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Wired In: Kontek Conversations is for leaders who want to get technology right. From universities and healthcare systems to corporate enterprises, each episode delivers practical insights to help you navigate complex projects, avoid costly missteps, and design environments that truly connect people.
Through candid conversations with Kontek executives and industry experts, you’ll discover why projects succeed or fail, how to balance innovation with usability, and how bold ideas become reality. Along the way, we share perspectives on the evolution of AV technology, the impact of employee ownership, and the culture of accountability that drives lasting results.
With almost four decades of expertise, Kontek invites you to think bigger, dream bolder, and imagine what’s possible when technology and vision come together.
Brandon Giella: Today we are talking about
our favorite three letter acronym, ROI.
So on this show, we talk a lot
about dreams and we want very
badly to help leaders' dreams come
true regarding their AV setups.
But of course, dreams need to
come into contact with reality
and we all have bills to pay.
So, uh, I wanna talk about cost, ROI and
what is the total cost of ownership for
some of these projects that we work on.
And so, uh, we have
talked before about how.
Um, it's better to go with the $80
cable than the $8 cable because
of, again, total cost of ownership.
You're gonna get things
working correctly all the time.
Uh, and then also if you do it right
the first time, you avoid having
that IT person needing to pay him
to run around and make sure all
the AV setup works all the time.
And, you know, they're double
checking everything and so we
just want it to work right.
And there's a, a little bit of
cost involved with that upfront.
As you can imagine.
And so today, uh, Marcus, I want to
talk more about that story and go
further into that, uh, the ROI of when
we want to establish this dream and
really build the AV setup of our dreams.
What does that really entail,
and how do I think through that
quantitatively from a budget perspective?
How do I sell that into the CFO, to the
finance team, to the procurement team?
How does that work so that I make sure
we have all of our ducks in a row when
I'm coming to bring your dream together?
Marques Manning: Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know, a way
to start with this, some of
it before you start thinking
dollars is even, you know,
speed to decision making, right?
Because it used to be, if you
wind the clock back enough, I can
remember, you know, faxes, right?
We're sending faxes back and
forth happen on a phone call.
You've got to drive out to meet so
and so I'm flying out to a meeting.
So it's technology evolved
and email was introduced and
more and more technologies.
Some of that time and that
there is monetary cost there, but
some of that just time, right?
To get a decision made started
to shorten and it's gotten shorter
and shorter over the years.
Well, when you have full scale
conferencing and you know, all
these ways to communicate now
that feel like they're in real
time, I can share more assets.
I can do spreadsheets
and all these things.
Now the time to make that
decision has shrunk dramatically
from what it was, right?
Because now, Instead of hopping
on the phone and trying to call
and talk through a spreadsheet or
email it and we're going back and
forth 25 times trying to figure
out what's happening on line 32,
we just pull it up, we hop in a
web conferencing platform, we can,
you know, pull up our documentation.
I can see it clearly.
If you're in the room
with me, you can see it.
If you're remote, you can see it.
So by bringing in, you know, cameras
and microphones, um, cutting down
on latency and, you know, the delay
that's built into some of this.
Now we're really communicating
pretty much in real time.
We're able to see the documents.
So how much time did I now
save the company because we can
work our way through this in,
you know, 30 minutes, we make
a decision, we're good to go.
So in one aspect, we've greatly
shortened that cycle for decision
making, which at the end of
the day, you know, time is
money when it comes to that.
Um, you know, you don't
want to spend a week trying
to figure out something.
Brandon Giella: I love that story.
Uh, when I'm thinking of, um, you know,
different podcasts and things that,
books I've read and whatever, where,
you know, you have a high powered
CEO, he gets paid a lot of money.
She gets paid a lot of money.
Uh, but the way that they talk about
it sometimes is like, well, I get paid
to make a few multi-billion dollar
decisions a year, a few decisions a year.
And so if you kind of scale that down
into all the different decisions that
you have to make in your working week,
different people that need to collaborate
on things, a global team, uh, and, and all
the different media types that you need.
Audio, video course, screen sharing,
like you're talking about it, the,
if you think about it in time, is
money and decision making speed.
That makes a ton of sense.
I I, I really love how AV
can be cast in that way.
really smart.
Marques Manning: Absolutely.
And then, I mean, it's, it
really enhances it, right?
So we do a lot of
executive style boardrooms.
We do CEO, uh, spaces,
things like that.
So if you go into the boardroom
environment, think about how
expensive that meeting is, right?
You have your CEO, your CFO,
your COO, you have board
members, all these folks
coming out for a day or two.
You need your technology
to start on time.
You need it to be working.
Everything needs to kick off, you
know, and be correct because if
you have a delay of 20 minutes,
30 minutes, an hour, how much time
have you wasted of your highest,
you know, your highest earners
within the organization and how much
have you lost in terms of, you
know, trust currency because now
the CEO is going to look at you,
we'll say like the young people,
they're gonna get you sideways and
say, hold on now, you know, we
just had this major board meeting.
It was delayed by an hour.
You know, how do we make sure
this is not going to happen again?
We don't want to
waste everyone's time.
So that that is one of the
major, you know, cost impacts
because if you think, oh, the
room's down, we have to move it.
Okay, well, maybe you can if
you have enough time, you know,
in advance to make this move,
but not just in the corporate
setting, but also when we think
about the judiciary, right?
If you have a courtroom
go down now, you have
to move all the cases.
That's a nightmare trying to
do that in the last minute.
We deal with higher education,
you know, are you going to
scramble to find a classroom?
I don't know how much you
keep up with what's happening
in colleges now, but trying
to just rebook a class.
That's a nightmare.
It's, it's pretty crazy because I
mean, those spaces are packed full.
So just, and you know, when
it comes to trust currency,
that's also a major issue that
you want a functional system
that has to do with, you know,
upgrading on a certain cycle.
You don't want to try to stretch
things out to the very limit because
again, it'll fail at the worst
possible time, which really, anytime
it fails, seems like it's the worst
possible time, but those are things
you just want to factor in when
you're thinking about the budget and
what is, you know, the, the hidden
costs in terms of your user groups.
Trusting that this system is
going to work and having the
confidence to come in and use it
and work through their sessions.
Brandon Giella: So in a way it's,
it's, it's um, thinking of an AB
cost just because of the need.
Just 'cause the way, you know, people
are working from home, people are
working in globally, they need video,
they need all these kind of multimedia.
We talk about decision speed.
Uh, it's really efficiency from
your organization standpoint.
Um, if we invest to make this AV setup
work right the first time and work very
well, uh, and then all that speed that
comes out of that, whether you're at
a, in a, you know, healthcare setting,
corporate setting, um, government,
judiciary setting, um, academic
setting, it, it really is, it impacts
the efficiency of the organization
and to, to a pretty strong degree.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
Marques Manning: absolutely.
Absolutely.
And then if you think about
also, you know, the dollars
in infrastructure and I'd say
like land acquisition, putting
up new buildings, right?
This one really hits home in
the higher education space.
We do so much with them,
but across all spaces, if you
think about your cost to stand
up a new building, right?
Then you have to think to yourself.
Okay, if I'm going to spend, you
know, a new building, maybe $100
million large scale building, can
I offset that cost if I said,
do we need this building right
now or do we have the tools
and technology available to enable
more remote working, learning,
whatever it is that we can feel
confident in and it's working
because now instead of needing,
you know, a building that's $150
million, can I reduce that spend
down because I can empower these
rooms with everything they need.
And maybe this overall construction
footprint shrinks a little bit
and I get that cost down to, you
know, a hundred million dollars
or do I delay it all together?
Because we say, Hey, we're
going to go, you know,
full scale remote with this.
I don't get into the
arguments about, you know, RTO
mandates and things like that.
But if you're bringing folks
into the office, most likely
in large scale companies,
especially everyone's not going
to be there at the same time.
Right.
And if you're global, you know that
everyone's never in the same space.
So when you're thinking about
your building footprint and your
land footprint, can you use
technology and these, you know,
capabilities to offset some of
that investment, which is the grand
scheme of things, a much higher
spend, uh, capital expenditure
than what we're talking about
in terms of technology solutions.
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay.
Uh, uh, I wanna go deeper there.
I wanna, I wanna, I want to, uh, follow
that up with, um, what, what's an
example of where you've seen that happen?
Where, uh, 'cause that's really
interesting to think like,
okay, I was thinking I need.
Five rooms to do these
five different tasks.
But really if you had one really
well designed room that did all
kinds of different things, I
wouldn't need those four other rooms.
And it brings that architecture cost down.
How, like, talk to me more about that.
That sounds fascinating.
Marques Manning: so a clear cut
example is we'll talk about at
the higher education level for,
you know, for a minute, you know.
So, for one thing, every university,
college, what have you, they can't
expand, you know, horizontally.
If you think about
their footprint, right?
If you're in a city, especially
you may be locked in.
Yeah, I think it's around you.
Sure, you can try to go vertical.
But you're in the
business of education.
So then it becomes a question
of, okay, well, how do we
reach more clients, which in
this case would be students?
How do we reach more of them?
Well, now your solution becomes
technology because you say, Hey,
we can't get more people in seats
because we can't put in more seats.
There's no more room to create
more seats, but what we can
do, and you actually, this has
happened over the years and it
continues to expand more and more.
You say, Hey, now we're going
to do full scale remote learning.
So when you see your commercials
for all your, you know, remote
online campuses and all, all
those things that actually spins
out of the need to have it.
And you can't just continue to build
infinitely if you're a university.
So now you start to outfit
your rooms with cameras, with
interactive displays, with microphones
and all these technologies.
So you may have a typical,
you know, classroom.
And now instead of seeing
the 30 to 40 students.
Once you take it remote and
enable those capabilities.
Now you're seeing 80 students
per class because you can have
40 remote and the professor can
actually see them with a, if you
do something like a high flex,
which is hybrid flexible, a specific
set of criteria for a setup.
I can see the student's faces.
I can see, are they getting it?
I can interact with them.
Um, I can understand who's falling,
uh, falling behind, you know, just,
just through visual cues alone.
So in higher education, that's
one of the clear cut cases of,
Hey, instead of building outwards.
Let's build into this,
this more technology.
And then you start to design your
classrooms to have that flexibility.
So maybe if I'm just a instructor
at the front, I'm teaching.
Okay.
That's easy to do.
We have, you know, a few cameras.
Well, I do a hands -on demo.
Okay.
Also easy.
We'll bake in an overhead
document style camera.
So now those cameras that are facing
the instructor for the next class.
They flip and go to the ceiling
and I'm, you know, building a Lego
house, whatever it is, you know,
now I can actually pick that up
clearly on camera and be broadcasting
that as students follow along.
Okay.
Next we're going to have
presentations and sales
pitches from students that
are around the classroom.
Okay.
Well there's another type of
camera that's kind of spins around
and now it catches the students.
So now we can make these
classrooms, you know, multifunctional,
uh, very, you know, didactic
and how they're going to work.
And you're in one singular space.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
I'm picturing in my mind those,
uh, cooking videos on Instagram
where they have like a camera
above while they're like, make
Marques Manning: Oh, absolutely.
We've actually done teaching kitchens.
So
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
That's cool.
Okay, cool.
Um, okay, so we talked in, in a
previous episode about, uh, some
of the different industries we
talked for a while about academics
and, and some of those needs there.
So, so go check out that, that
episode, um, for more on that.
But I'm curious, so we've
talked about, um, so CapEx cost.
The investment in the, in
the AV installation, set
up, design, support, cost.
But how does this impact, uh,
the other big, uh, chunk of a
business's cost, which is your labor?
And where I'm going with that is what
you just said about, uh, you know,
now a professor can interact better,
you know, have a higher quality,
higher engagement kind of class.
H how could it 'cause I, I could imagine
there are certain professors, and I'm
sure this is case, the case for for
other industries as well, but there's
certain professors that like can't do
a remote setup in a traditional sense.
'cause they either don't like
it, they don't have the technical
skill, you know, they can't see the
students or it kinda limits what
maybe the, the professors could.
Teach or who could teach
in different slots?
Uh, have you seen anything where because
you have a, a very high quality setup,
that it actually gives you a much more,
um, much more access to more people to
be able to use the space making more.
Call it like productivity
or efficiency in your labor,
expenditures over time, improve.
Do you see what I'm getting at?
Is that, is that question
Marques Manning: I think so.
So I think one of the great
examples of that is, uh, there's a
local university and your description
of professors and how they interact.
Made me laugh because we've
experienced all of those.
Some aren't comfortable
with technology.
Brandon Giella: yeah, I've had 'em.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Marques Manning: We've all had them.
I know a guy that
wants a chalkboard and
Brandon Giella: yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Marques Manning: But with new
inventions and new technology,
that's okay now, right?
Because now instead of, okay,
I need, uh, an additional
person to come in here and
take notes, or maybe my TA is
taking notes and we're trying
to capture and all these things.
No, I can get rid of that.
I have Mr.
Professor, you know, he
loves his chalkboard.
All I do now is take a
very special type of camera.
mount it to the top top
of the chalkboard and
feed it into my session.
And now I can capture and he just
teaches his class as normal, but I
can actually capture his writing
on the chalkboard for students that
are now going to be remote, right?
So you can start to cut
down on your assistant labor.
Um, we've seen a university
who's deployed a pretty awesome.
Uh, control set up so that they
will have one person monitoring up
to five classrooms at once because
of how they're bringing all those
signals in from the classroom.
And if anything happens, you
know, the professor can just
press a button, a light
pops on at their station.
They dial the room up and
say, hey, how can I help you?
What do you need?
So instead of, you know, having
one person per room, they're able
to say now we have one person
monitoring five rooms easily.
Brandon Giella: Cool.
I love that.
I wonder is, uh, what you, what
you described about the chalkboard
and the camera, I wonder if there's
a way to like digitize those, uh,
those notes and stuff for, for
students later or for other people
later that you can like, take a pic.
Your and transcribe or OCR, the,
the handwriting on the chalkboard.
I, maybe that's a little
Marques Manning: That's actually how
Brandon Giella: I, I could imagine a lot
of, a lot of like digitizing the actual
notes in the classroom for online students
and, and, and different needs later.
Like, I can imagine, you know, they
want to teach this class, you know,
another professor could teach this class.
Well now he's got notes from another
professor or you, you know, I mean,
I could just imagine there's a lot
of, um, a lot of efficiency gained
by digitizing everything as well.
Marques Manning: absolutely.
And that expands, you know, we talk
about higher education, but that
expands into the corporate arena
anywhere you're communicating, right?
Because we see white, everyone
has a whiteboard somewhere.
Everyone wants to brainstorm
and do all these things.
Okay, well, some of us, I'm
a whiteboard on my laptop.
Everyone doesn't do that.
So for the traditional, Hey, I want
my red marker, my black marker.
Okay, you've got the green marker.
Let's, you know, do our
SWAT on the whiteboard.
You can still capture that
through technology in real time
and then tie in folks that
can't make it to the meeting.
Okay.
So again, in travel costs and just
scheduling costs, trying to juggle
schedules, I mean, we've all been on
the invite from Microsoft where you
have, you know, 20 people trying to
coordinate and one person replies all
saying I'm not available that day.
So you're spinning out of control.
Hey, don't even bother.
We'll just go remote.
You know, there's still some timing
things to figure out, but it's
much easier and much more cost
effective than saying, okay, let's
all of us head over to the office.
Sit around the table all
day, you know, get this done
every tool that we need.
We can actually bring it into
that environment now remotely,
and it's just really a matter
of thinking through where you're
going, you know, in your business.
How do you operate?
How do your users work?
What's actually happening?
So that gets back to, you know,
those early conversations on, you
know, what are we doing today and
how do we want to work tomorrow?
Brandon Giella: Mm, you'll, you'll
make fun of my setup, but when I have
to do some whiteboarding in person
for a, a brainstorming or strategy
session, of course you use the
whiteboard and I record everything.
Now with my iPad.
I set it up on the, on
the desk and face my.
You know, face the whiteboard and
then after you're done, I know you've
seen this a hundred times, is you pull
out your phone and you take a picture
of your whiteboard and then you drop
that into Dropbox or whatever and
label everything and you know, yeah.
You know, so yeah.
Cut out all that.
Marques Manning: things for that now.
There are services and
hardware components that
just tie all that together.
It grabs all your
screenshots in real time.
It digitally translates it all.
And yeah, when you're
done, you just hit save.
Brandon Giella: That sounds great.
Okay.
Sign me up for that one.
Uh, what else, what else would you
like people to know about when they're
thinking about the costs involved?
Again, you have your dreams, they
have to confront reality, and you guys
coach, uh, you know, folks through
that obviously, but what else would you
like them to, to be thinking about when
they're, as they're dreaming and scheming.
Marques Manning: even when
you're talking about, you know,
large scale, uh, expenditures
and rollouts of new systems.
Also thinking about, you know,
realistically, how do you manage
your own dollars because a lot of
times this is a capital expenditure,
you're spending all of this, you
know, money, all this capital goes
out the door up front and you
don't have to, you know, in our
space to help manage this, you
can actually do a lot of what's
called, uh, AV as a service now.
And so basically it's, it's like
your Microsoft license, right?
You just pay every month and you
have access or, or your Google meets
license or what have you G suite.
But you can do that with AV Now
we've seen that over the years
come up more and more so that,
you know, instead of spending all
of that up front, um, those up
front dollars, what you basically
do is just capitalize it over five
years and and at the end of that
five year period, it just refreshes
and so essentially you can have a
building that's just automatically
refreshing every five years and all
you doing is paying a monthly fee.
So we've seen that deployed and
some companies really like that
because it also helps you where
now instead of being a CapEx
It's an OpEx and it's just handled
differently financially for you.
And it makes life a little
bit easier for some folks
that need to do that.
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Interesting.
Now I can understand time, value of money.
You would want to front load that
as much as you could, but, uh, but I
love the idea of smoothing out your
cash flow in that way, especially
if it's, if you want to invest it
somewhere else, you know, upfront.
Um, but, but to your point, you're gonna
have to upgrade all this stuff anyway.
This is the nature of technology.
Cameras get better, processors get better,
cables, get better, et cetera, et cetera.
Um, I love that idea of, of,
uh, of being able to refresh.
It's like the, you know, the
phone upgrade plan every I, I just
amortize that cost over two years.
I know I'm gonna upgrade it
'cause I'm gonna have to, so I'll
hit that upgrade in two years.
That sounds
Marques Manning: Yeah,
exactly the same thing.
Same thing.
Hey, every five years
you've got a new display.
Brandon Giella: Fascinating.
Fascinating.
Okay.
Okay.
Well this has, this
has been super helpful.
Uh, anything else that you, you found
interesting or any kinda unique insights,
uh, when you're thinking about, uh,
I don't know, any kind of unique case
studies you've seen that have really
proven to like, save a lot of money
over time or anything like that?
Marques Manning: No, I've seen a
couple of, you know, and they
really just talk about the, the
power of, you know, the right
technology and how it's being
deployed and better decision -making.
So I saw one and we've talked
about it briefly, but you know,
if you're in a meeting and
Especially is finance will say
you have an underdesigned system.
So you're looking, you're looking,
there's an issue with a number as
being shown a spreadsheet on display.
But if the proper display wasn't
used, so it's not large enough,
you know, it slows down your
ability to catch an error, right?
So maybe you don't speak up
because you can't clearly see
it and you're not comfortable.
Maybe the next day
you're viewing it.
Now you comment.
So in a way, you know, there's also
a loss when you don't really think
about this technology and you don't
really go all in on like, okay,
what are, what are the standards?
What are the recommendations?
And again, I tell folks
all the time, this isn't
about driving dollars.
This is about math, right?
It's getting the right
solution in the right room
so that everyone can see it.
Everyone can interact with it.
Everyone knows what's going on and
there's basically equity in the
decision making because everyone
understands and can see and
can be involved in the process
and feel comfortable with it.
Brandon Giella: Man, fascinating.
I think about AV
completely differently now.
Uh, it, it truly, this, this sounds
silly 'cause I'm here hosting this,
uh, podcast episode, but, uh, just
the way that you're framing it,
like think of AV as decision speed.
That to me is like, boom, light bulb done.
Yeah.
I
Marques Manning: absolutely.
Brandon Giella: I love that.
Cool.
Okay.
Well, Marcus, thank you.
This has been very enlightening.
Uh, uh, thank you very much.
Uh, I'm excited about our next episode.
Next episode, we are gonna
be talking about support.
So getting back to like, over
time, you're, you know, there's
different things that will come up.
This is the nature of living in a,
uh, a world that suffers from entropy.
There are things that need to be
fixed and problems to resolve, and
how do you go through the support
process to get those things resolved.
So we'll talk about that next time.
Thank you, Marcus.
See you then.