Proactive Maintenance and Support Maximizes the ROI of Your Audio & Video Systems

When organizations are looking to design and implement an A/V system, they seldom consider the long-term maintenance and management of the solution. They’re concerned about how the system is going to function — and, of course, the total cost of the project. A managed services agreement might seem like an unnecessary added expense.

However, maintenance and support should be part of the conversation from the outset of the project. Otherwise, issues are bound to arise that reduce the ROI of the solution.

Let’s say that a sales person is doing a presentation for a prospect and the connection drops. By the time she’s able to get back online, the meeting is derailed and the prospect is no longer interested. Or let’s say your procurement, logistics and service delivery teams are trying to coordinate an important project, but one of the teams is unable to connect to the web conference. These kinds of issues can impact your organization’s bottom line.

Some organizations establish internal processes for A/V maintenance and support. Someone on the IT team is assigned to check each meeting room on a daily basis to ensure that everything is operating normally. If an issue arises, users are directed to call the help desk and open a ticket.

There are a couple of problems with this approach. First, IT teams are typically stretched thin. There may not be adequate staff resources to do that “preventive maintenance walk” every day. If a user calls the help desk for support, a tech may not be able to get there quickly enough to salvage the meeting.

Second, IT pros aren’t always familiar with A/V equipment. Issues can arise that they won’t be able to troubleshoot in a timely fashion. If the person conducting the “room sweeps” is unable to solve a problem within 15 minutes, the issue should be escalated. That escalation is a burden when the organization doesn’t have dedicated, knowledgeable A/V staff who can actively take on those issues.

And often the answer lies in the network rather than the A/V system. For example, vendors automatically send firmware updates via cloud servers to their devices over a customer’s network, which provides convenience and quality control of their products. However, this can cause problems in complex A/V control systems. If the firmware changes the names of devices in a command line, for example, the A/V programming suddenly won’t be able to communicate as it is referencing a different command.

Rahi’s A/V team has the experience to recognize these issues and has seen them happen on many occasions. With a managed services contract in place, to monitor system functionality, Rahi’s experienced field engineers can extend their reach to its dedicated A/V team to quickly reprogram the controller. The typical IT pro likely wouldn’t know where to look.

Sometimes the IT team inadvertently causes the problem. The network administrator might perform updates and forget to set the right permissions for the A/V equipment on the network. Or A/V devices might not be able to communicate if they’re rebooted out of sequence.

You can avoid these kinds of problems with managed services from Rahi Systems. Our A/V professionals will perform preventive maintenance on your A/V systems to ensure that they’re always up-to-date and functioning optimally. We can coordinate with your IT team to stay ahead of firmware updates and other changes to the network that could impact the A/V environment. And when problems arise, we can troubleshoot them remotely or dispatch an experienced tech to your site. That technician comes with the support of experienced A/V engineers, A/V programmers and IT engineers and will address the issue within the agreed SLA.

It all boils down to value. You invested in A/V systems to help enhance productivity and customer service. Proactive maintenance and support help ensure that your A/V systems deliver maximize ROI.

Jovan Ortiz

Jovan joined the Rahi A/V team in 2012, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in audio engineering. He quickly grew his career from field technician, to field engineering and then into project management. He now serves as a presales engineer designing cohesive solutions that enable Rahi’s customers to maximize their investments in A/V technology

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