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ISE 2019 – Part II

In the past few weeks I’ve actually set a challenge for myself, and it’s a challenge that I want to extend to not only Technology people, but also Interior Designers, Architects, and Project Managers.  The challenge I set myself was actually to think outside of the box. This was all spurred from my recent trip to ISE.

ISE is a big trade show for our industry, and here I saw a plethora of amazing technology. I saw huge LED screens, I saw touch interactive screens, flexible LCD screens, and stretched out thin displays. I even saw an LCD screen that rolled up into a cylinder and fit into a box.

But I left the show a little bit disheartened. I was thinking how do we actually use these things in our everyday work environment? Most of these technologies are not applicable. Why are we having them in the first place!

Given a few weeks of time to reflect, this is where the challenge has come in place. We’ve got to think about new ways to be able to use these technologies, in ways that we haven’t done before.

I’ll give you an example. Imagine if we replace a projection screen with the screen that rolled up into a box, wouldn’t that be amazing?! All those thin stretched displays, we could put them next to a door and have room booking information on them, instead of those tiny little tablets. Or even for way finding solutions, we could get rid of the static screens and have those stretched displays, with active information that changes on the time of day, depending on what needs are in place.

And this is the challenge that I’m going to give to you today, again not just to Technology people, but the whole project team. How can we use these new technologies in ways that we haven’t thought of before to improve people’s lives?

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Steps to Get the Best Result out of an AV Contractor

Adrian – Hi! My name is Adrian Magno and I’m one of the Senior Engineers here at Konnectus. Today, we’re here to talk about Tender Management. So, you put together an AV Design and you’ve received a bunch of responses from the different AV Contractors. How do you evaluate which one is the best for you? So, Dave is it all about price?

David – Well, a lot of people do think that yes, it’s all about price. If I get the best price, then I’m set. I need to get the best deal. You know, drill everybody down until I get the best price. Get that price, and then walk away. Seriously, that’s how most people think. But if you’re doing that, that’s really selling yourself short. You’re probably not going to get a contractor that is the best fit for your project or for your company as a whole. There’s a lot more to it than that and we’ll get into that later. However, it is important to evaluate price Adrian and the way we like to do that is break a quote down into different elements. We evaluate the equipment, the software, and then the labour separately. For the equipment, we’re just trying to look at the particular models, or similar types of equipment from different manufacturers and just check that, first of all, whether the pricing is similar between different offers and also in line with competitive market rates. Then, the same thing with the software really. Its the same kind of process. And then with the labour, you just want to ensure that the allowances are not too light or too heavy. And that’s basically it. And so, once we do that evaluation of price we are left with a comparison, which is a very important step, but definitely not the only step.

Adrian – I understand. Now, if you did get your AV Design completed by an expert such as an AV Consultant, wouldn’t the price for equipment all be the same anyway?

David – I suppose if it was one of our konnectus designs where we hard specify all the equipment, and its a case of just comparing the three of four different AV Contractors for the same bit of equipment, yeah, sure it’s a very easy comparison and it’s quite quick. So, I guess, it’s one of the benefits of doing it that way. It’s very quick and easy to evaluate the price.

Adrian – What if you’ve done the things you were saying, you’ve evaluated the equipment and labour and you’ve done a bit of apples to apples comparison, but you’ve noticed that one of the tenderers is 20% cheaper than everyone else. Does that start to make you feel uneasy?

David – Oh no! It doesn’t make me uneasy. I’ve just got a job to do and that is to evaluate, dig a little deeper, and make sure that we’ve uncovered all the stones and done the proper due diligence. What that is telling me is let’s go on to the next step, which is evaluate that particular contractor for compliance with the design. Let’s say, for example, they’ve missed a system type, or a large piece of equipment somewhere, or a room type, or even a quantity of rooms or systems? These are just clerical errors and they happen all the time. So, that’s something we’re going to check. It’s the first thing actually. The other thing we might be checking, especially if it wasn’t a hard specification design, is design compliance. If it was maybe a performance specification that was given and the design is on the AV Contractor to put together, well, let’s go have a look at that design and evaluate it against the performance specification. We will check to see whether the equipment up to scratch, or in line with the performance specifications. We will check whether the design the contractor is putting forward is actually going to work. We will check whether it is going to deliver the actual user requirements that the customer is looking for. We just want to evaluate and dig a little deeper and, quite often, we’ll uncover quite a bit after completing those two steps. In fact, the contractor’s outlier price will usually change and get a lot closer to the pricing from the other competing contractors.

Adrian – So, I know with my wife, her eyes light up every time she goes to a store and sees something mislabelled with the wrong price. She’ll go right up to the clerk and say “This is the marked price so this is what I’m going to pay”. Is the same principle applicable in the Tender Environment? Can you hold an AV Contractor to any clerical errors?

David – Well for the way we document our designs, absolutely yes. We have it stated in our documentation that we’ve done a clear design and we’ve specified all the equipment. It’s then up to the AV Contractor to make sure that they have included everything to make a fully functioning and working systems as per the design intent. It does depend on the actual contract at the end of the day though. So, if they’re following our contract, then it’s written there and there are no excuses for clerical mistakes.

Adrian – I did want to ask you. If a contractor is still much cheaper, does it send alarm bells, or is there something wrong?

David – Potentially. So, we need to dig a little deeper again. So, we’ve obviously looked at the price, and then we’ve checked for compliance with the design. And now the next thing we need to look at is TEAM. So, there are many great AV Contractor companies out there and they have plenty of experience and they’ve done fantastic projects and they can show you all of those as examples and you can call up for reference and things like that. You should do that step by the way. However, what I’m more interested in is who the actual set of team members are that will work on the project. I want to see their names. I want to see their CVs. I want to see what percentage of each person’s time is allocated to the project. They have to be the right set of people for this particular project and for this particular customer. So, there is quite a bit of work involved to go through and make sure that all lines up. If it’s not the right team. Maybe, they don’t have enough experience. You’ll find that out quickly. At that point we go back to the contractor and we say “Hey, we need you to change the personnel for this reason, or that reason”. And that, therefore, may affect their price, to be honest. They may have to lift it back up again. So, very important.

Adrian – So, I have had a few tender responses in the past that have come in without the CVs of the different people being provided. What do you do in that instance?

David – I just insist and say “I want to see the CVs please”. They might not be used to giving that level of information and that’s fine. But we are quite thorough in that process because it’s very important to get the right team of people on that project for that particular customer. So, we just want to do our homework and make sure. It’s like when you hire someone to work at your organisation. You want to do your background checks and things like that. It’s the same thing when you’re hiring a contractor to do work for you.

Adrian – I understand. There’s one thing that you mentioned previously, the fit. So, you were saying the customer needs to be the right fit for the AV contractor.

David – Yes.

Adrian – Do you mean, personality wise? In other words, you don’t want to match a head strong project manager with a head strong AV contractor because they might bicker. Is that what you mean by that?

David – Look, personality can come into it. I probably don’t go that deep very often. In terms of project manager, you do want someone who’s pretty head strong who can sort of smash heads when required. That’s actually a good trait to have in a project manager because you’re going to be more likely to hit those deadlines. However, what I’m really thinking about is more the long term. Well, maybe there’s two things I should mention. The first is, what’s the approach this company has? We’ve looked at price. We’ve looked at compliance with the design. We’ve looked at the right team of people. What’s their approach, actually, to delivering the project? Quite often, there’s going to be a builder involved, and they will have a construction program. I’d like to go back to the AV Contractor and say “Hey, this is the current construction program. What’s your program to deliver this AV solution and how will it fit in with the overall program?”. This is actually a good test because they’ll come back to you with what they think is right and you can clearly see whether or not they know what they’re doing. Do they have the right approach? Have they done this before? Are they going to work well with a particular builder? So, that’s an important check to see if they’re the right fit to deliver the project. The other big thing, in terms of fit, is kind of long term.  So, yes, we’re going to get that project delivered and it’s going to be delivered well but after that, what happens? Does this company have the ability to service and maintain that equipment or that solution for the customer? This is so important, yet so often overlooked. It’s probably one of the things I feel most passionate about. In Month 1, or month 11, or year 3 down the track, if there’s an issue with the equipment or solution, and those poor people are trying to use the systems and just getting frustrated, who is the customer going to call? They need to have a plan in place, and there needs to be a reliable company providing their service.

Adrian – Just before we go, thank you so much for all the information. It’s been very informative. One of the problems I do sometimes run into is when you have three tenderers that are all priced within 1-2% of each other. I’ve called all the different qualifying bodies and made sure that all the teams put forward are all adequately qualified. The labour allowances are relatively even and the equipment pricing is also relatively even. How do you choose between three options that basically look exactly the same?

David – In all my years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen that happen. If you go and follow all of those five steps that I just talked about, you’ll find there’s going to be a clear winner. If you only do the first couple of steps, or even the first three, yeah you will have that dead heat sometimes. So then what do you do? Just flip a coin, I suppose, because you can’t go any further. That’s not really the right approach. If you cover all those five steps, you’ll always uncover a clear winner who is the best long-term fit for the customer and the specific project. So, that’s what I recommend.

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Importance of Initial Technology Needs Assessment

Let me tell you a quick story about how we managed to save over a million dollars for one of our customers. They were doing an Audio Visual Technology refresh for their Brisbane office here in Australia. It was one of those large big four accounting firms with global reach. They invited me up to a vendor presentation in Brisbane. This vendor they had been talking to them for a while and they had some ideas and solutions that the customer was quite interested in.

 

So, I said sure I’ll come up. I went and attended the presentation and watched and listened. It was all very interesting. They had some great solutions. Really cutting edge. This office would be amazing with all these technology solutions in place. At the end of the presentation, my customer took me aside and said: “So, David what did you think of that? Give us your honest opinion”. I said, “It looks fantastic. That technology would be amazing in your office. It would wow everybody that came in. But let me ask you one question. Do you actually need that?”

 

And they said, “Well, we don’t know”. I said, “Well, why don’t we do this. Why don’t we just take a little bit of time to do a “Needs Assessment”. I’ll sit with you. I ask some questions. We’ll find out a little bit more about what it is you’re looking to do with the technology. Let’s find out what your customers and staff actually need from the technology. Let’s ask, what are the actual business needs? We will go through a step by step process and uncover the true requirements that you have.”

 

So, we did that, and then we also proposed some technology options for them to consider, which were more aligned with what they actually needed. So, at the end of this “Needs Assessment” process, what they had was a document, which listed their business needs, as well as, those of their people. The document also included various different options of technology that made sense and aligned with those stated requirements.

Our customer then had a real clear picture. They were able to make an informed decision on what to do next. And that really helped them. With them, we actually went on to do the design of the various AV systems and manage the installation as well. Ultimately, the investment for them was around about $600,000 dollars, which is a lot of money. But when you compare that to what the other vendor was proposing, which was in the millions of dollars, there’s a significant gap there.

 

The other thing to note is a $600,000 investment in technology which you know you need, and you know your people are going to use is a completely different prospect to spending multiple millions of dollars in technology that are not necessarily going to be used by your people. The latter is simply a bad investment.

The moral of the story is take the time to do a “Needs Assessment” prior to commencing a large AV technology project or refresh. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s not an overly large investment. But it’s definitely worth your while in the long run.

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How Cutting edge technologies can be applied to commercial AV

David – So, Adrian today we’re going to be talking about two technologies that are out there in the market reasonably cutting edge, I guess we could say. Facial Recognition and also Voice Control. And we just want to explore how those technologies can be applied or potentially applied in the future to commercial AV applications.

Let’s talk about Voice Control. Obviously, a lot of us would have heard about Amazon Alexa, Google Home. They are basically, in our face all the time, in our ears all the time, the commercials just bombarding us. It’s clearly a strong emerging trend. Yeah. I can’t ignore, I guess, and neither can you. We have to accept it. It’s in our lives. And I think you’ve already got some of these technology in your own home, don’t you? Can you tell us about that?

Adrian – That’s correct. My wife got me Alexa for my birthday, and it was something that I was pestering her for pretty regularly.

Alexa has been great. When you go to a fridge and say “Oh my gosh, I forgot milk. Alexa add milk to my shopping list.” Recently, we also have a newborn baby and to track her feeding schedule, every time she feeds, my wife just says “Alexa, I’m feeding now”. And what that does is, every time we open the Alexa app, it keeps a track of all the things that we’ve said. It’s like our personal little assistant. And I can turn on my lights, “Alexa, turn on the lights downstairs”, or “Alexa, play jazz downstairs” and it’s starting to learn our different tendencies of the way we talk and all that other stuff. It’s been fantastic.

David – I see. So, it’s learning about you specifically? Correct. The occupants of that home? Yeah. And it’s, sort of, adapting and I guess the margin for error gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller as it gets to know you. Is that how it works?

Adrian – Yeah, that’s true.

David – Okay, perfect! And we’ve seen big AV companies like Crestron, and AMX now integrating with those products from Google and Amazon as well. So, in those residential applications, we might have Crestron control system, or AMX control system, controlling all the lights, and the blinds, and the music, and the other audio-visual elements. You can now use it with voice commands, can’t you?

Adrian – Correct. I’m not sure in a commercial environment though if it’s as applicable. That’s because when I say things like “Alexa, add this to my shopping list” and it doesn’t understand what I’m saying, it’s only my wife who’s laughing at my pronunciation. However, when I’m in front of managers or more senior level staff, it might be a bit unnerving when you’re doing a presentation and you can’t get the system going because it doesn’t understand what you’re saying.

David – Right. I guess if we’re applying this technology to commercial environments now, there are a few things we need to be aware of that maybe aren’t quite there yet. Obviously public space is not a controlled environment. So, the technology is dealing with lots of different people all the time.  And so, it’s hard to adapt, isn’t it? Hard to reduce that margin fairly like what we were talking about. People say things in different ways, don’t they? People might say “Turn the TV on” to try to get it working, and then others will say “Let’s just jump to put my presentation on” and they’re trying to do the same thing maybe but the commands are different, so the system could be confused.

Adrian – Yeah. So, my wife, her father is Filipino and whenever he comes to our house, he always says “Open the lights”. Whereas most people say turn the lights on and off, he says open and close the lights and Alexa never understands what he’s saying.

David – Oh well, that’s a classic example of what could go wrong. But I think the technology is fantastic, would you agree? Clearly, the future is for this technology to be in commercial environments such as a workplace or any other areas. But, maybe, not quite yet ready. So, just some things to be aware of there.

Adrian – Yeah. Imagine in the future we just have to say, “Call David Allara” and it calls you straight away. It turns on the screen. It turns on the video conferencing codec. Gets the camera zoomed in on you and it saves you all those buttons but like you said, it’s not quite there yet. So, we can look forward to that.

David – And then the other technology, Adrian, I wanted to talk about is Facial Recognition. We see this in security. It’s been around for a while in security and obviously extremely useful in that specific area or application. It would be interesting to talk about how that technology could be put into other different environments and see if it’s useful or not. Yeah. One example is Digital Signage Wayfinding. I think we know in commercial Digital Signage, Facial Recognition is now starting to being used more and more.

Adrian – Absolutely. So, Samsung and NEC, specifically, are specifically manufacturers that are really pushing Facial Recognition. There’s applications such as logins but one really powerful one that I tend to agree with, is screens that are now looking at us, the consumers. And whenever we’re in retail stores, now their screens are looking at our age and their looking at our gender.

So, the advertisements that are on those screens are actually based on who we are. A kid would be more receptive to an advertisement about a toy or a video game, whereas a female will be more inclined to pay attention to something from Forever 21 or stores like that, I suppose.

David – Yeah, okay. So, this is a bit of a win-win here. We’re saying if you own that Digital Signage platform, you, all of a sudden, have the power to command more revenue from your advertisers and say “Listen company, I can guarantee that I’m going to get your advertisement on the screen at the right time in front of your key target audience almost every time” and that’s worth a lot of money.

Advertisers are going to pay a lot more money for that type of guarantee than the traditional of “It might get to the right people at the right time. Just put it on and hope”. So, huge win there for both the companies who own the platforms and also the advertisers that advertise on those platforms. Isn’t it? Absolutely. There, we can see technology is really helping those types of companies in those applications. That’s already here, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a great return of investment for both. It’s already here that technology, isn’t it?

Adrian – Absolutely, yeah.

David – And what about it in the office, we talked about this just offline, you were saying that Facial Recognition to login? Can you tell us about that a little bit more?

Adrian – Some laptops have had a bit of a clunky Facial Recognition to login and they’re still developing it but what they are now starting to put is that technology in Meeting Rooms as well. Okay. Sometimes, people get scared when they go into Meeting Rooms. The applications are not quite the same as what’s at their workstation. Yeah. And what they’re doing is bridging that solution of using your face to log in at your workstation and using your face to log in in the Meeting Room, and there, the user interface looks exactly the same. So, it’s no different moving between them. You don’t need to login and log out. It just uses your face.

David – Well, that’s powerful. I suppose you could link that to back end systems as well, like Room Booking systems.  So, if you book a Meeting Room with a video conference call to a group of participants, you just walk in, you get recognised, the call starts. Amazing! However, it sounds like there could be a little bit of work on the back end to get this up and running. Would that be fair?

Adrian – A substantial amount of work in the back end. Now, with us, regularly we just have to log in with the username and password but now you need to have the entire biometric formula for each person’s face and each staff member. Even on boarding the staff is now becoming a much more extensive process.

David – Okay. Definitely another one to look for in the future but just be weary there’s a lot of work to get that up and running. Not just dive into it. You need a forward plan. Is that a fair statement?

Adrian – Yeah, absolutely. Alright.

David – Well Adrian, thanks mate. That is very informative. Two great technologies: Facial Recognition and Voice Control. We’ll be looking forward to seeing those in the near future in commercial applications.

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Are Interactive LCD Screens a Good Investment for your Organisation?

Jonathan – Hey, Adrian! Just last week I was talking to a colleague about Interactive LCD screens and he was working with a particular customer. They wanted to put interactive screens in all of their Meeting Rooms.

Adrian – It’s a lot of screens.

Jonathan – They were a lot. But they weren’t sure whether the screens were actually being used as interactive screens. So, they set up some monitoring and what they found was this particular room was used over 250 times for presentation. But guess how many times it was actually touched?

Adrian –  Uhhh, a hundred?

Jonathan – Try once. Once? That’s right. So, in this presentation spaces, these powerful interactive LCD screens weren’t being utilised. And that’s really the case. Interactive screens are a niche product. They’re only very useful in a small number of scenarios.

Adrian –  So, today we’re here to talk to you about the touch LCD. What is a touch LCD? A touch LCD is like a giant iPad at the front of the room. On it you can draw. You can even annotate over your presentations and email what you’ve done and sometimes you can even video call from them.

Jonathan – It’s really growing in popularity. They’re powerful tools and big power houses like Microsoft with their Surface Hub, Google Jamboard, Cisco Spark, lots of people are producing them.

Adrian –  Yeah. Like you said they’re really powerful but there are few things we need to know about it before putting them everywhere. They’re made to do lots of things but sometimes you only need it to make a presentation. Right. Additionally, it requires lots of training to use this product because they do so many different things.

Jonathan – Yes, that was the case for my scenario. But what kind of niches are they useful for? Where can you put them in?

Adrian –  I suppose you can use them in classrooms because the teacher is at the front and is always using it. They get really comfortable with it. Another place that you can use it is workshopping and brainstorming spaces. When you’re creating ideas, they’re really good for annotating over and when you’re making design considerations.

Jonathan – Oh right. What you’ve described there is really Collaboration space and I think you hit the nail on the head. The other space I was talking about is a Presentation space. When someone asks you to put an interactive LCD screen in, you really need to ask the question “Is the space a Presentation space?” or “Is it a Collaboration space?”.

Adrian –  Yeah, I think that’s right. Well, that brings us to the end of this video. Feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts on today’s topic. Thank you so much for watching.

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Why “value engineering” an av technology solution can be short sighted

Any of you that have worked with me or any of the konnectus team will know that we spend good amount of time early on the project really trying to get to know our customers and understand their needs. We try to understand their current pain points and clarify their aspirational outcomes. We then come up with some technology solutions and concepts that fit exactly what they’re looking for. A part of this process is putting together very detailed Cost Estimates of what that initial investment is going to be. And that is what I want to talk to you about today.

So, that initial investment, let’s take an example and say its two hundred thousand dollars with a particular customer or particular project. Quite often I get the response back “Well that’s a lot of money. That’s probably outside our budget or what we are thinking. Can we start to cut back on this by using value engineering?”. So that’s fine, I totally understand working to budgets is important, and you don’t want to be overspending or overcommitting yourself. However, I think it’s important to realise that there is more than the initial investment that needs to be considered. A lot of you watching will agree that is not nothing new but we’ll just go through some of the things that maybe specific to AV and Technology projects.

The first obvious one is if you have systems that are designed very simply and don’t have a lot of complexity (i.e. they’re not over engineered), then they’re reliable. If they’re reliable over a long period of their life, say 5 plus years, the cost to maintain them is low. And that should be considered in your picture of assessing cost.

Secondly, you want to look at how easy it is to use these systems? If they’re really easy to use and you can avoid those embarrassing situations of wasting time trying to get the technology up and running, that has a cost as well. It’s a bit of a hidden cost. Not just the cost of time but the cost of embarrassment of putting the people on the back foot. When a person is not feeling confident or not feeling good about themselves, this could be costing money. Especially when they are trying to do important presentations in a meeting, or an important show in an entertainment venue. It all sort of accumulates.

Another aspect that is not always considered is what I would call the “WOW” factor. This is not for all projects, maybe not in most projects, but if you’re trying to make some sort of an impression or create an experience for people that either using or enjoying these AV systems, I think it’s important to have something that’s a little bit extra, a little bit more exciting. The initial cost may look a bit expensive, but over the long term, you could pay it back with benefits like creating a brand, or creating that experience people are talking about. This may not bring costs down but is potentially bringing money back in to repay for that initial outlay.

The last point to make is uptake of use of the new technology. And that’s really important. I have not met a customer so far that has not been really focused on getting the uptake of their new technology to be as high as possible. That’s the whole purpose, isn’t it? To invest in the new technology so that people will use it and have better outcomes in whatever it is that they do. Whether it be in business, or in education, or in legal, or whatever field they’re in.

So, that’s really it.

I hope those four tips will help you on your next Audio Visual technology project when you’re assessing cost. Don’t just look at the initial upfront ticket price. Consider all other items that make up the bigger picture of cost, and remember, it’s an investment over the long term.