Why your Support Services Should be Separate from your Integrator

With complex building environments requiring constant upkeep so that your teams get the most out of  the  investment  in  your  facilities,  including  the  technology  in  your  meeting  rooms,  collaboration spaces, private working environments, andeven“chill-out zones”; it stands to reason that you would want someone paying attention to the little things.

This  is  where  the  integrator  will  usually  come  in.  They  sold  and  installed  the  entire  set-up;  why wouldn’t they be the best team to correct an issue? Ready to arrive with a toolbelt and a hero’s cape –your integrator will usually be your first phone call when your technology and AV equipment starts to cause problems.

While this has worked well for many in the past; reducing thenumber of phone calls to get the ball rolling, this is no longer the case.

What’s the problem?

• A standard response time for an integrator to provide a service call-out to investigate a faulty device can be up to 48hrs. This may cause continuous disruption before the problem can even be identified correctly.
• Replacement parts may be required at an additional costand with current supply chain issues and a general shortage of technology goods in the market as a result, this could be both costly and timely.
• Your integrator may have an interest in promoting certain equipment, sometimes to the detriment of your own timelines and usage requirements.

What’s the alternative?

Having a technology and AV support service in place, separate from your integrator, can remove and reduce many of these obstacles:

• Your support team will not have a commercialinterest in the sale or lease of AV equipment. You can trust their advice as truly neutral and in your long-term intereststowardscost reduction and functionality.
• Where your support team is ‘vendor agnostic’ and do not preference certain providers or manufacturers, they will prioritise the best result for the end user rather than an existingcommercial partnership or their own device stock.
• With a differentiated support arm –not only can the fault be looked at immediately; a customer-first perspective will investigate other solutions like moving the meeting to another available space, other mobile equipment, and working collaboratively with the host to get the right result.

What’s the point?

Some of Australia’s highest level enterprise organisations are experimenting with different, and sometimes hybrid approaches to an overall technology support strategy.

An example of this is to have the best of both worlds –it’s never good advice tocompletely do-away with your integrator as a trusted partner in the long-term management of your facilities. However, by leveraging your dedicated support team you can minimise the requirement for your own time to be invested in managing those interests and rely on a skilled resource to advocate on your behalf, whilst still having their own performance expectations to meet.

By investing in even a single support resource for your site, you can reduce downtime for systems massively, and mitigate the much larger costs associated with continuous service-calls and equipment replacement via your integrator for otherwise simple issues.