Start by understanding what’s not working
Before your organization moves ahead with any AV or UC upgrade, it helps to get specific about what is not working well today. That may sound obvious, but many upgrade conversations begin with solutions long before the real issues are clearly defined.
Pain points are usually the earliest signs that a system no longer supports the way people actually work. They show up as unreliable audio, inconsistent video, awkward room controls, poor meeting equity for remote participants, or a steady reliance on workarounds. Identifying them early gives your organization a stronger starting point when you speak with a consultant or integrator, and keeps the discussion focused on outcomes rather than equipment.
Why this step matters
An upgrade should not be treated as a simple technology refresh. For most organizations, the real goal is to reduce friction, improve consistency, and support collaboration more effectively across meeting spaces, teams, and locations.
When pain points are clearly identified, your organization is in a much better position to explain what users experience day to day, highlight where time and productivity are being lost, and show where current tools no longer align with how people collaborate. That clarity also helps outside professionals recommend solutions that are genuinely relevant to your environment. Most importantly, it prevents a common and costly problem: investing in new technology without solving the issues that made the old system frustrating in the first place.
Common pain points to look for
Every environment is different, but a few themes come up again and again in corporate AV and UC projects. Poor user experience is the most visible: controls are confusing, inconsistent from room to room, or overly dependent on technical knowledge. Reliability issues are close behind, with meetings starting late because equipment will not connect, audio drops out, or displays and cameras do not respond as expected. Platform and compatibility gaps surface when a room does not work smoothly with the collaboration tools your teams rely on, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Webex.
Increasingly, the trouble is not confined to the room at all. Many AV and room technologies now depend on the enterprise network, remote management, firmware updates, and secure connectivity, so performance problems can originate well outside the hardware in front of users. And when nothing else works, people improvise — personal laptops, external speakers, ad hoc connection methods — just to make a meeting function. These workarounds are useful signals, and they should help shape the next stage of planning.
How to identify pain points more effectively
A useful review combines user feedback, real-world observation, and technical input. Your organization does not need to diagnose everything on its own, but it should aim to gather enough evidence to describe the problems clearly.
Listen to the people using the rooms. Start with the daily experience. Talk to the people who regularly host meetings, present content, join remote calls, or quietly fix things when something goes wrong. A few questions tend to surface the real patterns:
• Are certain rooms consistently avoided?
• Do meetings regularly begin with a troubleshooting session?
• Do remote participants struggle to hear or be heard?
• Are controls inconsistent from one space to another?
• Are staff bringing in personal devices to compensate for room limitations?
Patterns in this feedback are far more valuable than one-off complaints. They reveal which issues are persistent, which spaces are most affected, and where a consultant or integrator should focus first.
Document the technical symptoms. Users do not need to diagnose the underlying problem, but the organization should record what is happening clearly enough for the right professionals to investigate it. Note where the issue occurs, how often it happens, who is affected, what users experience, whether a workaround is being used, and what impact it has on meetings or support. A recurring ten-minute delay in the same room is more useful evidence than a general complaint that “the system is unreliable.” A consultant or integrator can then determine whether the cause is equipment age, configuration, software, network conditions, infrastructure, room acoustics, system design, or some combination of those reasons.
Consider system fit with your broader environment. It is also worth looking beyond the room itself, because many issues arise when the AV and UC environment no longer fits the organization’s wider technology stack, support model, or security expectations. Does the system align with your preferred collaboration platform? Can internal IT teams reasonably support it? Are there security, remote-access, or firmware-management concerns? Is documentation current, and are rooms consistent enough to reduce support burden and user confusion? Modern AV environments are increasingly network-connected, and they depend on documentation, coordination, and shared responsibility between your organization, the integrator, and other stakeholders.
Keep future needs in view. Pain points should not be judged only against today’s problems; they should also help your organization think ahead. A system that feels strained now will feel far more limiting if you are expanding hybrid-work expectations, standardizing more meeting spaces, opening new locations, leaning harder on video collaboration, or trying to simplify support across many rooms and sites. This is where a pain-point review becomes a practical input for a future-facing discussion about scalability, usability, and long-term fit.
Key takeaways
Identifying pain points is one of the most important early steps in an AV or UC upgrade discussion.
User feedback, recurring workarounds, and real-world room issues often reveal where the biggest problems lie.
Many current AV environments depend on network readiness, platform compatibility, and supportability — not just hardware performance.
Your organization does not need to diagnose every issue itself, but it should be able to describe the patterns clearly.
Clear pain points help Canadian consultants and integrators recommend solutions that are better aligned to actual needs.
Next steps
Starting to plan? Plus+ Services works with consultants and integrators across Canada and can help connect your organization with the right project partners.
SFM is a trusted market leader in customized go-to-market solutions for global brands within the audiovisual, live entertainment, and media production industries. We have supported hundreds of organizations through every step of this process. This guide reflects the expertise we have developed in Canada’s audiovisual sector and how our partners benefit from it.