# AV & Systems Integration Firms

> For audio-visual, access control and smart building integrators: installed estates, planned maintenance, reactive callouts and multi-site clients.

**URL:** https://cubemsp.co.uk/industries/av-and-integration-firms

Project-heavy delivery with a maintenance tail that deserves the same system.

Integration businesses live in two modes at once. The install is a project with a date, a specification and a margin that erodes if it slips. What follows is years of maintenance, callouts and warranty work against equipment nobody has documented centrally. The firms that struggle are the ones where those two modes live in different systems, so the engineer attending a fault has no reliable record of what was installed, and the account manager has no reliable record of what maintenance was promised. CubeMSP holds the installed estate as services against the client and site, and the projects that created them on the same record.

## Figures

- **Per site** Estate, contacts and history
- **Recurring** Planned maintenance raised when due
- **Lifetime** Margin including the warranty tail

## Common problems in this sector

- **Nobody knows what is installed:** The as-built information is in the project folder, the engineer’s memory and occasionally a photograph. The callout two years later starts with a survey that should not be necessary.
- **Maintenance promised but not scheduled:** Annual servicing sold with the install and then dependent on somebody remembering. The first anniversary is usually honoured; the third often is not.
- **Multi-site clients as separate records:** A client with fourteen sites becomes fourteen customers over time, so nobody can answer a question about the whole account without knowing all fourteen names.
- **Project margin lost in the tail:** The install made its margin. Two years of warranty callouts, unrecorded because they were not chargeable, quietly consumed a good deal of it.
- **Callouts without context:** An engineer sent to a fault with an address and a description, but no history of the site, the equipment or the last three visits.

## What CubeMSP does about it

- **Sites as first-class records:** One client, any number of sites, each with its own address, contacts, installed services and incident history. Multi-site clients stop fragmenting.
- **The installed estate as data:** What is installed, where, when and under what warranty - held as services against the site rather than as an as-built document in a project folder.
- **Planned maintenance that recurs:** Servicing intervals held per installed service, raising the work when it is due rather than depending on an anniversary somebody remembers.
- **Installs as templated projects:** Board templates with dependencies, supplier lead times and dates, shared with the client so a slipping delivery is visible rather than explained afterwards.
- **Warranty work that is counted:** Non-chargeable callouts still booked against the site and the project, so the true lifetime margin on an install is visible before the next one is quoted.
- **History the engineer can read:** Previous visits, faults and resolutions on the site record, so the person attending arrives knowing what happened last time.

## Use cases

### A callout that began with a survey

**Scenario:** An engineer attended a fault at a site installed four years earlier. No central record existed of what had been fitted, so the first ninety minutes were spent working it out - unchargeable, and repeated across dozens of visits a year.
**Outcome:** The installed estate is held per site with the original project attached. Engineers arrive knowing the equipment and the history, and the survey time disappeared.

### An install that made money and then did not

**Scenario:** A large install came in on margin. Over the following two years, warranty callouts were attended and not recorded because they were not chargeable. Nobody knew the true position until an unrelated review estimated it.
**Outcome:** Non-chargeable time is booked against the site and project. The lifetime figure for that install informed the pricing of the next three.

## Implementation

1. **Discovery:** A structured session mapping how you run now - the PSA you have outgrown, the spreadsheet of renewals, the shared mailbox that is really your ticket queue, and the review deck somebody rebuilds by hand every six months. We come back with what the platform covers as standard and what needs building.
2. **Configuration:** Your service catalogue, ticket taxonomy, boards, roles, approval limits and review templates set up to match how you actually work - not a demo tenant with your logo dropped on it. Your categories, not ours.
3. **Data migration:** Clients, contacts, sites, services, renewal dates and enough ticket history to make the knowledgebase and similar-incident retrieval useful on day one. An empty AI is a useless AI, so the history matters more here than in most migrations.
4. **Training & rollout:** Role-based training - the service desk learns logging and resolution, account managers learn reviews and renewals, directors learn the reporting. We usually pilot with one technician and one client before opening it up.
5. **Ongoing support:** UK support from the people who built the platform and use it themselves, with a named contact, agreed response times, and a roadmap you can influence. Being a small vendor is an advantage here and we intend to keep it.

## Frequently asked questions

**Is this a field service management system?**

Partly. It holds sites, installed equipment, planned maintenance, callouts and time. It does not currently do engineer scheduling with route optimisation or a dedicated mobile app for job sign-off, and if those are central to your operation we will say so during discovery.

**How is the installed estate recorded?**

As services against the client and site, with install date, warranty period and maintenance interval. Incidents attach to the specific installed item, so recurring faults on one unit are visible.

**Can maintenance visits be raised automatically?**

Yes. A servicing interval on an installed service raises the work when it is due, so the third-year service happens as reliably as the first.

**Do you handle multi-site clients properly?**

Yes - one client with any number of sites, with contacts and services attached to the site they belong to. Reporting rolls up across the account or breaks down by site without duplicating the client.

**Can clients see project progress?**

Yes, on shared boards, with internal-only tasks and comments filtered on the server. For install projects with a client project manager, this is usually the feature that sells it.

## Relevant solution pages

- **IT Project Management Software** - Shared kanban boards for migrations, rollouts and onboardings - with the client invited in, and internal-only tasks filtered on the server. https://cubemsp.co.uk/software/it-project-management-software
- **MSP CRM Software** - Prospects, clients, contacts and sites in the same system as the services you supply and the incidents you handle - so winning an account and running it are one record. https://cubemsp.co.uk/software/msp-crm-software
- **Service Desk Software** - A real queue instead of a shared mailbox - incidents logged against the client, site and service they affect, with priority, ownership and time. https://cubemsp.co.uk/software/service-desk-software
- **Subscription Management Software** - Every licence, circuit, backup and contract you resell - with quantity, cost, sell price, term and renewal date, and the margin visible on all of it. https://cubemsp.co.uk/software/subscription-management-software

## Related industries

- **Telecoms & Unified Comms Providers** - For resellers of lines, circuits, SIP and hosted telephony: hundreds of small recurring lines per client, each with its own term and renewal date. https://cubemsp.co.uk/industries/telecoms-providers
- **Managed Service Providers** - The core case: recurring support contracts, a shared service desk, project work alongside the day job, and a review meeting every quarter. https://cubemsp.co.uk/industries/managed-service-providers
- **IT Support Companies** - For firms whose revenue is still largely break-fix and blocks of hours, and who want to move towards recurring contracts without losing the work they already do. https://cubemsp.co.uk/industries/it-support-companies

## Contact

- **Product:** CubeMSP
- **Trading name of:** Cube Systems Limited (company number 17220899, ICO registration number ZC216972)
- **Email:** hello@cubemsp.co.uk
- **Sales:** sales@cubemsp.co.uk
- **Support:** support@cubemsp.co.uk
- **Telephone:** 01234 672 617 (+441234672617)
- **Address:** Unit 11, Olney Business Park, Osier Way, Olney, Buckinghamshire, MK46 5FP
- **Opening hours:** Monday to Friday, 9am to 5.30pm
- **Part of:** Crushed Ice Group (https://crushedicegroup.co.uk)