Things to know before buying an audiovisual system for business

When a company purchases an audiovisual system for business, it focuses on the functionality of that system. This is the key thing to consider while making a purchase decision. The purchase department, IT manager, or AV system manager takes this responsibility. Before buying an audiovisual system for business, understand the following things to choose the best for your business.

Defining ‘Needs’ and ‘Wants’ –

Needs and Wants are two separate things, and you need to define them in that way only. Your needs will be those you need for the system to function. It is also important to define your ‘wants,’ some optional things you feel to have. For example, you are designing a video conferencing system, and the room is too big. You expect the microphone to pick up the people in the back of the room. In this case, the speakers you want to mount on the ceiling can be your need. Whereas, the expensive sound bar below the TV, which is out of the budget, will be a want you do not necessarily need. Thus, you must define the needs and wants before buying an audiovisual system for business.

Audiovisual Experiences –

You should also determine how the users will use these rooms in these audiovisual spaces. We call it audiovisual experiences. So a user or a group of users can use the AV system differently than others. Some can be fairly technical, some from an IT company or technology company. Even some of them may be less technical in general. The manager managing these users wants to understand the group’s technical ability. This ability may vary between divisions and departments within the same company.

For example, one customer may have an IT team that likes high-end audiovisuals. Even being a little more technical to use, they know how to set it up. In another office in a different location, they have sales guys. They want a user-friendly, very basic audio-visual system. Come in and press a button as a start. And it just works the way they want it to every time.

Audiovisual System Configuration –

You can build different conferencing systems in a lot of different ways. Today video conferencing systems can be modular like those with soft codec systems like Zoom rooms. These systems have peripheral devices that are built in a million different ways. You have different types of cameras that plug in USB and different types of displays on the wall. Maybe you want a single display or a dual display. You can do sharing through the application or locally with an HDMI cable coming up from the conference room table. Thus, you can configure the conference rooms differently.

Those things are assessed during the ‘needs,’ and the ‘wants. ‘Even the company may have a preference for the different systems that they’re using. Infinite Audiovisual has the experience to make useful recommendations. We also help our customers define what their needs and their wants are. Our recommendations are based on our experiences with a lot of different technologies that are out there. We’re currently using Logitech systems and Neets sound bars. We are a Crestron and Extron certified designer and reseller. We can produce custom GUI interfaces for touch screens. You can use buttons to drop the projector out of the ceiling and to start the Zoom meeting. Also, room schedulers are another thing whose integration is possible into conferencing systems and conference rooms lately.

We can provide you with the applications that connect the calendars. You can schedule conference rooms in the office with it. You can also have a small display, touch screen and digital signage outside the room. It indicates whether the room is available or if it’s occupied. You can also look at that and see the schedule. So, audio-visual systems are custom and configurable, or they can be very simple and easy to use. It depends on what the customer is looking for from the system.

Serviceability –

Our team installs plug-and-play systems that are really easy to service and can be pretty simple. There are a few things that need to be looked at if the room isn’t working correctly or we’ve built out conference rooms that are a lot more complex, and you have a large boardroom or a training room or an all hand-space that has many different components that are configured with custom configurations, custom DSP settings, and those ones are a little more complex. In order to service those rooms, we recommend that the customer’s staff is trained and they are given some training on how to troubleshoot the system, how to set it up for meetings, and what to do and what not to do to make sure that their systems are working properly.

Maintenance –

Infinite Audiovisual provides regular maintenance services for audiovisual systems. Our customers frequently work with us to design and build their standards. We install new conference room systems or retrofit existing conference room systems. And then we regularly visit our customer’s place for regular maintenance. Since audiovisual spaces like conference rooms are very high touch, you may require our assistance. The system needs to be readjusted when some cables are unplugged, and things are modified or moved out of alignment.

So, our team performs regular maintenance sweeps for a lot of our customers. We visit after hours or during low traffic hours on office days to clean up the cabling and do some cable management. We wipe the touch screens down with the appropriate clothes to avoid damage. Usually, the case is that the cleaning people in these offices are not going to touch the technology. So, it’s just something that needs to be cleaned by a professional company like Infinite Audiovisual.

Conclusion –

So, before buying any AV system for your business, check the above factors. And always prefer professional guidance and recommendations such as you can get from Infinite Audiovisual.

Are you looking for a skilled audiovisual system integrator? Call us at (408) 796-7735 or schedule a review of your system with our experts.

Tags: audio video system, audio-visual system for business, audiovisual system

Categorised in: Audiovisual Technology

This post was written by Sandeepa