“2022 is our ten year anniversary; how gratifying to have been part of the SCN Top 50 since our Day One,” said Theresa Hahn, USIS AV’s VP of Client Success. “Our AV Principals, Bill Baretz and Todd Hutchins, had a specific vision for what our place in the market would represent: a client AND employee obsessed integrator delivering brilliant experiences to both sides of the integration equation. Our rank at #29, within only ten years of launch, is a direct credit to the commitment and strength of our teams.”

 

 

SCN has published its Top 50 AV Integrators since 2006. The annual list continues to be a soft metric of the commercial audio visual industry’s health. Rankings are based on voluntary submissions by national integrators reporting indicators such as company size, revenue, and year-over-year growth, to establish an industry snapshot.

 

 

As part of the feature, USIS AV was also invited by SCN Editors to share insights on the industry, markets, challenges, and technology:

 

 

Q: What technologies have exhibited the most growth for you 2022?

 

 

The industry has adopted fully agnostic AV over IP hardware and software solutions. This technology environment lends itself to routable USB over LAN which in it of itself has become a very large requirement since the pandemic hit. Adding these devices onto networks has also created a more usable and realistic requirement for Remote Monitoring, Diagnostics & Troubleshooting Software in any AV/technology environment.

 

 

Q: What vertical markets have exhibited the most growth for you 2022?

 

 

We have seen substantial growth in AV buildouts for amenities spaces. These are large conference centers in mostly urban centers, funded by the building owners versus a particular tenant, offered as value added to building tenants and outside clients. These are being fully fitted out with AV equipment versus the use of rental companies.

 

 

 Q: What do you expect to be the biggest challenges for your company in 2023?

 

The pandemic fallout continues to present supply chain challenges, as well as the voluminous need for manpower scalability. Supply chain delays can result in slowed project completion, further compounded by peak project levels. We’ve moved ‘almost-instant’ resource scalability to the forefront of our strategic planning, allowing us, as best as possible, to adapt to client needs while juggling our industry’s resource crunch in manpower and hardware availability.

 

 

Q: Has your company returned to “normal” operations?

 

 

“Normal” is rather subjective, highlighted by the fact it’s now often written in quotes (see above). I think our emphasis switched to “extraordinary operations” somewhere between pandemic, supply chain shortages, and talent wars. Are we delivering projects, increasing our workforce, building a company? Yes. Are we doing it the way we did in 2019? We are not. Challenges have inspired better ways of thinking, more efficient ways of working, and highly creative solutions, at a rate much faster than we would have during “normal” operations.

 

 

What do you think will be the hottest technology trends in 2023?

 

Amplified by hybrid work models, devices that can be managed and supported remotely and as a segment, managed services overall, which we’ve seen from manufacturers more now than ever before. Organizations where employees are not at a physical space full time, create strong use cases for proactive monitoring and resolution to combat issues before they have a negative impact or require someone to be onsite. Another growth area will be computer-based control systems where we might see the slowdown of centralized control and more and more technologies like BYOM, BYOD, etc.

 

 

How has the pandemic changed your company’s workflows or policies?

 

I believe more effort is required to stay connected now. We’ve always had a percentage of remote employees, so it wasn’t a complete culture change. However, when entire departments were pushed to remote, it was a challenge we had to work at. It has been the incidental issues we’ve had to overcome, such as spontaneous collaboration when someone stops by a teammate’s office to ask a question and walks away with an immediate answer. We’re more deliberate and dependent on schedules now, which as an organization is efficient, while at the same time finding creative ways to nurture unstructured innovation.

 

 

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