Outsourcing, freelancing, subcontracting – call it what you will but sometimes passing work off to a better-placed expert saves you time and money. Anna Hayes spoke to the founder of a new AV outsourcing site about his vision for the future.

We’ve all been there. You’re moving house, or cleaning a yard, or helping someone with a renovation when the inevitable ‘job you don’t want to do’ crops up.

The beauty of today’s world is that there’s always someone who will do it, albeit for a price, and you can simply pop it up on Airtasker or some similar outsourcing site and crack a can while they get to grips with the heavy lifting.

How, you ask, does this bear any relevance to the AV industry? After all, this is a specialist area with various technical expertise required.

The answer is B2B AV, a new AV outsourcing site started by UK-based Benjamin Davies who is aiming to create a database of professionals in a host of areas designed to complement and grow any ambitious business.

“B2B AV is a marketplace for selling and buying services within the industry. I’ve been in this industry for a long time and lots of people want to come into the space but it’s very difficult to build a business with all the skill sets required to run a business successfully in the space.”

Ben stresses that it has taken him almost 14 years to build a business that incorporates separate departments for IT, design, installation, etc. He says that when he started out, he tried his best to outsource some skills such as, in the first few years, using an external IT company to help with networking systems.

“We focused on what we were most profitable at or, I suppose, what we were good at. And we tried to build that over the years within the business. So as we grew, we brought skill sets in-house but we always tried to outsource different parts. We’ve outsourced some design, things like cinema renders, even schematics and plans because we found that more efficient in the workflow process.”

B2B AV was an idea that came to him about four years ago but, obviously, took a little long to come to fruition.

“We see websites like Fiverr and Upwork which are great, they’re brilliant ideas. B2B AV is very much a niche version of that concept. But what we need, within the space, is people who have worked in that realm for a certain period of time to know the nuances of how it works.”

He says it is ideally designed for smaller companies with fewer than a dozen people to allow them to engage with experts they need. And yes, there is a little element of the above ‘I don’t want to do this’ about the process.

“It allows people to outsource areas that they’re not interested in or that aren’t their area of expertise. You could pay someone $250 to do a cinema render that might take you four days to produce – it’s more efficient in terms of both time and money.”

Ben loves the idea of outsourcing, not only as a way of being efficient but also as a means to an end – that end for him personally being the fact that he doesn’t have to deal with I.T. issues!

“I outsource that because I don’t want to be doing something that gets me frustrated and upset. I want to do the things that I love doing because I think that makes your creative workflow better and you become more efficient doing that.”

The ever-changing nature of the industry is something that B2B AV can respond to, Ben says, pointing out that the various facets of running a business are growing all the time, and that’s not even looking at the heavily technical aspects.

“For me actually, the idea came out of the bulk of the services to the side and behind the technical side of things. There are so many skill sets from project planning, marketing, copywriting, website creation, etc. We’re not just catering to one singular technical aspect; I’d like it to be as open a platform as possible, with experience in those spaces.”

There has been good interest in the platform so far, with a lot of queries coming from the U.S. but the aim is for the service to be global and available to all. At the moment, it is only available in English but work is ongoing on translations and localised versions of the site – Ben hopes that this will be onsite towards the end of this year or beginning of next year.

So how does a person use B2B AV? And how do you know that your engaged professional is, in fact, a professional?

“We do follow a verification process and we will look for certifications and certain qualifications, and portfolio content like designs or media coverage if you’re in PR or marketing, and references. That information goes to our team who review and sign off on verifying you within a certain space.”

If you are not verified by the team, you can still post services but users are urged to exercise caution based on the information available. Ben stresses that conversation is also a key factor in this exercise and he would expect most people using such services to ask for references, work examples, etc.

Ben is optimistic for the future of the platform, acknowledging that it will take time for people to embrace.

“There are genuinely no expectations from my side of it. It’s something I wanted to produce and it’s something I’m going to work really hard on to grow it. But I have no expectations to say that by Q4 it has to do this turnover, or grow to this scale, etc.

“It’s been drawn from understanding how outsourcing can scale your business in a way that doesn’t put stress on you personally, or the people around you. I think for integrators interested in using it, it has to feel like something that they can slowly get involved in, start using some parts of it and, as it helps them, then they’ll find that it becomes something that they can lean on when they’re busy.”

Ben hopes that, at the very least, the platform can create a conversation both with new and experienced professionals in the AV industry.

“I’m trying to network with a lot of people and get the message to installers that are going a long time to say ‘look, there’s a way of creating secondary revenue here’. And then I’m trying to say to people coming into the industry, ‘look, here’s a great way to scale your business without having to go and either hire or find other integrators to work with’.

“This is the platform to bring all of these people together.”