Supersummit, the flagship event for Certified Solution Providers of the PSNI Global Alliance, is set to take place virtually on March 30.
Ahead of the event, AVNetwork caught up with some of PSNI's Preferred Vendor Partners to get the scoop on their latest products and hear why they're looking forward to the 2021 Supersummit.
Interview with Megan Knedler, Director, Marketing at Legrand AV.
AVNETWORK: What changes has your company made during the COVID-19 pandemic?
MEGAN KNEDLER: As a manufacturer in the tech space, we’ve forever been caught up in the “What’s New?” mentality. This past year has drastically evolved our approach. Not that new isn’t important—We’ll always be innovating. It’s just that enablement today is more important. What the heck does that mean? At Legrand AV, enabling our partners means:
- Focus on what’s relevant. The corporate sector has historically represented a majority focus for most of us in the commercial AV industry. In a year when the physical office was a ghost town, we all had to take a hard look at our resource allocation and ask ourselves how can we support people, teams, and communities now? Keeping doctors and patients connected, keeping students and teachers connected even communities through houses of worship—these are the connections that matter most today. Instead of focusing on the latest new products, we looked hard at each of these developing markets and curated products, tools, and content to support the reality of the challenges each faced.
- Partnering on tools and content. As these market needs shifted so did content needs and audiences. The demand for relevant digital content exploded. To help our partners drive revenue, we began co-branding content for them to use in email and online marketing.
- Services. Legrand AV has a Solutions and Engineering Team whose focus is to assist integrators and end users with system design. Their services took on a whole new meaning after the country fundamentally shut down. Integrators were forced to reduce their staff, projects were left in partial states of completion with needs dramatically shifting. This team became an extension of our partners' businesses, enabling them to scale up and down, execute on projects quickly—essentially flex capacity for the integration community.
- Transparency. Some brands rose and fell on the hinges of information accessibility this past year. When demands for cameras exceeded 300 percent year-over-year growth, we stayed true to our partners by providing them real-time information ... even if the news was less than stellar. We updated lead times on critical products daily. We partnered with our distributors to serve dealers when we couldn’t. Finally, we organized our content in a way that made sense and was easy to access and understand. We did these things because we understand that trust is foundational to partnership.
AVN: How can integrators better position themselves to profit from the products and/or services you have to offer?
MK: Legrand AV is uniquely made up of leading brands and products foundational to amazing AV experiences. The best way to get more is to solve more than one problem for your customer. Consider the space, consider the challenges of both today and tomorrow, and move beyond selling a mount to enabling hybrid teams to collaborate. Zooming out and flexing the breadth of Legrand AV solutions will unearth far more opportunities.
AVN: Tell us about your latest product.
MK: With return to work upon us, employee safety will be an upmost priority. AV is uniquely positioned to not only connect people and technology of collaboration, but to enable communication and safety on a campus. Check out Chief’s new floor and tabletop tablet stands that support safe entry and navigation through public spaces.
Click here to see how the whole system comes together for entrance temperature scanning.
AVN: What are you most looking forward to at the 2021 PSNI Supersummit?
MK: PSNI has always hosted amazing, high-energy events with the coolest people! While we’ll certainly miss that face-to-face (and the cocktails), we’re looking forward to the one-on-one interactions in our booth. These are the best opportunities to discover the next generation big ideas that will shape the future of AV. Looking forward to seeing you all there.
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