champions of change vol 2

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Introduction

Profile 1: Harrison Home Systems

Profile 2: All Pro Sound

Profile 3: IMS Technology Services

Profile 4: Logic Integration

Profile 5: OneVision Resources

Four Months Later: Tracking Champions from Our Last Edition

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Introduction

Change is naturally challenging… after all, we humans are creatures of habit. But when it comes to integration businesses, those who are on top of the trends—those who can adapt and evolve—will lead the industry forward.

Hundreds of the nation’s largest and most progressive custom and commercial integration firms gathered for the 2014 CE Pro and Commercial Integrator Summits to uncover the latest and best business practices and meet with leading vendors one-on-one. This is where the who’s who assemble and where trends are born.

Light bulbs go off from some of the industry’s best minds, whose actions are mirrored by the many integrators that follow suit.

We call these fearless, forward-looking entrepreneurs Champions of Change. They use the information, advice and ideas born from the event to facilitate new processes and ensure good follow through.

In this second edition of the Champions of Change, we’ll follow the journey of five decision-makers from Harrison Home Systems, All Pro Sound, IMS Technology Services, Logic Integration and OneVision Resources who are driving change as a result of the Summits.

Changing is hard. Not changing is fatal.

“I have already started working on some of the ideas from the boardroom sessions and have been in touch with a few of the vendors I met with. I really enjoyed the event and it was definitely worth the time out of the office!”–Jeff Brower, Operations & Sales Manager, Sound Ideas

“We have attended the CI Summit for the past three years and have found it to be educational, inspirational and fun! This year all of the panel discussions and roundtable breakout sessions were very pertinent to our business. Of course I enjoyed the one on one sessions with the suppliers on Friday – excellent group of people!

–Roberta Perry, VP of Business Development, Edwards Technologies

CE Pro & Commercial Integrator Summits4

Profile 1: Harrison Home SystemsBoosting Business with Better Employee Benefits.

Home sales are on the rebound, and the building business is bustling again. That sigh of relief is also creating a challenge for integrators.

Retaining experienced employees has become even more crucial with the invention of the smart home and the growth of remote home control. Kassa Harrison and her husband, George, run their 12-year-old A/V company together.

Kassa focuses on marketing, finances and human resources. George is the head of sales and manages home automation projects such as security systems, lighting control, motorized shades, and A/V installations.

“We are designing, installing and servicing. We are heavily focused on remote management these days,” says George Harrison. “We have been implementing the SnapAV OvrC remote management new product line, which has really had a big impact on our business.”

Harrison Home Systems includes service and maintenance of these systems in the original sale price for one year. After that, the company offers extended warranty packages and one- and two-year service contracts.

Installing and maintaining these complicated devices takes competent employees with a sufficient background and training in home technology.

“I think that the market has shifted so that it is very much an employee’s market,” says Kassa Harrison of Harrison Home Systems in Golden, Colo.

“Construction in our industry has made a big comeback, and so I think that it’s extremely competitive to try to find and keep employees.”

Champions of Change Report: Edition II 5

“We have a niche industry, and there are a lot of IT people in our market who would have to be retrained to service and program the systems that we sell,” says Kassa.

“It is much more cost-effective for us to keep the employees we have on staff and really promote a culture where people stay for a long time.”

Kassa and George agree that’s tough to do in the competitive integration market, especially since other companies are courting their talented nine-member team.

The Harrisons turned to the CE Pro Summit to get some tips on how to retain their team members. They’ve since implemented strategies they learned at the Fast Managed Growth (sponsored by ConnectWise) and the Rapid Onboarding, Employee Retention and Hiring (sponsored by Dish) sessions.

At the Summit, the Harrisons learned that employees respond better when you reward them on a more regular basis, instead of just a bonus tied to the end-of-year holidays.

Harrison Home Systems now offers its employees long-term disability, accident and critical illness insurance, and quarterly bonuses. Accommodations accounts also allow employees to purchase company products at a lower cost for their personal use, and they can pay in installments using a regular deduction from their paychecks.

“We’ve had nearly a hundred percent participation,” says Kassa. “It’s gone over very well. We actually had an employee thank us for thinking of them and for protecting all of us against anything that might happen.”

The business partnerships built at the Summit are also helping George and Kassa as they initiate a new benefits program. They were inspired by Shawn Hansson of Logic Integration and Dan Fulmer of FulTec.

“This is a particularly relevant thing about CE Pro I was impressed with,” says George. “Even some of the companies in our own market that were there in that dynamic situation seemed very much willing to share their experience, even though they were one of our competitors.”

And the Harrisons are hopeful those relationships and the ongoing bonds built will help them compete in their home base.


“I think just focusing on employee retention as a key part of our business moving forward, it’s really going to be something that we have to work at in the long-term and something I plan to improve on an annual basis,” says Kassa.

Plans are in the works to launch teambuilding events such as a company-wide volunteer effort with the Home Builders Foundation, a summer social event and weekly beer Fridays.

Kassa has also just started a monthly technical training program on topics such as remote VPN troubleshooting, new time tracking software, and Savant and Lutron manufacturers training.

She also promoted an assistant general manager internally, who among other things, will act as a change agent when it comes to employee relationships and development.

Now accepting applications for the 2015 Summits!

Contact Leigh Fishback 508.618.8330 [email protected]


mailto:leigh%40ae-ventures.com?subject=

Profile 2: All Pro SoundNational integrator implements formal offering to generate recurring revenue from A/V and lighting clients in the houses of worship sector.

“Since our founding 35 years ago, we’ve put almost no focus on recurring revenue and service contracts. At present we bring in zero percent of our revenue from this category. Our mission has always been to sell a system and move on to the next one,” says Allan Lamberti, CEO of All Pro Sound based in Pensacola, Fla. “Then I sat in a recurring revenue session at the CI Summit and said to myself, ‘The time has come. It’s long overdue.’”

Eager to start right away, Lamberti and his staff have already developed their business plan, analyzed costs, and developed their go-to-market strategy for this new revenue stream. They recently created a service group for the houses of worship sector for which they are hiring service, training and marketing staff. They are planning for recurring monthly revenue to represent 15 percent of their total revenue within three years.

“Our houses of worship clients remember how excited they were to show off their newly installed racks and sound-booth wiring and to let their colleagues hear how great the system sounded,”

– Bobby Taylor, Vice President & Director, All Pro Sound

ALL PROSOUND

All Pro Sound provides consultation, design and installation of professional audio, video and lighting and security systems nationally and abroad. Their projects range from large commercial and residential installations to small conference rooms.

They have secured a reputation as one of the premier sources of installed systems for houses of worship and were a pioneer in the use of structured wiring for churches of all sizes.


“Understanding the limited budgets of this unique market segment, we believe that many will opt to re-optimize their systems as opposed to replacing them.”

The new service program is called Renew— a word that will strike a chord with church leaders—and involves a three-step process: Discover, Correct and Teach.

Simply put, All Pro will discover issues, correct any deficiencies and teach customers operational best practices.

Taylor shares an example from a recent site visit to a church that had signed up for a service contract:

“In the Discover phase, we tested all inputs and outputs on stage, the integrity of rigging, loose cables, impedance of speaker drivers and wireless frequencies. We also documented the basic system layout, saved the system schematic using CAD software and verified the integrity of voltage and grounding.”


“In the Correct phase, we retuned the system for optimum performance, cleaned and straightened sound booth cables and equipment rack wiring, cleaned filters in amplifiers and processors, refreshed the mixing console layout, optimized wireless frequencies, relabeled the rack equipment and console, and updated the firmware.

“And finally, before we left, we taught the client best practices in operating the mixing console, outboard gear and other equipment. For church leaders and their volunteer staff, technology is outgrowing their expertise. Without trying to sell them something, we can help them optimize and get the most out of their existing gear.”

All Pro also plans to expand the service program to the commercial and residential areas of their business.

As another benefit of attending both the CE Pro and CI Summits, Lamberti was happy to discover the Trusted Advisor program and now converses regularly with Sam Taylor and John Riley from ALMO Professional A/V.

“I can ask any questions I want, and they give me tech solutions and advice that I share with my team. It’s a very valuable asset.”

Lamberti adds, “Because of the Renew program, we’ve been able to get in front of more clients and meet them face to face. We are confident that this service will form stronger relationships and will give us the opportunity to sell more equipment by assisting the client in developing a master plan for future upgrades. Monthly revenue is an affordable way to offer these services to the client—flat-fee or pay-as-you-go—whether we installed the system or not.”


Profile 3: IMS Technology Services A/V consulting company implements gross profit assessment, new hiring techniques to boost job performance.

Accountability can make or break a business. If employees don’t feel liable for the jobs they perform, sales go down and the business doors will close.

To make employees feel accountable, and even have pride in their jobs, Michael Shinn, operations manager of IMS Technology Services is training new hires efficiently from the get-go and implementing a gross profit assessment.

Shinn got the idea to implement these changes for the A/V consulting company after speaking with several integrators during a roundtable at the CI Summit about key performance indicators for employees.

He said he was impressed with how the integrators evaluate design concepts, sales strategy and project management process adherence across projects and adjust the compensation plan accordingly.

“While we all agreed that sales performance indicators are fairly clear with revenue and gross profit targets, it is harder to measure the performance of a technician, project manager or administrator,” Shinn says.

At IMS Technology Services, located in Garnet Valley, Penn., and founded in 1994, changes are beginning with new hires.

“The way that they ensured that corners were not cut and quality was maintained was very intriguing to me. This got the juices flowing for me to come back and determine how a similar program may work out in our environment.”– Mike Shinn, Operations Manager


“I was very impressed and intrigued by the concept that Rob Simopoulos brought up during the discussion, which later became a topic during recruitment, of how he is targeting training his people to the level of accountability he is looking for from the ground-up with an apprenticeship program,” says Shinn.

Simopoulos is president of Advance Technology Electronic Systems Integration, which serves New England. Shinn is taking a page out of his apprenticeship program by tying new hires to the hip of a lead performer in that particular line of duty for a period of time to help them learn the ropes of what it means to work at IMS and in the industry.

“We have seen greater success when there is a trainer involved that is not management, but instead someone that has demonstrated success and expertise in their knowledge area,” says Shinn.

A new project management process measurement has been introduced at IMS to ensure that customers receive the same professional services, regardless of which project manager is assigned to the project. Process compliance is calculated through a custom algorithm.

“We have assigned certain percentages of importance to specific milestones that we see as absolutely essential to the success of a project,” explains Shinn. “When those steps are mismanaged or skipped altogether, then those points are removed; almost like taking a test in school. If you worked the process only 70 percent of the way, then your compensation will be affected to correlate to the performance.”

To ensure fairness, the company has outlined a means for employees to work with management when a process doesn’t make sense for the scale or type of a project.

“If they involve management as part of the process, then they are not dodging the process at all and it allows for them to be compliant,” Shinn says.

Finally, a new compensation plan has been implemented for the project managers to reflect this new performance measurement. The idea is to follow the proper procedures rather than focusing on the final gross profit at the end of the project.

“This is to ensure that should they need to step outside the bounds of the process, that they are involving management to assist in guiding them properly so as not to have negative effects on other members of the team, the design, or, most importantly, the ultimate satisfaction of the customer,” says Shinn.


He has explained to staff why this change is necessary and how it will be implemented. To reinforce training and get feedback on how employees are doing, Shinn has scheduled monthly team sessions. Employee reaction has gone as anticipated.

Those struggling to adopt the changes are receiving help from management. If they cannot meet the new demands, they may be moved into a different role or move on to greener pastures.

“At least now we have a mechanism to hopefully see and assess this before it becomes problematic in the eyes of the customer or other mission-critical employees.”

The results have been encouraging, however.

“Thus far for 2015, I have seen about a 20 percent increase in process compliance by team members and everyone seems happier with the various team members fulfilling their piece of the puzzle more consistently.”

And we all know that when employees perform to the best of their ability, the customer is happy and the bottom line will rise.

“As one might expect, change has been challenging,” Shinn says. “However, overall there has been positive feedback from all accounts that we are definitely progressing and improving our art form. Here and there we receive push back on a new procedure, but after a while people begin to see the whole picture and the benefits.”


Profile 4: Logic IntegrationA/V integrator develops change order process, customer interface to stop leaking profits.

While Logic Integration has received such accolades as CEDIA Audio Video Contractor of the Year, the company had to undergo an extreme makeover to take its business to the next level. Some might argue the company had to undergo major changes to even remain in business for the long haul.

“We’d grown really fast over the past four years and didn’t have the resources, procedures and tools in place to grow,” says Shawn Hansson, CEO and founder. He admits that prior to making some major changes he never knew what was going on in the company.

Logic Integration, located in Denver, Colo. designs and installs home theater systems as well as audio and video systems for commercial, government, worship, residential and other applications. While his company grew from eight to 30 employees since the company’s founding in 2004, it became quite apparent that something had to drastically change when it lost about $250,000 in change orders alone in 2014.

“I’m not kidding when I say this—we did not have a change order process,” Hansson says. “Many items were ordered and installed free of charge.”


He joked that if you wanted a free television, last year would have been the opportune time to get one through his company. But now that there is an actual process, things are looking up. Each type of change order, internal, field directed and external, has its own step-by-step guide. “In 2015 we have done over $100,000 in change orders,” Hansson says.

Hansson has been to every CE Pro Summit. He says the roundtable sessions at the latest events had a great deal to do with the many changes his company has experienced lately.

He learned about procedural flow, department manuals and other companies’ processes.

An overhaul was also made to salespeople’s compensation plans. Previously, all commissions were based on gross sales, now it is based on profitability.

Since that change has been successful, the company is putting a new compensation and profitability bonus plan in place for all operations, including the installation team.

“It’s been tough for some of them, but now they’re starting to see the fruits of how it’s benefiting them,” Hansson said. After all, if the company doesn’t do well, they are out of a job.

Finally, the company has implemented an online metrics dashboard. While Guiding Metrics created the coding and application program interface (API), Logic Integration staff decided on the information they needed and uploaded the data.

Now everyone in the company can see how the business is doing financially, past and present projects, budgeting, hours invested and more. Staff members have tabs personalized to their specific needs as well.

“One of the best things about going to the CE Pro Summit is the ability to network with peers and people in the same position as you,” he says.

“Some companies are larger and can give you killer advice as they have been there before.”


With these changes, customer satisfaction has greatly improved.

“I’ve gotten more thank you letters and compliments from customers this year than I ever have in the company’s history,” Hansson says.

And let’s face it; it’s all about the customer. A year ago, Logic Integration didn’t have a customer interface. Now the company uses a live chat and tracking customer relationship management (CRM) system that allows staff to see how many people are on the company website, where they are from and what they are looking at. This enables the company to follow up with potential clients about what they are most interested in.

“All this data is live on the screens in our offices for everybody to see. This has changed the dynamic of the company,” says Hansson. “The company is more transparent, so the employees know what is going on and how to drive the business in their own individual area.”

Customers also have a chance to rate the company’s service, which Logic Integration tracks. If there is an unsatisfied customer, the system emails the management team to address the issue.

Overall, these changes boil down to one idea—consistency. Consistency in training, procedures and communication. And that consistency has paid off. The company profits have more than doubled. In Q1 of last year, the Logic Integration made $600,000. This year’s Q1 resulted in $2 million.

“We have the best Q1 in the history of this company,” says Hansson. “We survived 11 years without this stuff, so now imagine what we can do with it.”


Profile 5: OneVision ResourcesGrowing a company means hiring the right people.

For OneVision Resources, finding the right people meant changing the way they recruited them and implementing core values its employees could own.

In the custom integrator world, talent is not plentiful, even in a high-tech, well-educated city like Boston. Universities don’t offer home technology majors, which means finding the right person for the job is difficult, and finding the right person to come into a company that wants to break the status quo is even harder.

Those were some of the problems OneVision Resources was having when founder and technology managing director Joseph Kolchinsky attended the CE Pro Summit.

“We assumed that talent would be plentiful and easy to find because this is an established industry. We assumed that they’d be qualified and that they’d be able to do the job. We assumed that they’d be able to come on board and assimilate pretty quickly,” says Kolchinsky.

Turns out that none of those assumptions were right. “We didn’t have a good

perspective on how to properly evaluate talent to bring them on board,” Kolchinsky said.


He left the Summit with a new understanding on how a company’s culture has a major impact on its ability to grow.

OneVision Resources is an 8-year-old technology and personal health management company located in Boston. Kolchinsky was determined to learn from other Summit attendees about how to scale successfully and make changes that would result in attracting top-tier talent.

“We had a few ideas and preconceived notions as to how to successfully accomplish this, but after speaking and networking with fellow CE professionals we were able to verify that in order to scale a company, an organization needs to build a solid cultural foundation, and from there attract and hire top-tier talent,” Kolchinsky says.

That meant changing the recruiting and hiring process.

First, OneVision decided to increase recruiting efforts, investing in LinkedIn Recruiter and maintaining a dedicated employee who is focused exclusively on recruiting.

Second, in order to attract talent from outside the industry, the company invested in its image and has branded itself as a different kind of custom integrator—one that focuses on the service experience, not on the hardware. Kolchinsky says re-branding the company has helped generate interest from potential employees who wouldn’t normally look for employment in the custom integration field.

“People are already nervous about this field, they already think it’s immature, and in many cases the status quo doesn’t support the notion that we are a white-collar professional industry,” Kolchinsky said. “So a classically trained engineer or programmer may be less likely to join a custom integrator to design and program consumer electronic systems. This makes it very hard to find outside talent that can bring the rigor and discipline our field needs.”

Third, the company restructured its interview process that not only helps decide whether a candidate is a technical fit for the role, but also evaluates how they would fit with the company’s values.


But OneVision didn’t have a set-in-stone set of values.

“Before we could interview on values we had to figure out as a company what our values were,” Kolchinsky says. “We actually had to buy into them and believe in them and shift the entire company around those values and make sure we were committed to them because we couldn’t interview and evaluate candidates on that if we didn’t do that ourselves.”

Building a set of values was an organic process, according to George Gennis, a technology specialist in member services at OneVision, and it took some time to set everything straight.

“Our values were created several months ago, but as the company grows it’s important to be aware of their changing relevance. For example, during a recent retreat to Florida we voted to modify and clarify one of our values. In this way, the list came together and it became a real living document that we all bought into,” Gennis says.

Having a set of values allowed the interview process to go forward, and it’s something several members of the company take part in doing. Taking part in the hiring process invests each employee with a sense of empowerment and teamwork.

“We really have this sense of we built this house, we invested in this house, we’re going to protect this house,” Kolchinsky says.

The changes OneVision has implemented has empowered the OneVision team, helped employees to internalize the company’s core values, and allowed the onboarding of new hires to happen more quickly and efficiently.

OneVision’s Core Values• We share a passion for perfection.

• We come prepared with plan B. ...and C. ...and D.

• We empathize with our clients.

• Every detail matters.

• We respect and fiercely protect our client’s privacy.

• We are thought-leaders and provide innovative solutions.

• We support each other and the communities in which we live.

• We are transparent and not afraid to address the elephant in the room.

• We own the experience.

• We learn from our mistakes and share lessons learned.


4 Months Later: Tracking Champions from Our Last EditionImplementing change isn’t easy, and sticking with your plan can be even more difficult. However, the Champions of Change featured in our last report are proving it is possible, as long as you pick products and platforms that work—have a team that is eager to learn and understand what your customer base wants.

Net-AVOur most recent winner, Net-AV, a commercial integration firm in Maryland, has already launched a new website promoting its innovative changes to customers.

“The site and our marketing materials replace our old install-centric model,” says director of marketing Dawn Meade.

Net-AV, which serves a range of clients from government agencies to Fortune 100 corporations, was motivated to transform its way of doing business at the Commercial Integrator Summit. Since then, it has created several recurring monthly revenue (RMR) packages. “At its core, the pricing structure is all custom because the formulas are based on type of system, number of systems, and level of coverage,” Meade says.

The company has settled on ConnectWise as its backbone business management platform, which will be fully implemented in May.

Well-known RMR providers ihiji and Pakedge are also at the top of Net-AV’s list.

“We’re committing to more than one platform for customer management because not every project has the same needs and each vendor we are working with fills its own niche within the greater umbrella of remote management products,” says Meade.

She is confident the company’s leaner, seriously committed staff will easily handle the new products and packages. Some team members are taking certified technology specialist and certified technology specialist-design prep classes. Others will take project management professional classes. And there are future plans for network training and certification. Also, a recent hire specializes in Secure VTC and C4ISR projects.

As for the company’s goal of getting 15 percent or more RMR by the end of 2015, Meade says there’s still plenty of time. “Even though we are just laying some of the necessary groundwork, we have converted some of our existing customers to this new mindset and some initial contracts are in place.”


Doing more with less was Patrice Robidoux’s goal after the CE Pro Summit, and the owner of Domo Prestige has found success with repeat revenue.

“We are getting really good results and finding good solutions to help us in this area,” says Robidoux. “We found that a lot of products are becoming easier to access directly with what the manufacturers are offering out of the box.”

The A/V retail store and installer in Quebec, Canada is using Panamax’s Bluebolt technology to tap into some access points using an app. He also connects to clients’ equipment using Control4’s Composer Express app.

Robidoux offers three RMR packages, with yearlong contracts paid upfront:

1. $50/month: Control4 4Sight access; remote updates, troubleshooting and repairs; four programming modifications; two on-site visits; 10 percent off service calls

2. $100/month: Unlimited programming modifications, 15 percent off service calls, four on-site visits; no charge for equipment updates

3. $150/month: Unlimited programming modifications and free onsite tech support

Domo Prestige

“Most customers are first-time home automation owners, so they don’t know the maintenance involved. We don’t want to scare them, so we don’t push too hard on the third option,” he says.

Option one is the most popular, costing just under a $1,000 for the year. Robidoux plans to make some changes to option two, lowering its cost to an $80 monthly fee. He also plans to use Pakedge’s BakPak for remote management. Right now, he relies on his customers’ VPN connections.

But his goal of fixing connectivity issues before the customer even knows there’s a problem has been a complete success.


Starting simple is Bruce Kaufmann’s solution to tackling social media. His mainly commercial company in the Washington, DC area, Human Circuit, is trying to improve relationships between its customers and technology through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other facets of social media.

Inspired by the Commercial Integrators Summit, Kaufmann uses a WordPress blog to push technology information through Human Circuit’s website and out to the world. He has noticed that many of his posts are being shared on social media. An internal blog for staff has helped build more of a team atmosphere.

“People feel more informed, whether it was the births of children (three recently), new jobs, fun events,” he says.

With that success, a huge hurdle is slowing down the process. Employees have been apprehensive about exposing their information to the outside world. To counteract that, Kaufmann’s sales and marketing administrator is acting as a change agent, spending 50 percent of her time on expanding the company’s presence on social media.

Human Circuit

Employees will soon be creating video profiles using a Vimeo channel linked to the company’s website. “So people can learn about our people, we have just started experimenting with our new GoPro camera and learning about their editing software,” Kauffman says.

The company is also making a time-lapse video showcasing the stages of a new project.

Other efforts include reworking employee profiles on LinkedIn and pinpointing the impact of social media through search engine optimization reports.

Now accepting applications for the 2015 Summits!

Contact Leigh Fishback 508.618.8330 [email protected]


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ContactsNancy FrancoExecutive [email protected]

Amelia AndradeOperations [email protected]

Wendy LoewVP of Business [email protected]

Leigh FishbackGuest [email protected]

Adam HanchetteSales [email protected]

Jillian Bateman-MooreDirector of Marketing & [email protected]

Casey [email protected]

Kelly [email protected]

Andrea MedeirosEditor & Multimedia [email protected]

Steve WithrowEditor-in [email protected]

John [email protected]

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champions of change vol 2

Documents

harrison home systems

home sales

smart home

george harrison

pro sound profile

logic integration profile

introduction profile

kassa harrison