The Key to Staff Efficiency and Advertising Success
Effective communication is everything in the modern, fast-paced business world. Your boardroom or meeting space AV system can mean the difference between an okay presentation and a remarkable one that inspires your team members, employees, clients, or anyone else on the receiving end of your communications endeavors. Imagine running a meeting where you can use the walls of the environment to augment your presentations. The info will be clear, and the staff will fully understand the direction as well as the subtle subtasks and undertakings. A well-understood directive means fewer clarifying questions and more effective, engaged workers who will do their jobs more productively.
The simpler ease of use makes using AV control systems a better choice for effective staff. Imagine the reduction of downtime when your staff workers can communicate their ideas without asking you or someone else a million questions about how to get the program to work.
Marketing teams and ad groups, advertising will never be the same again with the new interactive musical advertising billboards. With digital signage, ads can be changed out on the fly from anywhere in the world—the ads change based on the movements of a nearby user. The advertisements could then market their products based on the type of user we infer them to be based on their clothing.
The marketing strategies are endless, and businesses could use this advantage to put themselves and their businesses on the map in a major way.
Understanding AV Control and Its Role in Business
AV control is important in commercial spaces. It can take all the different elements of a commercial audiovisual system and make them all work together as one. For instance, in a conference room, you might have a projector, microphones, and speakers. In this case, the AV control system would be in place to make sure that all of those different components are working together and are functioning in a manner that allows for the seamless and uninterrupted presentation of information to a team. This example is important in the scope of corporate environments because it can be applied directly to the board, meeting, conference, and war rooms. The list goes on, but the concept is the same: the business will be more productive with the tools, and the technology exists to control the tools. In addition, a subtle difference between this book/CD type of AV control model and a “modern” TV-based control system (think a TV with a built-in DVD player—1 device) is that they are each used in interesting places. The service staff hanging out in the Napoleon suite after the gig is always a good time. Great.
The Impact of AV Technology on Staff Efficiency
AV control systems are essential for staff to interact with one another—they make departments like internal communications more straightforward. The systems allow people to present multimedia content, including presentations or videos, with technically little going wrong. The alternative is for marketing teams to install the AV technology in meeting rooms and the collaborative spaces in the office, but that means there are too many interfaces for new employees to get their heads around at their own speed.
Also irritating is when it takes the first day of an employee’s arrival at a training seminar for the managers to use the software. It is a smart fix by manufacturers to develop a control system that reduces the amount of downtime during meetings. It probably only amounts to a few minutes at a time to troubleshoot how to fix the display from being wrongly cropped. However, businesses underestimate how quickly that time amounts to lost revenue. Besides, training—video-training, at times—is stressful enough before taking into account who is viewing its contents.
At the minute, adopting AV control systems is also a really smart thing to have done to thrive in a hybrid workplace. More people than ever work from different areas of—in the most literal use of its definition—the office to make work less competitive. Hopefully, with everyone’s audio quality equal, the meetings can stay more on track.
Leveraging AV Control for Advertising Opportunities
AV control technology enables businesses to display appropriate, targeted advertising relevant to whomever might be looking at a specific sign at any given moment. Using data analytics and other real-time customer information, the advertising on the signs can be adjusted based on the time of day, the location of the sign, or profiles of the “likely” buying habits of people within the area of the sign. The goal is to try to match the output content of the sign with an advertisement that is relevant to the potential consumer. The consumer is more likely to “like,” or “want” the advertisement and will therefore more likely pay attention to it.
This “dynamic” advertising content frequently changes. A static advertisement can be recognized and then ignored after having been seen once or twice. Dynamic content moves around, vibrates, resonates…basically encouraging people to “engage” with what they’re seeing. Or, to reach out and buy the product right there on the spot, or to go to the brand’s website to learn more about the product, etc. And, the more engaging the content of the ad, the better.
Then there’s simply the fact that a real-time update changes. What’s going on in real-time that might make me want to know more (or less) about how I feel about a certain product? For example, if the trending topic right now on LinkedIn is something related to fashion, why not display an advertisement for plaid neckties (which are in fashion, by the way)? As this technology matures, it will probably become a mandatory tool for any business that aspires to be more than “mediocre” in a highly competitive market.
The Financial Benefits of Investing in AV Control
Many businesses will see AV control systems as a long-term money-saving tool. This highlights the true definition of business automation. Automating camera movements and audio mixing eliminates or significantly reduces the amount of human labor involved in simple tasks. In very large organizations, the labor cost savings can be substantial, especially in systems that are designed to present information that educates, entertains, and sells to their customers.
However, why would an enterprise that is already involved in the AV technology space see control and touch user interfaces as a tool to minimize churn? The answer is straightforward and concrete. Providing AV control and ease-of-use functionality, regardless of the demographic, simply makes a business more money. To silence the increasing groans of those who use your corporate AV products that do not include AV control, these basic ROI tools could become your worst nightmare.
Audio-visual control systems are one of the most neglected items that can cause staff inefficiency. Businesses project unwanted time and energy troubleshooting why their laptop won’t connect to the projector when employee’s time and attention should be spent on why they booked the conference room in the first place. An optimized AV solution may be as simple as pushing a single button to start a video conference.
Making use of and selling digital signage and interactive menu boards can also be difficult when businesses don’t speak AV. In fact, this is an essential crossroad where IT and AV solutions should be telling businesses the same thing: just point and click. However, this is hardly the case. As the AV design solution was implemented during a different phase than the menu system, businesses then have to decide if the latest server update is corrupted or the AV system.
Even more so than the meetings rooms, digital signage projects heavily on businesses’ outward appearance. An error on digital signage is not only a poor representation of the business, it is a wasted opportunity to help the bottom line. In other words, instead of IT and AV working together to add value, they leave the presentation out of focus.
Digitally printed or physical signage is a completely unnecessary expense when businesses implement an AV solution that is easy to use for all departments. Stop making the maintenance man the graphic designer or having to remember what the IT guy said about downloading security features. Simply let me add team members to the project! These financials also do not include sales lost to poor customer experience, so the losses just keep piling up… just a real face-palm moment.
Because IT and AV integrations touch so many different areas of a business, the cost-savings add up over time. In some instances, digital signage can even be used to drive extra profitability by being sold as advertising space. That said, when digital signage is installed over the public entrances to events it is perplexing why these spaces wouldn’t be considered valuable areas to sell to advertisers.
Interestingly enough, digital signage offers many different forms of communication, so as long as businesses have their ambitions set on growth, there is no wrong way to use digital signage. This is annually a multi-billion dollar industry! It can even be used for special events as a good way of selling sponsored advertising space.
Given IT and AV business-driven objectives programmed for third-party advertisers, advertising space could be scaled across a customizable built-in advertising network. This network could then be managed from central and multiple locations with access. Doing business on the weekends? A particular pop-up ad at lunch with the game or another event notification may just do the trick.
