It’s easy to overlook audio visual (AV) technology in the hurly-burly of modern business where hot new IT hardware, software and mobile products and technologies are announced nearly every day, but it’s worth bearing in mind that AV can help to project and display your company and services to customers and the wider world more effectively.
And there’s no doubt that small businesses are becoming increasingly interested in AV. Don Holmes, senior sales consultant at TNS Distribution, which supplies a number of AV products, says the use of AV products in smaller businesses has become much more prevalent in recent times. He argues that small businesses are recognising the importance of communication with customers to improve product awareness and increase turnover. “Inevitably, the use of AV has proved invaluable for smaller companies to help them in their quest to improve their overall business solution,” Holmes claims.
Liam Sheehan, AV sales manager at Osmosis Ireland, says the “single biggest use of AV technology by small businesses is using plasma screens and LCD monitors for digital signage”. One of the products Osmosis carries is the OneLan set top box, which can turn a plasma screen into a digital sign by letting businesses input information into the box and also allowing them to create different zones on the screen. Sheehan gives the example of a pub showing a football match on the screen with ticker tape advertising for specials on drinks running underneath.
Holmes says that AV use has been particularly noticeable in the hospitality industry. “The smoking ban has resulted in hotels, pubs and restaurants, regardless of their size, having to develop new methods of attracting regular customers,” he suggests. Other drivers for growth would be major sporting events, such as the Ryder Cup and the World Cup.
A different type of digital signage is deployed in the retail environment, argues Peter Fox, sales director at Digicom. This can often involve using rear projection screens but he admits the retail environment “struggles because it likes bright lighting to show off the merchandise while AV needs darker scenarios”.
In terms of display screens, he argues that LCD is “definitely preferred over plasma because there’s no burn-in of the image and it’s non-reflective”. Some customers have also taken to “playing around with using the screen with portrait on its side” to make their display more distinctive.
Sometimes, people selling digital signage suggest customers can sell advertising space to their suppliers, in addition to displaying their own information, but Fox is unconvinced. “You can sell advertising space, but I don’t know if it’s been hugely successful. We haven’t done it ourselves. It works in airports of course, but they’re more prone to people buying on the hoof. That doesn’t really happen in supermarkets.”
One successful deployment of AV in small business has been Easi Media’s solution for butchers. By networking plasma and LCD to a PC, butchers can run presentations on their business, highlight the traceability of the meat they sell, advertise special offers, awards, recommended recipes, and details of value added products. Holmes at TNS describes it as “a typical example of how small businesses can use AV to promote their business and increase communication with their customers” and demonstrates the benefits they can achieve from a relatively small investment in AV products.
Ray Hoey, managing director of Easi Solutions, admits butchers can “take a lot of convincing” about using AV technology. “It’s a gamble for every butcher, but we’ve signed up all the top ones,” he says. Those customers that have signed up help to advertise the AV product not just to their customers but also to other butchers. “We don’t advertise it,” Hoey claims, “they come to us.”
He suggests another advantage is that Easi Solutions trains up the butchers so they can edit the system themselves – “they don’t have to pay us to come back if they need to edit their special offers”. Those who have installed the system “view it as an extra member of staff,” Hoey claims.
Interestingly, given Fox’s comments about advertising on digital signage, Easi Solutions has not recommended clients take the option of allowing other companies to advertise on their displays. “ We don’t farm out screen space in the butchers,” Hoey says. “A few have asked but we recommend they don’t because they will have no control.”
Easi Solutions has now taken the system into a different market. “We’re starting with a hardware company this month, that will be using it to advertise the company, the products it sells and its expertise,” Hoey reveals.
Businesses without a retail or point-of-sale environment are also adopting AV technology for promotion, albeit of a slightly different kind. Fox at Digicom says there’s a lot going on with small business boardrooms with ‘hang and bang’ applications. Small businesses will typically have “a projector, a motorised screen and maybe speakers in the ceiling. It won’t be overly complicated – there won’t be room control for example. You’re talking about a sub €10,000 installation for a small boardroom, although it could be less than €7,000. It’s not so long ago that you would be talking about £20,000”.
It’s not that long ago that having projection in the boardroom would have been viewed as a luxury for a small company, but Fox claims “it’s now being viewed as a necessity to advertise your company to visiting clients. There’s an expectation that they have at least this level of AV technology available.”
The high cost of the technology in the past led many companies to hire AV equipment, but Fox argues hiring is “more or less gone at this stage. We have a leasing option for up to five years, with an option to upgrade after three years, and that’s going quite well”.
He advises that projector screens are preferable in the boardroom to plasma and LCD screens. He argues plasma and LCD screens are “generally too small and fail the 4:6:8 rule”. The rule is that you can only be four times the height of the screen back to view a spreadsheet on the screen properly, six times the height for a Powerpoint presentation and eight times for video.
Another (smaller) area worth looking at in terms of AV technology and small businesses is interactive whiteboards (IWBs). There has been a huge take up of IWBs in the UK because of the massive investment the government has put into them for education – there are now two IWBs per primary school and 7.5 per secondary school. In fact, the UK is the biggest market for IWBs in the world and sales in 2004 were 80 times higher than in Germany.
In terms of Irish market share, Sheehan says IWB “is a growing market, particularly for boardrooms for making presentations or for staff training and there’s a bit more interest”. He points out that a board can be bought for as little as €1,200 plus VAT, although the larger 80 inch boards cost about €2,000.
Fox argues IWBs are used a lot “in progressive companies, particularly in the pharmaceutical, IT and finance industries. You can really ‘wow’ someone with them”. But he stresses that suppliers need to go back at least twice to help customers with the technology “because often when they try it themselves, it will fall over. If you don’t go back and help them, they won’t use it”. Fear of using IWBs and failing is particularly high if they are being used for presentations – no one wants to mess up a presentation to clients!
Finally, there’s video-conferencing. Sean Holohan, managing director of AV supplier Videnda, claims video communications and collaboration is a growing area for small businesses, especially if they have a number of regional offices or small international offices and constant communication is difficult or expensive. Small regional offices and international suppliers can be “available at the touch of a button for a fraction of the cost that was previously the case,” he argues. “You can get desktop products and video phones that are well within the buying power of the smallest SMEs.”
To give an idea of the cost, Holohan says Polycom PVX business video software costs €120, video phones start at €390 and video-conferencing set-top systems are available from €1,800.
Fox at Digicom agrees video-conferencing is taking off in smaller room environments and says it’s “the biggest growth market in AV in our business. Small businesses are taking it on for intracompany connectivity – say you have a branch in Cork and one in Galway for example”. He estimates a small company could get a system “for under €8,000 that would give you a remote system where one or two people could talk to a system in the HQ that could handle five or six people”.
Unlike Holohan, Digicom wouldn’t recommend broadband “because the contention rates go up and down. Our recommendation for now is ISDN because you’re guaranteed 128Kb up and down per line or a fully managed VPN.”
Holohan disagrees. “IP is the way to go in nearly every case. Uplink bandwidth is important so you may need more than you already have, but it’s possible to get the bandwidth and low contention rates.”
Covering display, projection and video-conferencing, AV is a very broad technology area but in all cases, what it focuses on in the end is communication, external and internal. As such, it has attractions and benefits for all kinds of businesses that are looking for better communication with their customers and inside their own companies. So long as the price is right.
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