Commercial Integrator + Security Sales May 2024 - 11

Continually Improving
Leadership Skills
Running an integration company wouldn't
be easy in any era. However, it's increasingly
challenging as integration leaders
contend with what amounts to chaos.
How can leaders budget for what they
can't anticipate? How can they deal with
chaos related to continuous staff training
in a desperate effort to keep pace with
fast-evolving technology? How can they
maintain a strong company culture, pride
and high accountability standards when
so many employees require remote or
hybrid-work flexibility?
Each day brings turmoil, making it difficult
to find clarity. NSCA aims to elevate its
support for integration company leaders,
starting with leadership-focused sessions
at BLC and extending throughout the year.
A highlight will be a soon-to-be-launched
leadership peer group and education
program. After all, leadership focus is
required to seize the great opportunities
that this market presents to integrators.
Developing Next-Gen
Talent and Leadership
Year in and year out, integrators recognize
the need for new talent - both technical
and back-office talent - as well as the
development of future company leaders.
This doesn't make our industry unique,
but we are uniquely challenged with a
wide generation gap between those who
worked so hard to elevate integration companies
and the next generation of leaders
who will follow them.
This year, NSCA is doubling down on
developing next-generation talent. Our
soon-to-launch Excellence in Business
Operations (XBO) event leverages
Next-Generation Academy principles to
lead next-gen leadership discussions. This
is unlike any other NSCA event: It's a conference
that is planned and led by the next
generation for next-generation attendees.
Meanwhile, our Ignite career awareness
and internship programs will be highly
prioritized this year. These goals are
twofold: They're not just about breaking
through the industry bubble and hiring
new and diverse individuals but also about
NSCA supporting these individuals' track
to company and industry leadership.
Inspiring Code, Regulation
and Compliance Vigilance
The trade association is already seeing
a steady stream of proposed laws and
regulations this year that could potentially
limit an integrator's right to bring limitedpower
solutions (Power-over-Ethernet) to
customers.
NSCA won't let up in leading members
through these challenges and working
with the Connected Technologies Industry
Consortium to advocate on behalf of the
industry. In addition to limited-power
regulations, NSCA tracks bills related to
cybersecurity, school safety (in conjunction
with the Partner Alliance for Safer
Schools, or PASS K-12), sustainability to
help integrators play a bigger role in creating
healthy buildings and other subjects.
Use NSCA's portal to track legislation that
might affect your business.
discussions and, perhaps most importantly,
our recently released updated
Financial Analysis of the Industry report,
which provides industry-specific metrics
that will help create business rules and
put valuable KPIs in place.
Staying in Step with
the Pace of Change
As well equipped as NSCA integrators are
to evolve along with customers' evolving
needs, it's still daunting to deal with
today's meteoric pace of change. Needs
are changing and escalating. AI relevance
is emerging. On the business side,
integrators face challenging choices when
it comes to margin erosion, compliance
issues, industry consolidation, interest
rates and much more.
Through training at BLC; monthly
We're honored to
help you manage
issues that affect your
organization, and we
are proud to be your
voice in matters that
affect our industry.
Supporting and Providing
Resources for Financial Leadership
In order for profitability to be achieved,
integration companies' financial leaders
have never been more important.
They need to take hard stances and set
standards to make sure that projects have
a chance to be profitable. They need to
de-risk proposals.
Many integrators entered this year with
strong backlogs. That opportunity elevates
the need for an integration company's
financial leadership to be empowered to
make sure these opportunities are indeed
opportunities, rather than double-edged,
profit-killing swords. NSCA will continually
provide guidance on this topic
through BLC, skills training, roundtable
webinars and roundtables; our quarterly
trade journal, Integrate; our recently
updated Guide to State Licensing;
articles by our Emerging Technologies
Committee; and the new XBO event,
NSCA continues to challenge members to
position themselves to solve customers'
evolving business needs.
We want to thank our valued members
who regularly leverage us for business
resources, advice, data, news and
workflow tools. We're honored to help you
manage issues that affect your organization,
and we're proud to be your voice in
matters that affect our industry.
NSCA is privileged to be the association
you rely on for direction and guidance. We
are your voice, your business resource and
your trusted advisor. CI
TOM LeBLANC is the executive director
of NSCA. To learn about becoming an
NSCA member, visit NSCA.org.
NSCA is offering training
on finance, sales, project
management and operations at
InfoComm 2024. If your team is
going to learn about products
and technology, you might as
well have them learn some strong
business skills, too!
Register at InfoCommShow.org.
May 2024 | Commercial Integrator+Security Sales & Integration
11
http://www.NSCA.org http://www.InfoCommShow.org
Commercial Integrator + Security Sales May 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Integrator + Security Sales May 2024
