Many multi-national companies are embracing centralised IT services. This is either on their hosted data-centre or increasingly, on a virtual data-centre provided by AWS or Azure. Conversely, the audio-visual industry has focused on localised solutions with “central control processors” that extend to a dozen rooms at most. Today, this is rapidly changing as the decision maker for building and AV control is likely to be an IT professional and not the traditional AV manager.
At ACA we focus on solutions that conform to IT standards and consequentially take advantage of IT trends and opportunities. It’s a natural fit for us as our smart building control platform is built on open web-standards.
Centralising your control platform in the same why you might centralise your email support can create new value in your building. There are the three inconvertible benefits of a centralised web-based control platform across your multi-national company:
1. Lower CapEx- Use your global buying power
If you have 10 meeting rooms in your Sydney office, 20 in Hong Kong and 30 in Singapore, you can go on an enterprise license for 60 rooms- rather than three separate on-premises licenses. The more rooms you add to the platform, the lower the per room cost. This allows your smaller offices to have the same solution as your corporate headquarters without having to pay separately at a premium.
2. Lower OpEx with a centralised support model
With a centralised solution comes a centralised support model. You can have a single help-desk or perhaps multiple help-desks across multiple time zones. Ultimately, you can run support for your meeting rooms in the same way you might run your centralised desktop support. Monitoring and remote tools are built into the ACAEngine admin interface.
3. Consistent and uniform customer experience- everywhere
This also helps with centralised support but more importantly your customers will have the best user experience at every office. You can use tools such as Google Analytics to monitor engagement and work out the best way to improve the user experience throughout the life of the system. With a web-based solution, you can also make live changes across the entire organisation or try out new interface designs on a sample audience with built in A/B testing in most Analytic platforms.
ACA has partnered with multi-national integration companies that can help you design, deliver and support an innovative smart building for every office in your organisation.
