For now, Advanced AV is a global company with a single office. That global approach comes from the fact that many of its clients do business overseas, from places such as Brazil, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia and more. Being part of USAV Group has helped Advanced AV extend its reach.
“We’re pretty much going anywhere our clients want us to go,” says Boettcher. “We work with clients within 2½ hours of Philadelphia and they take us all over the world,” says Greene, who notes working out partnerships overseas “was a bit of a conundrum.”
More Ways to Improve
As the integration space continues to evolve, Advanced AV prides itself on learning as much as it can about what’s going on now, what’s going away and what’s coming next.
“Training comes in waves, but it is really important to maintain a strategy,” says Boettcher. “You can get caught up in the battle sometimes, and wind up pushing this out, but you can’t do that longterm. We keep specific certifications, both industry and specific manufacturers (Crestron, Cisco and Extron, for example), and the latter seems more important at this time.
“We’re in the crosshairs of services, cloud and everything else. It can become so confusing from a client or industry standpoint, so it’s up to us to understand where the value is and where they fit in and how to sell them,” he says.
Advanced AV posts a large matrix on the wall of its headquarters that shows all technical employees and the certifications they need to attain to be eligible for promotions. The document spans all aspects of the company, from service to sales and everything in between.
“Installer to technician, you need certain certifications,” says Boettcher.
Advanced AV also prides itself on “aggressively trying to develop women in positions of management,” says Greene.
That growing group includes purchasing manager Maureen Gouchenauer, marketing director Marina Gregory, express team leader Tory Holmwood, inside sales account manager Colleen Leskowich, engineering director Susan Lucci and services IT infrastructure manager Amrit Sidhu.
“Having that viewpoint brings a very collaborative approach,” says Greene. “Prioritizing that within the industry has brought us benefit in terms of tearing down silos and disrupting processes. They think things through differently and that’s a positive.”
Boettcher underscores, “You won’t solve problems if everyone thinks the same way.”
On the operations side, Boettcher points to a “shift from a facilities-based mindset to IT. Facilities know how long it takes to build; IT knows how long it takes to configure. We’re getting entrenched in conversations on IT, getting people trained in IT and supporting it from an industry perspective.”
Along those IT-related lines, Greene sees the biggest change in the industry as the speed at which things happen.
“If we’ve said something will take 12 weeks in the past, we’ve been able to explain the process,” he says. “Now they want to know why. We need to have IT chops if we’re going to continue to have success in corporate, higher ed and many other markets.”
Advanced AV continues to learn from its mistakes and trying to do things better.
“Too many companies do not have good information around their financials, especially regarding projects and overall costs,” says Boettcher. “Analyze accurate data so you can make good business decisions.”
In hindsight, it seems clear that one of those good business decisions for Advanced AV was entrusting its leadership to someone with a rich services-related background. Boettcher continues to champion the importance of recurring revenue.
“If people don’t get that by now, come on,” he says. Things have come full-circle in Boettcher’s seven-plus years at the helm.
“There’s chaos happening again with the whole AV-IT convergence situation and we’re managing that process now,” he says. “We’re under fire and this is hard work, but it’s exciting.
