From an insurance perspective, there are a number of risks and benefits to consider regarding the AV technicians that will work on your project. This is true whether the technician is an employee of your company or is a contracted freelancer for a specific project. In particular, one important risk for you to consider before a contracted freelancer begins work on your project is how your company will manage a  Worker’s Compensation claim (or worse, a lawsuit!) from injuries incurred by the contractor while working on your project.

At Mertzcrew, we’re all about simplicity. Our all-in-one AV crew management platform has given AV companies the ability to centralize project details, services/hours rendered, payments, communications, project updates, and more for both the company’s employees and the freelancers Mertzcrew helps to contract.

While we designed our online, AV Crew Management system to be intuitive and easy to use, we knew that challenges and questions would still come up. When they do, your team needs answers, and fast -- especially when you’re in the midst of coordinating a project on a tight timeline.

We are happy to announce that our recently released Help Center will help you find all of the answers you need so you don’t have to stop working on your projects.

It takes a team to complete an AV project, but keeping that team organized can be just as challenging as getting the project done.

Making educated crewing decisions for an AV project takes time and deliberation. Do you have the right employee or skilled freelancers in your network? What was their last project with you? Are they really skilled at what they do? How do you know? There are many boxes to check and verify, and no easy way to do it.

The gig economy may be expanding in various industries, but it’s always been a big part of the AV world. Freelancers have long been a part of AV projects, providing specialized skill sets and extra hands on deck when large projects land on an AV company’s desk.

AV freelancers have long been a part of executing projects in the AV industry. Yet even with their longstanding role in the AV industry, there’s still a lot of confusion surrounding how to properly pay AV freelancers.

As AV projects become larger and more complex, they require even higher levels of thoughtful project and crew management. The introduction of the right smart technology solutions may allow AV teams to better manage growing crew member numbers, the search for crew members with specialized skills, and evolving project needs.

AV companies face an interesting dilemma in 2016: companies in industries all around them are adopting SaaS tools to optimize their projects and workloads while gaining better efficiency, while AV companies themselves struggle to find a SaaS solution that can fit their processes well enough to merit a switch from the disjointed project management tools they’ve used for decades.

Process improvements are the key to establishing a workflow that improves your AV team’s productivity and helps your team deliver exceptional work for clients.

But before you can make any crew management process improvements, your organization needs to identify where inefficiencies exist, what possible solutions may fill them, and how to get the rest of your team on board with these new changes.