AV In The AM Response for 3/10/2019 - Technology Roadmap

I'm writing this to avoid multiple multi-post threads on #AVinTheAM from Twitter this morning. The topic is developing a roadmap for your client, who should be involved and what should be a part of it.

The first question deals with do you create a roadmap or is it handed to you by the client. The answer to this is both. Ideally you should work together with the client who has at least some vague ideas of what they would like to do, and help them distill that down into a plan for their systems. In a larger operation, that is basically taking the current rooms and bringing them up to a current standard. There may be some issues like a discontinued product here or there as you go along those 5 years, but there is usually a replacement that just has a couple more features that will fit right in. Other than infrastructure it is almost useless to try to predict new technology. If you really want to try to help yourself, you pull shielded Cat6 and fiber to each endpoint. That covers just about every possible variation of what could be placed at that endpoint, and from there it's just a box swap if you need a new input like a USB-C or something like that. Trends come and go, and trying to build a roadmap around them will lead you to the insane asylum.

The second question is who from your internal team would be involved in the creation of the roadmap, and how important is historical data in formulating that map. For me, that's a salesperson and an engineer. The salesperson is the face of the company to your client, and the engineer is there to make sure the system actually will do what it's being sold to do. Five years is about the time most companies that I've seen would take before a tech refresh, so as I said in the previous answer it's pretty much building a company's portfolio of rooms up to a current standard, and then starting that process over again after 5 years on the latest standard. And as always, the salesperson presents the roadmap as they are the main client facing person from the integrator, but the engineer should be there if technical questions arise, or questions about integrating with IT systems come up.

The third question involves adding marketing, training, and outreach to your roadmap. No, yes, no, in that order. You're already in, you don't need marketing and outreach at that point. You want to keep the conduit to and from the customer focused or else details will get lost. If you bombard the customer with info from many different directions, they can get overwhelmed and will probably go for someone who makes the process easier. Training is an ongoing issue, and needs to be addressed. Turnover at the client's facility especially requires you to hold training more than just at the end of the installation. Also, if you find you're holding training on a certain topic over and over, that can expose a design flaw that needs to be corrected in future versions of the systems. Training topics that are requested are a great feedback tool for engineers to see where the system has flaws and what needs to happen going forward.

The fourth question is about proprietary vs open systems. This really is a question of what's the best fit for the customer. I prefer an open system with many options, but sometimes it's best to standardize on a more proprietary setup. In UC you want it to be open and standards based to provide the most cross over with other systems and keep the communication open. If an endpoint doesn't have multiple ways to join a conference call, you should probably look at another end point.

The final question deals with catalog rooms. The answer is yes, you absolutely should have standardized room types for a customer, that are easy to deploy and you know will work the way they want with little extra training. Most rooms will fall into a couple types, and from there you can identify the real custom rooms that need to happen and devote resources to them.