John Bailey

John Bailey is Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation for AVI-SPL, the digital workplace services provider pioneering unified communications (UC) and audio-visual (AV) services for in-office use. 

In his role, Bailey is responsible for the company’s global UCC strategy and practices, supporting strategic partnerships and programmes as well as serving as well as leading incubator initiatives to bring new solutions to customers. 

“This means I monitor many industry and market trends, and from that, design, launch and grow programmes and practices that support these new technologies,” says Bailey. 

Like many technologists today, Bailey’s passion for his industry has been longstanding. While his current role did not follow a direct line from his early career, he says it has nonetheless been a “fantastic journey.” 

“I really enjoy this idea of bringing people together through communications,” he says. “I think it's so powerful how the solutions and tools we use touch every industry and person everywhere in the world. That's still my guiding light many years on.”

Indeed, Bailey has worked in communications since leaving university with his degree in the same field.

“After college, I worked in the broadcast and engineering area of communications,” he notes. “This was an exciting period because at that time audio was shifting from analogue to digital.”

He continues,  “I was lucky to get in on the front end of that digital wave. Digital audio workstations and digital audio recording were very innovative at the time.”

Bailey soon joined a commercial audio-visual (AV) company in need of production services support. He stayed in that role for a few years before joining Whitlock, a larger AV-focused company where Bailey spent the next 21 years of his career. 

“In 2019, we had grown into a U.S. national company with a strong global partner network that allowed us to serve our global customer base. By revenue, we were about the third-largest AV company in the United States,” adds Bailey. 

“That year, our founder, John Whitlock, decided to sell the company to a private equity firm. That firm also purchased AVI-SPL, the world's largest AV/UC firm, and they merged the two companies.”

The merger was completed in 2020, creating America’s largest AV/UC company for digital workspace services. The new entity retained the AVI-SPL name. 

AVI-SPL: Innovation in overdrive during COVID-19 pandemic

Of course, at the time of the AVI-SPL merger, a major change in the way people worked was about to take place. 

The COVID-19 pandemic saw working conditions shift dramatically from in-office work exclusively to working from home. The need for many businesses to onboard new AV technologies into their business was at its peak. 

“The state of the industry we're in today is a reflection of many of the services we developed over the past four years,” says Bailey.

“If we think about hybrid meeting technology, which is something we spent a lot of time working on, those challenges all continue today. They were challenges before the pandemic, but during and after they have probably become our number one concern.”

Of course, new working conditions were not just a challenge for AVI-SPL. The sudden shift to remote work was a challenge for workers and businesses who needed new digital workplace solutions immediately. 

“I like to say technology doesn't necessarily solve people problems, it’s people who solve people problems,” comments Bailey.

“By that, I mean we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking technology will solve everything for us. It’s about understanding the tools that people need to perform their job effectively.”

Today, as the workplaces settle into a post-pandemic norm, Bailey feels businesses can incentivise workforces to return to a hybrid working model by creating in-office workplace experiences enhanced by technology. 

He says: “It’s people that motivate people to come back into the office, not just the experience technology. To that end, my team and I want to meet and understand as many perspectives as we can. 

“We talk to global teams, customers, end users, consultants, analysts, manufacturers and platform providers to understand and try to solve the challenges that we're facing today. 

“These are macro industry challenges, and it's a unique point in time where there is a disruption inversion, in that the way people work has changed faster than the pace of innovation. 

Read the full story HERE.

**************

Make sure you check out the latest edition of Technology Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Tech & AI LIVE 2024

**************

Technology Magazine is a BizClik brand