HOW TO ENSURE AN EFFECTIVE GLOBAL AV DEPLOYMENTS ?
As of this moment there are over 83,000 globally driven companies employing 80 million people which is an enormous figure. The shocking statistic though is that within these very workspaces, only 4% of the meetings rooms are equipped with technology. It is clear that the AV industry still have a lot of work to do to help global enterprises and their collaboration strategies.
However, the problems and hurdles faced by global organisations can often be very difficult. We need to take care of the multinational preoccupations and way of working to propose adapted solutions that suit global strategies, ensuring a smooth user experience rather than risk upscaling rooms that will stay empty.
The AV equipment of those rooms are very strategic for multinationals and needs to meet four core global objectives:
At first sight global deployment and support is quite complex on different aspects:
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User requirements and communication / collaboration approach
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Cultural norms and expectations
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Language
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Taxes, duties, financing, currency
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Time zones and geography
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Product availability
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Product distribution strategy
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Support models
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Technical / other skillsets and education
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Government laws and regulations
Therefore it’s important to choose a global AV company that is used to deal with all those issues and have the capacity to provide the same service quality wherever the AV installation is taking place in the world.
Here are some key facts that need to be checked to simplify and remove the risk of a AV global deployment
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Check the reality of claimed global coverage – Own staff vs subcontract, is it in place?
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Check your hardware is globally available
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Understand the distribution and discount/pricing model
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Understand who will be doing the work: Incentives to go above/beyond
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Understand what the business model is: Subcontract? Tender?
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Understand how taxes & billing work: reclaimable VAT? Depreciation? Warranty?
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Know who handles customs: distributor or SI? Do they understand local customs?
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Ensure QA happens: who does QA? To what standard? Liaison with local/global teams?
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Validate the end-used experience: who validates & ensures expectations are met?
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Guarantee repeatability: who ensures global consistency across multiple SI’s & Distis?
Here are the 10 main challenges global AV companies faces and should able to answer
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Integrator coverage – who covers where, and how
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Vendor availability – ensure the kit is available everywhere
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Contract – the structure is correctly aligned & incentivized
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Design consistency – deliver the same UX, across the globe
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Procurement – know it can get what they need
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Taxes / duties – be fiscally efficient
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Customs – guarantee compliance and de-risk delivery
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Quality Assurance – guarantee delivery to spec
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UX validation – know your customers are happy
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Repeatability – be able to deliver the same UX, everywhere
The GPA, the global AV company that meet all those requirements!
Our teams are present in the following countries; Argentina/Chile/Colombia (80 PAX), Australia (190 PAX), Benelux (252 PAX), Brazil ((68 PAX) , Canada (70 PAX), China (135 PAX), Czech Republic/Poland/Slovakia (110 PAX), France (453 PAX), Germany (100 PAX), India (150 PAX), Israel (30 PAX), Italy (38 PAX), Japan (20 PAX), Mexico (135 PAX), New Zealand (28 PAX), Russia (410 PAX), Singapore/Malaysia/ Philippines/Indonesia/Korea/Hong Kong (192 PAX), South Africa (130 PAX), Spain (8 PAX), Switzerland/Liechtenstein (240 PAX), Thailand, Turkey (47 PAX), United Arab Emirates/Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Kuwait/Oman (46 PAX), The United Kingdom/Ireland (20 PAX) and The United States (850 PAX). Every Global Presence Alliance office includes “in country” specialists and resources required for AV integration project: engineering teams, technical teams, global care services teams and storage capacity. In total we have over 200 offices with over 3800 staff around the globe.
The main mission of the GPA’s is the user experience. We strive to help our customers enable improved collaborative outcomes that support their global teams’ needs, allowing them to increase business velocity, and achieve or maintain a competitive market advantage. That’s why we built a set of unique guiding principles that we believe are the foundations for our clients to achieve better outcomes when it comes to their global technology integration.