Commercial Integrator December 2021 - 21

INTEGRATOR OF THE YEAR
moment's notice, with a company requirement
that support calls are responded to in
less than five minutes.
According to Hansson, that is what sets
the company apart from its competitors.
" When someone spends half-a-million
dollars on AV and after the last check is
written, it's not a great feeling for them to
call their integrator with a question and not
get call you back for a few days, " he says.
In the midst of the pandemic, that commitment
to quality and timely service led to
upgrade projects and renewals with those
more profitable customers. Simple things
like software upgrades, projector cleaning
and other maintenance not only helped
the company retain the trust of its longtime
customers, but also helped to pad the
firm's revenue.
Hansson is eyeing 8% service growth
this year but is aiming even higher next
year at 15%.
The past two years have illustrated why
managed services and recurring revenue
are critical for any technology solutions
provider, with a healthy backlog of projects
no longer a certainty.
" Jobs come and go, and you're not going
to collect that money forever, " Hansson says.
Responding to an Inflection
Point in AV
As AV systems are increasingly deployed on
the network and managed via the cloud, AV
is now a subset of IT, with internal IT teams
increasingly taking it upon themselves to
deploy and manage audiovisual systems.
Hansson sees that occurring more often
now, with corporate clients enlisting their IT
departments to deploy their own conferencing
systems. That is especially true as margins
on hardware get slimmer and slimmer
and " black boxes " become a commodity.
" They could take a Crestron Flex and
they could put it online, go to the web
interface and go, 'Okay, I just need to name
this here,' " Hansson says. " That's definitely
a huge threat. "
Where integrators can continue to
provide value, however, is with a dedicated
service team that is highly specialized in
troubleshooting and fixing those systems.
In addition, those systems need to be
easy to use. That's where the company's
commercialintegrator.com
Customers' AV racks are built and programmed in the company's shop (above), making
its installation and service time lightning fast. One trademark of Logic Integration's work
is designing one-touch control solutions for large meeting spaces (below).
residential roots are bleeding over into
the commercial market. In the smart home
market, automation and ease of use are key
to keeping customers happy. Especially for
conferencing solutions, that simplicity is
becoming the norm in corporate offices as
well, since end users became accustomed
to using solutions like Zoom, Microsoft
Teams and Cisco Webex from their laptops.
That was exemplified in one project
where Logic Integration's corporate customer
was standardized on Cisco Webex
across the board.
The customer had large meeting spaces
and wanted the Webex interface to run all
of the Crestron and QSC solutions behind
the scenes so users don't have to learn a
new graphical user interface when they use
the systems.
" One-touch meetings were so important
to them that they wanted to pay for it, "
Hansson says.
According to Hansson, the company has
processed almost 3,000 support tickets
this year. If a large majority of those tickets
result in billable hours, that provides a solid
revenue stream.
That's why a top-notch service and support
team is becoming central for today's audiovisual
integration business. Building integrated
audiovisual systems remains what makes this
industry unique. But when it breaks and the
only person who can fix it is booked for three
weeks, customers are left unhappy.
" People want to be in control of their
own destiny, " Hansson says. CI
DECEMBER 2021 Commercial Integrator
21

http://www.commercialintegrator.com

Commercial Integrator December 2021

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