Peter Worth, board member of the AV Alliance and Managing Director of Melbourne-based Audio Visual Dynamics recently sat down with CEO Magazine, and spoke with them about his company’s journey, his values, and what truly sets Audio Visual Dynamics apart as an event technology provider.
Back in 1992, when Peter and his father purchased a “small, run-down AV company with four staff members”, technology as we know it now was still in its infancy, and companies still used overhead projectors and slides for their presentations. The realisation that there was little need for his team’s expertise as clients had no intention to rent technicians along with the equipment hit quickly. Far from discouraged by this, the company sought a different way to succeed and made a dramatic change to the nature of its business by starting to deliver events, which finally allowed them to bring more added value to their clients. It paid off, and today Audio Visual Dynamics is “one of Australia’s leading hotel AV support providers, delivering more than 10,000 events each year.”
It was another major executive decision that completely transformed the company’s approach to the events business. Realising early on that a deeper understanding of what goals their clients were trying to achieve through their events, and of how Audio Visual Dynamics could deliver the experiences that ultimately contribute to those goals was the key to their success, the company “stopped thinking about products and instead started focusing on outcomes”. This has since become a trademark of Audio Visual Dynamics’ customer-focused approach.
“Every event has to be important and successful. If we lose that and stop caring, then we lose our point of difference – we become like all the other big AV companies, which are focused on volume,” Peter explains.
“Person-to-person connections are our point of difference and our strength. We deliver a customer-based business and our staff understand that. They don’t talk in technology speak. We don’t consider ourselves technicians in the hospitality industry but instead hospitality people doing technical work.”
In a time when there is an intense pressure for audio visual providers to always offer the latest technologies and the most state-of-the-art equipment, Audio Visual Dynamics has chosen a different route by being a proud “trailing edge technology provider, not a leading-edge”. Peter Worth explains that “this takes the pressure off making sure we’re always at the head of the curve. We focus on outcomes, not products,” he reminds. “The products are the methodology for delivering an event and achieving that outcome. How we reach those outcomes is up to us. We don’t want our clients to think about the AV because that’s our job. We’re there to make them look and sound great.”
Another milestone that changed the direction of the company was carving out a business for itself in the five-star hotel market. Today, Audio Visual Dynamics is partnered with over 25 venues ranging from five-star hotels to 53,000-seat stadiums.
Peter has also been a long-time board member of the AV Alliance, a global network of premium AV and event technology suppliers. “Being the owner of a company can be pretty lonely at times. Through AV Alliance, I’ve formed fantastic connections with like-minded people all over the world,” Peter explains. “I love being associated with people who are entrepreneurial and smart. In business, you shouldn’t be excited by a piece of equipment; instead, you need to be excited by how you grow, how your people grow and how you’re growing with your clients.”
You can read the interview in its entirety here in CEO Magazine!
Credits:
Original article written by Lisa Schofield
Image by Elke Meitzel