrupted year, and it’s doing good things for the industry. And that leads into one of the more fun reminders on the “road to InfoComm”: Mark and the ITS Council and AVIXA are planning a reception at the InfoComm show in Orlando, to take place Wednesday afternoon, 4pm, Oct. 27 – when the first day of the show floor is wrapping. In fact AVIXA/InfoComm is producing the reception, which is jointly hosted by three AVIXA Councils: the ITS Council, the Systems Integrator Council, and the Consultants Council. If you’re headed to Orlando in October, don’t miss it – we’ll see you there!
Normally in May, Atlantis Partners execs would be getting ready to saddle up for the trek to Orlando or Vegas. Instead, we’re gearing up on all fronts, nationally, in a busy year that is challenging all of us to step up our game. Stay tuned: I’ll be sharing AV industry lessons learned along the way, in this new series of AV industry thought leadership articles on the “road to InfoComm.” (And let us know your thoughts, about your lessons learned.)
Frank Papayianis is President, Atlantis Partners, headquartered in Fairfield, New Jersey, and with offices nationwide. Atlantis Partners provides expert AV & IT installation contract manpower to technology AV systems integrators.