Choosing an AV supplier when your own company sells technology

A software business that has spent a decade refining how it buys and sells technology sits down to specify meeting rooms, and finds that none of its usual instincts apply.

There is no trial tier. Nothing can be run alongside the incumbent for a quarter before committing. The thing being bought is bolted into a building, paid for once, and lives in the fabric of the office for the better part of a decade. Switching supplier next year means switching relationships, not switching subscriptions.

Technology firms tend to be good at procurement — many of them resell and package other people’s technology as their core business, and read a supplier quote for a living. That skill mostly transfers. What catches people out is the small number of ways AV behaves differently from everything else on the purchasing list.

This article covers what makes AV procurement different, what to test before committing, whether a supplier can keep pace with a growing business, and why the relationship matters more here than the specification.

Table of Contents

• Why AV doesn’t procure like software
• What to test before committing
• Whether a supplier can keep up with growth
• What this looks like in practice
• Why the relationship outlasts the specification
• FAQs

Why AV doesn’t procure like software

Three differences account for most of the friction.

The first is irreversibility. Cabling routes, ceiling work and display positions are decided once. A specification that turns out to be wrong is not a settings change; it is a return visit with tools and a room out of use.

The second is that the buyer is rarely the user. The people specifying meeting rooms are usually technical or operational, while the people living with the result are everyone else in the business. A room that makes sense on a drawing can still be quietly unpopular, and that only becomes visible in the booking data months later.

The third is that most of the cost of a bad decision arrives after the invoice is settled — in interrupted meetings, in support time, and in the rooms people stop booking. None of it appears in the comparison spreadsheet at the point of purchase.

What to test before committing

Since AV cannot be trialled, the substitute is evidence and specificity. What separates audio visual suppliers is rarely the equipment list, which is why the useful tests sit elsewhere.

Worth establishing in writing before any order is placed:

• What is excluded — acoustic treatment, containment, commissioning time, training and documentation are the items most often thinned to reach a lower number, and the least visible on a summary page.
• Who attends site — design and installation frequently come from different teams, and the people in the pitch are not always the people who turn up.
• What a comparable project looked like — specifically what went wrong on it. Every project has a difficult part, and a supplier who describes it plainly is usually the one who handled it.
• What happens in year two — how faults are raised, how quickly they are answered, and who attends when a remote fix is not enough.

Seeing a room the supplier has finished, in use, with ordinary staff rather than a demonstrator, is worth more than any of it.

Whether a supplier can keep up with growth

Growth is the defining constraint for most technology businesses, and it is the one AV proposals rarely address.

A company adding headcount every quarter will take more space within the year. The relevant question is not whether a supplier can deliver six rooms now, but whether the seventh room, fitted eighteen months later by a different account manager, will behave identically to the first six.

That depends on unglamorous things. Whether a written standard exists rather than living in one person’s memory. Whether the supplier documents what was installed and why. Whether they will still be applying the same pattern when the business takes a second floor or a second city.

An AV company that treats each project as discrete produces an estate that drifts. One that treats the first installation as a template produces something a growing business can extend without renegotiating from scratch.

What this looks like in practice

Viewpoint’s work with Auto Trader PLC has run for more than ten years, across an estate of forty meeting rooms in Manchester and London, with the work nominated for an award at InAVate. A business that grew substantially over that period kept extending the same relationship rather than re-tendering it, which speaks to the part of a proposal that is hardest to assess in advance.

The full Auto Trader case study sets out what was delivered.

Why the relationship outlasts the specification

The installation takes a few weeks. The arrangement that follows runs for years, and most of the value and most of the risk sit in that second part.

This is where the difference between a supplier and a partner becomes visible. A supplier delivers rooms to a specification. A partner expects to be working alongside the in-house team in three years, asks different questions during design, and leaves documentation behind that somebody else could work from.

For firms weighing this up, the practical starting point is usually agreeing how video conferencing will be specified, supported and kept consistent as the business adds space, since that is where inconsistency shows up first and costs most.

Viewpoint AV works with technology companies as a long-term AV partner rather than a one-off supplier — get in touch.

FAQs

How should a technology company approach buying AV differently from buying software?
The main adjustment is that AV cannot be trialled or rolled back. Cabling, ceiling work and display positions are decided once, so the evidence has to come before commitment — seeing finished rooms in ordinary use, and getting scope written down rather than assumed.

Why do AV quotes vary so much for the same rooms?
Because scope varies more than equipment does. Commissioning time, acoustic work, containment, training and documentation are frequently the difference, and a summary page looks much the same with or without them.

What should be checked before choosing an audio visual supplier?
What is excluded from the quote, who actually attends site, what went wrong on a comparable project, and what the support arrangement looks like in year two. A visit to a completed room in normal use is worth more than a showroom demonstration.

Can an AV supplier keep up with a fast-growing business?
Only if they work from a written standard rather than project memory. The test is whether a room fitted eighteen months later, possibly by different people, will behave the same as the first ones.

Is it worth paying more for an AV company with a long client history?
Longevity is one of the few available proxies for what happens after handover, which is otherwise almost impossible to assess in advance. It is not a guarantee, but a supplier who has kept clients for years has been through the part where things go wrong.