Labor Services in the New Decade

As we enter the new decade the landscape for labor continues to evolve for AV integrators. 

The challenges remain the same; how many technicians do I need to both maintain and grow my business? How can I compete if I am smaller in size but actually have the “smarts and parts” to otherwise compete?

The answer to both is outsource!

In the (20)20’s, we are clearly in the throes of the gig economy, and the field of AV labor is no exception. Many technicians have chosen to freelance as opposed to work full-time on the staff of an integrator, which presents great opportunities for all involved.

The techs can be self-employed, and the business owners don’t have to deal with hiring, vetting, managing, and carry technicians on payroll.

A primary focus for the industry now is commonly referred to as AVaaS, or AV as a service. Leveraging outsourced labor is a great way to support these solutions, along with SLAs. If you are not building an annual recurring revenue stream for your business – please begin to now! 

Again, regardless of the size of your company, could you not benefit from having access to a nationwide footprint of technicians to allow you to service your clients, and support these contracts? In most instances you can outsource technicians to respond within 48 hours, and in some instances 24 hours, or even same day.

If you are a smaller integrator, you can now see how you can grow and create annual recurring revenue without managing your employees. If you are a larger integrator, you now have the ability to extend your support to an even wider client base, without losing a great lead who is onsite at a project – to a service call.What if you send a team out to install a project, but 6 months later that client requires a service call? What is the cost to send a tech on a plane, or extended drive – losing that tech as a resource for primary projects? Could you not benefit from a local tech – that effectively becomes “your tech” to provide consistent support to your client?

What if an existing local client is opening, or renovating an office 1,000 miles away? What you require is a site survey. Compare the cost of sending a tech of your own versus having access to a local tech who can not only provide that survey on an hourly basis (no travel/per diem), and then serve as a resource if needed on the install/upgrade? The benefit seems clear.

As summer approaches (being based in the Northeast – we think summer is coming in February), school projects become both an opportunity and a challenge. You are presented with a local school district looking to install a few hundred projectors or smartboards across several schools in a tight time frame. Your existing labor force cannot complete it. Do you pass, or do you call a partner who can provide you day rate AV techs to augment your team.

These are just a few examples of how important outsourcing labor is to both maintaining and growing your business.

There are many obvious concerns you have. Will the techs maintain the level of excellence you expect? How will they represent themselves? What are their skills? Do they have the required licensing, background/drug checks? Have they done this work before? Where do they come from?

All of the above are a part of the vetting process that must be in place when you seek a partner to help you with your outsourced labor needs. All must be addressed in advance to guarantee that the expectations of both you, and your client are met.

ALMO Labor services offer integrators skilled technicians to support they businesses in all aspects inlacing full project completions, nationwide rollouts, temporary labor, site surveys, and service calls. With a nationwide footprint, this enables dealers to take on more projects, reduce travel costs, support their service contracts, and more.

Jay Saret – ALMO Services Development Manager – East

The bottom line is – outsourced labor is a resource to consider to help grow and maintain your business. If you’ve not yet tried it – do so. Start small, and make sure you are vetting the partner that you choose to insure your success.

Here’s to a great 2020 (and beyond)!

To learn more about ALMO’s outsourced labor options, you can catch this on-demand webinar for more information. 

Jay Saret
888-420-2566 x6635  |  [email protected]

See what’s new from Panasonic Pro Displays

Have you heard about the new Panasonic CQ1 series of Professional displays?  Panasonic announced this new series of six (6) narrow bezel size options from 43, 50, 55, 65, 75, and 86 inches. They’ve integrated a unique feature such as, forward-tilting design (up to 20-degrees) for maintaining legibility when mounted in high places.  They have no-signal power off function in which power is turned off (standby) automatically when there is no signal for 10 minutes.  The Button Lock/RC control lock function prevents tampering and hijacking of the display.  This is can be a big plus when installed in public environments.  They do have brightness of 400cd/m2, 4k resolution and capable of supporting 4k/60p signals.

They are designed for 16-hours of continuous operation and support LAN, RS232C, and HDMI CED control to integrate easily into any environment.   These displays include built-in ATSC/NTSC/QAM tuner and integrated speakers, making them an ideal solution for corporate, education and sports bar applications.  Panasonic has backed them up with their 3 year Advance Swap Replacement standard warranty, too.  We have some already in our warehouse with more hitting at the end of September and larger sizes in October!  Contact me or your sales rep for pricing and promotional offers.

Angie Greene
Business Development Manager, CTS, DSCE

888-420-2566 x6209  |  [email protected]

Small Room. Big Benefits. Gain huge insight on small huddle space audio challenges and how to solve them.

Offices have been trending towards the “open office” model for quite some time, usually with one or two dedicated conference spaces. These spaces were usually large and most likely had use restrictions on them, sending the employees back to their open office to work on a project. This is a less-than-ideal situation because the open office environment introduces distractions and isn’t conducive to collaboration. Team members don’t want their meeting to disrupt their colleagues, so what’s a team to do?

Huddle rooms to the rescue!

Yes, we’ve heard and read about huddle rooms for a few years now. They certainly make sense for the scenario listed above. An easily accessible space for team members to meet, away from their colleagues, that fosters collaboration. Typically seating just 3-5 people, it’s an efficient use of available space. Remote workers cite a “more inclusive” feel when working with team members who are in a huddle room, as opposed to a large conference room, which has a more formal vibe.

 

How to make the huddle room a true collaboration workspace.

In addition to the huddle room as space in and of itself, it can provide additional functionality to the enterprise. By incorporating the right technology, the huddle room can transform into a true collaboration workspace for both local and offsite team members. Use of soft codecs within the enterprise affords the user greater flexibility for scheduling and meeting location. Technology in the huddle room should provide the same ease of use.

In a collaborative conferencing situation, team members may be moving around the room or at a whiteboard, with their backs to the camera and mic. The microphone on a typical laptop doesn’t provide adequate coverage of the room. It barely sounds acceptable when the user is on-axis to the mic. Horrible audio is fatiguing to the listener on the far end, and ultimately decreases productivity. The solutions should improve the audio fidelity coming from the room. Fortunately, Almo has a number of solutions to fit any budget and technical requirement.

 

We have the right products designed for huddle rooms.

AMX, part of the Harman group, offers the Acendo Vibe. Connected via USB or Bluetooth, the vibe has JBL onboard speakers and microphones, CEC control and the option of a 120-degree wide-angle camera.

The Biamp Devio was purpose-built for the huddle room. After running the system’s mic auto-setup, three 120-degree mic elements actively track the speaker in the room with incredible clarity. One USB cable connection from your computer is all that’s needed to push video to the local monitor, send audio to the monitor via HDMI, send to low-impedance speakers from its onboard 20-watt amp, or send the audio to a room system via line-level outputs. Connect the room’s telephone headset to the Devio and that extension can also bridge into the call. The Devio has USB connections for a camera and other peripherals as well. The company IT department can pull room usage information across the network via SMTP traps available within the Devio. An onboard web server as well as downloadable software allows configuration of the device.

And … don’t forget about local audio! Choose from a variety of speaker manufacturers and options from Atlas, JBL and TOA.

Questions? Give me a call! I’m available to help you with your project and answer questions you may have.

Steve Alexander, CTS, PCVE, CCNA
Business Development Manager 

888-420-2566 x6648  |  [email protected]

Why Audio in the Conference Room is NOT a One-Size-Fits-All Solution

These days, video conferencing is a daily activity. What was once the prevue of only “C suite” executives is now available to everyone in the organization.  Conference rooms are becoming ubiquitous, and come in all shapes and sizes. Small, medium, or large – each size conference room has its own set of challenges that require different types of AV integration products and solutions.

Let’s break this down a little:

  • Let’s start small—AKA the huddle room. It’s estimated that worldwide, the number of huddle room installs will be in the six-figure range over the next few years. Huddle rooms are smaller spaces where AV/IT infrastructure is minimal and BYOD is the norm. It’s a collaboration environment. Folks need the ability to easily connect their computer and share content locally as well as remotely. Biamp has the solution for the huddle space environment, the Devio. A one cable connection from your computer to the Devio is all that’s required. The heart of the system is its’ beam –tracking microphone, which follows the conversation around the room.Crystal clear audio anywhere in the room is possible, thanks to the auto-setup feature which calibrates the mic and audio with the acoustics of the room. Connect a USB camera to the device and HDMI output from the Devio to a monitor and you’re all set. Two models provide interface capability with existing phone systems via the rooms’ phone headset output. The Devio even has a Bluetooth enabled version. AMX also has a player in this space, the Acendo Vibe. Included are JBL speakers and mics and a wide-angle camera to see everyone in the room.

Did you know that Almo Pro A/V offers a SOUND OPTIONS audio sourcing and engineering group? SOUND OPTIONS gives accessibility to favorite audio brands and technical expertise all through a single resource. Learn more here.

  • Medium sized rooms, AKA the “GRANDE,” are the perfect candidate for the Phoenix Stingray. This distributed array auto-mixer features mic-line inputs and can be configured as a stand-alone SIP client. The unit can be daisy-chained to add additional mics. The device can bridge two audio calls from different interfaces, has direction-finding and beamforming software which provides the ability to steer the directionality of the devices’ microphones. Speaking of mics, Phoenix has a number of mics certified to work with the device, such as the AKG CHM 99 hanging mic and the Beyer Dynamic Revoluto RM 30.
  • Large rooms — AKA the “big boy/executive conference room,” requires products like the BSS Soundweb London family of DSP processors is the way to go. The unit can come in a fixed I/O configuration or as a chassis, with a number of signal processors and I/Os in a variety of networked-audio configurations and slots for a variety of input/output cards. Available protocols include Cobra-Net, Digital Audio Bus, Dante, and AVB. The units are configurable through HiQnet London Architect.

Conferencing Taiden, AKG, and Beyer Dynamic are designed specifically for the conference room space that requires chairman/delegate assignments, remote mic control, voting, and can incorporate simultaneous interpretation as well. These systems are found in the conference rooms of Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Taiden

AKG

Beyer Dynamic

In addition to these solutions, ALMO has the full line of Beyer Dynamic and AKG microphones, Ashly, Atlas, Crown, JBL amplification and speakers, Panasonic PTZ cameras, switchers, and a variety of video distribution options.

Small, medium, large…got a project in the works? Ring me up! We’d love the opportunity to help out!

 

Steve Alexander, CTS, PCVE, CCNA
Business Development Manager 

888-420-2566 x6648  |  [email protected]

 

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