Commercial Integrator May 2023 - 34

SECURITY Business Advice
these systems together to provide one
situational awareness within the space to
protect people, " he attests. " We're also
connecting the larger school districts and
the first responders and giving them the
awareness of what's happening. They're
not walking into a situation blind. " That
enables a kind of redefinition of the term
" ROI. " As Seifert puts it, " That's the real return
on that investment: We have a better
picture of any situation that's happening. "
A word of wisdom from our interviewees
is that, if your firm is looking to bring
together the AV, IT and security trades, it's
imperative to get the right people - the
recognized experts - involved. " If you're
going to partner with a vendor, make sure
that you trust them as your own, " Duncan
says. " If you come in as the AV integrator,
but you're also going to have a security
contractor under you, you need to take
ownership of all of those and take the lead
on the project. [That] means that you have
to trust your partners. " Part of that trust is
having utmost confidence that they'll perform
to the level that your firm sets forth.
Minimizing Scope Gap
One of the virtues of marrying AV, IT and
security is that it can help avoid miscommunication
when it comes to project scope.
" The more contractors you have, the worse
it is, " Duncan opines. " Because, unless
you're sitting everybody down at a table
and making them coordinate everything,
which typically falls on the general contractor,
you're going to run into scope gap.
Somebody else thought somebody else
was supposed to be doing X. " But when the
opposite is true, there's little room for miscommunication.
" If you go in [on a project]
and say, 'We're a single-source vendor, and
we're going to do it all for you,' there's no
chance to scope gap, " he adds. " Because
you own all those areas...all those scopes. "
If one integrator is responsible for the data
cabling, the AV and the security, there's no
question as to whether the cabling for the
security falls under the low-voltage contractor
or the security contractor. " You're both, "
Duncan says, " so it's going to get covered
one way or the other. "
When there's no room for scope gap, it
usually means fewer change orders. " The
fewer the change orders, the happier the
customer, " Duncan says. " Scope-gap
items are hard to get covered from a cost
standpoint. When scope gap happens,
somebody winds up eating the cost at the
end of the day, or you have a long, drawnout
process to find out who should have
had it and why they didn't have it. "
Integrators whose firms can offer AV, IT
and security - provided they do it well -
can add a lot of value for customers. " That's
why I say we're a low-voltage specialty
systems integrator, " Duncan explains. " Yes,
we do AV, but we're not an island. " And
the value proposition is easy enough to explain.
Duncan puts it this way: " Why does a
customer want to hire multiple contractors
when they can hire one company that can
do the AV, security [and] cabling? That's the
sales pitch when you're at the table. "
Going Deep and Wide
As Sansivero noted earlier, it's far more
profitable for an integration business to
keep a client than win a client. " The deeper
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Commercial Integrator MAY 2023
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Commercial Integrator May 2023

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