In today’s experience-driven landscape, audiovisual systems are key to helping brands create exciting environments that engage customers, increasing the amount of time they spend in-location. How do you ensure that your system installations are being properly specified, are standardized for consistency, and optimized for performance, value, and longevity?
- Get a tailored solution for your needs
A unique system design should be developed for every location, taking the venue size, layout, materials/finishes, and budget into consideration, as well as your desired performance expectations and functionality requirements. We often see systems sold to brands that aren’t in alignment with the experience they are looking to create or have not been optimized for their specific locations. All aspects of a properly designed system should work together as a truly integrated solution.
- Simplify the procurement process
Sourcing the right equipment for an audiovisual system install can be difficult, especially when supply chain disruptions arise. Getting equipment to the right places on time adds even more complexity. Look for partners who have strong, direct relationships with manufacturers and buying power that drives preferential pricing that can be passed on to their customers. This helps ensure you’re getting the best pricing on the equipment that fits your needs, on-time delivery, and ongoing warranty and direct product support.
- Start thinking about content early
The audio and/or visual content playing in your location is a critical piece of the experience that will be immersing your customers. Having a plan for how your content is developed, both creatively and operationally, how content is delivered and scheduled for playback, and how content updates/refreshes are managed go-forward plays a key role in the success of any deployment. Visual content is often adapted from other assets and may need to be reformatted to correctly fit different types and sizes of displays, or may need to be created from scratch. Audio content may need to sync with the visuals or could be specially curated music playing from a separate service, like Apple Music for Business. Get ahead by making sure you have connected with the appropriate internal teams and establish a processes to manage your content strategy. You can also save time and cost by engaging a vendor who can fully-manage all aspects of creative strategy, asset formatting, audiovisual integration, and ongoing content management.
- Seek deep experience with installations at scale
Managing build schedules and meeting milestone targets are critical to a successful installation. Missed deadlines often create scheduling nightmares when needing to coordinate across multiple vendors and many smaller systems integrators lack the ability to manage concurrent, national or global installations. Ensure the partner you work with has a history of managing deployments and installations at scale, from 100s to 1000s of locations, to give you confidence that they have the necessary operational resources and project management skills. Even a smaller regional company in growth mode can benefit from their expertise, structure, and organization, to implement standards and scalable processes for growth.
- Choose always available customer service
Do you get frustrated when you have a problem and can’t seem to reach a person? Or get feedback from your teams that they can’t get timely responses from one of your vendors? The last thing you or your location teams want is to not have anyone available to help when an issue arises, leaving them helpless. Insist that your partner has global 24/7/365 customer service through a variety of channels – phone, email, and live chat. A dedicated client manager is also key, giving you the confidence that there is always a go-to person for your requests with full knowledge of your brand’s account.
Interested in learning more? See how you can bring your brand to life with high-performance installations.
