Who is sitting at your AV and Technology Planning Table?

We all know that the most important people at the table when adding technology to your infrastructure are your IT teams.  That’s a given.  You need their buy-in as the company bandwidth has critical needs and quality of service is paramount with networked equipment, wired or wireless, falling in their laps.  But how does the planning of technology effect other departments?

• Executive Admins - This team has to ensure that every executive function, board meeting and daily appointments go off without a hitch.  They are the toughest of the bunch and rightly so.  They need their conference rooms to work all the time without fail.  They know how the executives of your company will be using the room.  Video or audio conferencing, sharing of content and what type of content?  How often and how many will attend?   These are all important questions to ask from the gatekeepers of your executive team.   Leaving them out of the planning would not put you in the lime light – Or it could but not in a positive way. 
• HR - This team has quite a few ways they need to collaborate and share information.  They also know what type of candidate they are trying to attract and what technology will entice potential new comers.  Getting their feedback will touch on employee break areas, town hall meetings, office space and possible needs for digital signage driving company updates throughout the organization.  Open concept areas affect this team as complaints of higher noise levels can happen if not planned for properly.  Which would call for talks about sound masking and questions of expectations around open concept and cubicle environments. 
• Marketing - The creative geniuses of the company need their say as well.  They want to ensure the lobby sends the company message in an aesthetically pleasing way from the second someone enters the building.  The company culture can be expressed throughout the building and organization timely.  Not to mention how their internal and external clients receive their marketing message.  AV is an extremely vibrant and creative way to communicate and collaborate.  It’s not just a bunch of clucky equipment in a rack.  It sends a message.  Let marketing help you plan your digital signage and video wall experiences.  Their input will add the “wow” factor to showing off the company as well as sharing and collaborating throughout your space.
• Training - Collaboration overload.   Touch screens, mobility, sharing content on the fly, recording content and classes, virtual training environments, webinars, interactive events and the list goes on.  Anyone training will tell you success comes with keeping the training class/students active and not using death by power point.  How can you create an educational environment that makes an impact with the training team and the students?  Be sure to ask a lot of questions in this area from the “teacher”.   What they do affects the bottom-line of the company. 
• Employees using the Facilities - Can we say simple?  Employees want easy to use, quick ways to meet.  They need the ability to go into a huddle or conference room and use it without needing a 3 page operation guide.  They need BYOD collaborative spaces. Ask a few of your employees what they want out of a meeting space and what they plan on using it for.  You might find you save money is this area.  Keep some of your areas basic and simple.
• Special Project Groups - Last but not least.  If you have a special projects group, invite one of the team into your planning meeting, if they are not the ones actually planning the planning meeting.  They will use the space with a little bit of collaboration solutions, video/audio conference, lots of meetings on top of meetings and probably mirror the uses of all the teams listed above.  You truly won’t know or understand the Special Projects Groups until you ask. 

Bringing the team together does not always mean that everyone will get everything they ask for, but you will have the opportunity to know and understand what they need, what they want and most importantly makes the department feel like they had a say in the planning.  It helps fit the pieces of the technology puzzle together to work for everyone.  Almost a slam dunk on creating a space with the technology your team needs but most importantly will use every day.  What a great return on your investment. 

As a Design/Build AV Integrator, we can help work with each department and create the needs analysis that is important to their use case.  Not all departments are created equal.  Our favorite part of the process is listening to the needs of the end users and creating the environment that can be shared across all teams of the organization. 

About Texadia Systems

Dallas, Texas audio visual technology company, Texadia Systems, offers customized commercial AV solutions. Whether you are looking for a corporate AV solution for your established business or building a new office vs renovating your existing one, let our expert consultants design and deliver the best AV and technology systems for your space.

Please feel free to reach out to learn more about Texadia Systems and our team – Call 214-956-5820 or email [email protected] or [email protected].  You can follow us at Texadia Systems.