Commercial Integrator December 2021 - 20

INTEGRATOR OF THE YEAR
Culture Sets Logic Integration Apart
Aside from service and a solid background of both commercial and residential
projects, Colorado-based audiovisual service provider Logic Integration prides itself
on its culture and management style built on a foundation of trust.
Making sure his employees enjoy coming to work is an important part of founder
and CEO Shawn Hansson's job, the business owner told Commercial Integrator.
Culture is so important to him that the company has hired an outside consultant to
study the company's culture and core values.
" We've always had a mission and vision and all that kind of stuff, but it's about
getting everybody to actually know what it is and why we're doing it, " Hansson says.
The company leader makes regular employee engagement and team
bonding a priority, with group outings to Moab, Utah for an ATVing excursion
and sumo suit wrestling just a few recent examples of how the company values
building what Hansson calls
a " killer culture. "
To understand why the
company operates this way,
one needs to only look at
Hansson's career path. He
grew up as an audiophile
working in a recording studio,
started fixing computers and
was offered a job in the residential
market in California.
The company then moved to
Denver, but two months later,
the owner couldn't afford
payroll, so Hansson took a
job at another AV installer.
However, he soon found out that the company was dishonest, installing used
equipment at new prices. When a customer complained about malfunctioning
equipment, Hansson told the customer the truth.
That customer - along with several others - told Hansson that they would give
him business if he left the company and started his own. So, he did.
That focus on culture has even led the company to be a bit picky when deciding
to pick up a new customer. According to Hansson, the company studies a potential
customer's online reviews from Google and Glassdoor to learn about their culture.
Without naming names, Hansson says the company has told some of its customers
to look elsewhere for AV services after seeing how they treat IT staff and other
employees.
" It's been hard, " Hansson says. " Some of these customers generate some pretty
decent revenue, but man, when they start telling at your staff and you have a miserable
IT manager over there, it's time to cut them loose. "
The COVID-19 pandemic gave the company a chance to step back and focus on its
employees rather than constant growth at the expense of its employees' wellbeing.
That has included opening up the company's books to its employees and setting
up some profit-sharing opportunities designed to help employees buy-in to managed
services and recurring revenue contracts.
" We're stepping back from COVID to focus on that instead of grow, grow, grow, "
Hansson says. " Ultimately, we all want a place that we enjoy working at. I think
sometimes we can be driving the top line so much that we lose track of that. "
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Commercial Integrator DECEMBER 2021
tion, the company was built on the residential
market, so it was more than ready
to meet the demand for new technologies
that customers were asking for while they
hunkered down at home.
On the strength of Logic Integration's
residential foundation, the pandemic
keeping people at home, and a partnership
with a production builder, the company's
residential business has grown by about
15% this year.
Commercial, meanwhile, has not fared
as well, with renewal contracts and state
government work providing some stability
for the company.
Like any other integration firm with a
strong corporate client base, videoconferencing
systems and related upgrades have
also provided some cushion.
The company is finding that there isn't
much demand for a residential-commercial
crossover for videoconferencing systems,
save for some high-level executives who
require robust conferencing capabilities in
their home offices.
Like any other technology solutions
provider, supply chain issues are wreaking
havoc to project timelines. However, that
hasn't had an impact on the company's
workload, as there are projects booked
through the new year.
" We haven't had anybody go home early, "
Hansson says. " We're definitely still busy. "
A Commitment to Service
The pandemic gave the company the
opportunity to refocus, which included
looking at the company's customers from
the past few years and sorting them by
profitability. That helped identify where
the revenue opportunities were and where
their efforts could be shifted.
That refocusing effort also included more
investment in the company's managed services
and recurring revenue. That included
shifting recurring revenue operations to a
more secure and automated platform, but
also growing the service department.
" Our service department has tripled in
size and revenue, " Hansson says.
The company decided early on in
its commercial venture that its service
department would have to be top notch
to respond to any concerns or outages at a
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Commercial Integrator December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Commercial Integrator December 2021
