The past few years have seen amazing innovations in technology the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the 1990s commercialization of the World Wide Web. Throw in Scott Galloway’s “10 years of innovation in 3 months” during the 2020 global pandemic, and it can feel at times like we’re riding on the hood of a Ferrari.
Changing times bring the opportunity to reevaluate our habits and reject inertia’s powerful siren call. Just because we’ve been doing things a certain way for years doesn’t mean we should preserve the status quo. Ironically, what we’ve been doing will seldom get us where we want to go. Why not choose to look ahead and picture starting your business from scratch tomorrow? Who would you need? Surely someone to make it, someone to sell it, and someone to watch the money. Beyond that, who else? Are there roles you have now that you might not hire tomorrow, but instead choose to outsource or eliminate? Are there jobs that can now be done by AI? Let’s dig in a little more by role to find out more.
Accounting
A typical fledgling CI business starts with an accounting person on a part-time basis who may grow into a full-time role. $1MM in revenue needs a full-time role, $2MM begins to need one or two resources, and $3MM begins the need for a well-defined controller, accounts payable/receivable clerks, and maybe even a fractional CFO. While your early days may have hired some or all of these roles internally, outsourced and AI capabilities are rapidly changing that dynamic. For example, QuickBooks has an automated accounts receivable function that allows vendors to email bills that are transcribed by AI without the need for manual data entry by your staff. It’s not perfect, but it helps eliminate a tedious task fraught with the potential for human error.
Vendors who can take on your entire accounting back office are now commonplace on platforms like Upwork. With today’s prevalence of cloud software running in the browser, it’s never been easier to onboard remote resources just by issuing them a username and password to your system.
Also by Henry Clifford: Creating a Culture of Learning
Design & Engineering
Whether you have a dedicated system designer or not, now is a great time to evaluate who is doing the work. Consider giving your salespeople an “Easy” button where they can visit a prospect, come up with a budget, and send it seamlessly to a design & engineering resource. Portal.io’s CEDIA Expo launch of its new AI proposal tool is a great example of this new concept in action. Salespeople can video record a walkthrough, describing what they want. Portal.io’s AI tool then transcribes the conversation and creates the beginnings of a proposal that a system designer can then buff and polish. Other resources like Blue Dog and AVDL specialize in taking sales requirements and translating them into fully fledged D-Tools proposals complete with full technical drawings.
Sales
Whether you have full-time salespeople or you’re a full-time hunter/owner, nothing happens until you sell something. There are portions of the sales cycle that can now be outsourced or automated. Remote worker sites like somewhere.com specialize in helping fill roles like outbound prospecting. Imagine a full-time remote worker cold-calling your prospects 40 hours a week for a fraction of what it would cost you to hire an in-house employee. In the words of sales guru Neal Lappe, “No one defaults to prospecting.” Instead of spending your time frustrated at your sales team or lack of time to prospect, consider outsourcing it.
Installation and Project Management
Outfits like Resideo’s Herman AV are dedicated to providing subcontracted labor services to the pro-AV community. Whether it’s installation, rack fabrication, service, project management, or design engineering, they have coverage across the United States. Imagine just being able to sell a job in another market and having reliable subcontracted labor fulfill it for you.
Service & Support
Remote Managed Service (RMS) providers like Parasol and OneVision have been around for the better part of the last decade, fulfilling the promise of giving CI businesses a reprieve from service calls after hours and offering frustrated clients a live person 24/7.
Marketing
Companies like One Firefly and ProSource Marketing have been around for over a decade, helping busy CI business owners with website development, search engine optimization, content creation, and customer engagement. Very few CI businesses have the budget for in-house marketing talent, and it’s hard to keep up with a fast-moving channel like marketing. Social media interaction alone is enough to drown even the most eager of would-be influencers. Newer entrants like PriceGuide.ai (full disclosure: I’m a co-founder) offer integrators the ability to amp up their web presence lead generation by 300% over sites with standalone “contact us” forms.
Also by Henry Clifford: Breaking Down Your Sales Process
Legal
Chances are you’re already outsourcing this one. With the advent of ChatGPT, consider questioning whether you need a lawyer for simple agreements and other basic forms. Complex buy/sell agreements and contracts will always need the expert eye of a good attorney, but don’t be surprised if more and more of these simple legal documents are an AI prompt away in the coming months.
IT
If you’re not inside complex networks every day, the complexity of designing and servicing them can be a tremendous drag on your business — especially if they’re poorly architected. This is where companies like Access Networks, WhyReboot, Blackwire Designs, SpecOp Secure, and others shine. Give them some basic client information and you’ll get back a turnkey network design, including documentation showing how it all connects. Support after the sale means they’re able to monitor your networks 24/7/365 and take care of fixing most issues remotely. Many of these companies have working relationships with RMS providers like Parasol and OneVision to give your customers a single “wringable neck.”
No matter which part of your business you decide to outsource or give over to AI, you’ll have to button up your organizational back-office workflow to make it happen. If you have any parts of the company that work because of tribal knowledge or only respond the way the jukebox in Happy Days did to the Fonz’s knowing touch, you’re going to have a rough time bringing in outsiders to take over. Consider this an opportunity to get your house in order so that the business is about roles as opposed to individuals. That way you can begin hiring people from all sorts of backgrounds, focusing more on aptitude and values while being able to train the rest.
Stay frosty, and see you in the field.
