How to Apply Service Delivery Management Best Practices to AV
AV Is a Service to Your Organization
As a term, service delivery management seems self-explanatory. If you’re in the information technology world, you also understand how it applies to your sphere of influence. In the AV world, let’s say that considering your AV infrastructure – like conference rooms and meeting spaces – as a service might not seem intuitive, but it is. Your AV investments are not a collection of rooms, microphones, projectors, screens, cameras, and audio mixers; they are a service to facilitate communication and collaboration for your organization.
How, then, do you apply principles of service delivery management best practices to your AV systems? If you’ve adopted the mindset that AV is a service, you're halfway there. We can take many of the same techniques applied to IT services to AV and adapt them accordingly. Let's take a closer look at five essential practices and metrics to ensure your Tempe, AZ, organization can properly evaluate the quality of service delivery management.
SEE ALSO: What is AV Service Delivery Management?
Ticketing
Trouble or service tickets are one measure of the stability of your AV services. They might be for hardware malfunctions, software glitches, or usability issues. Even if your rooms operate correctly, if you are getting many helpdesk requests related to managing the AV in a room, you have a problem that shouldn’t be ignored. Usability is an important metric, as poor UI or too much complexity is an impediment to a system that exists to increase productivity.
Monitoring
Monitoring is critical to maintaining the uptime of your conference rooms and other assets. You don't want a group of ten people walking into a meeting room to discover the cameras aren't working. Remote monitoring can have devices report health at specific intervals, restart systems as necessary, and proactively push firmware and software updates to limit issues cropping up. Monitoring can also look at device behavior to ensure the systems are free from hacking and malware.
Utilization
Utilization metrics are critical for understanding how AV assets are being used. What times are meetings occurring? What equipment is being used? How many times are videoconferences held? This data is key to understanding future needs, equipment and software upgrades, and the return on specific features and services in meeting spaces.
Occupancy
Occupancy is related to utilization but can be different. Are meetings routinely booked for ten people but only five on average show up? If the option exists for some people to join remotely, even if only from another floor, you could rethink your space and equipment requirements for your rooms. You may need more huddle spaces than conference rooms. Conversely, the same rethink would apply if your rooms are routinely overcrowded.
Satisfaction
User satisfaction is one of the most important metrics. If scores are low and people hate the systems, you could have a serious productivity impact. The scores may relate to system performance, uptime, usability, or any number of issues. It’s critical to survey users frequently – even after every meeting with a few quick questions – to determine how well your AV services are performing.
Room and Asset Inventory
You might (or might not) be surprised that many large organizations don’t have a great handle on how many meeting spaces they have or all the equipment and software that supports them. Knowing the complete scope of your AV investments is vital to understanding your needs and utilization. Just like IT organizations inventory computers, networking equipment, software systems, and user licenses, AV departments need the same level of visibility on AV assets. You should understand room capabilities, the age of equipment, software capabilities like Zoom or Microsoft Teams compatibility, and much more.
If your organization needs help applying service delivery management best practices to AV, we would love to help. Level 3 Audiovisual is a Tempe, Arizona-based national managed services provider helping organizations of all sizes across the U.S. design, deploy, and manage AV systems and infrastructure. Learn more by reaching out to Level 3 Audiovisual or clicking the chat box below to connect instantly. We look forward to working with you.
