In consultancy, success is all about know-how and persistence. Inavation Awards 2021 consultant of the year, Vineet Singh, explains what it takes to succeed as a world-class AV consultant.
As an AV consultancy specialist with numerous prestigious projects in the bank, Vineet Singh, director, HMPL Consulting, cut his teeth as a regional manager with systems integration group Esco as well as fulfilling a stint as director of India operations for Hewshott International before taking the plunge to found HMPL Consulting in 2016. Since its launch Vineet has worked tirelessly to deliver state-of-the art projects with a proven track record of solid integration and customer satisfaction. Five years on and HMPL Consulting has expanded as markets have evolved and needs have changed, diversifying and developing Vineet’s areas of expertise.
Vineet said: “We’ve grown from strength to strength. Initially, it was focused on the AV and acoustics verticals but as the business evolved, the market trends changed, use cases from end users changed and we evolved the business to grow different verticals focused on IoT, automation, IT, and also created some verticals for experience centres and innovation hubs for our clients.
“We also explored smart workspace technology which has become more relevant since Covid happened. Being an early mover in this space gave us an advantage to work with our clients who understood the need for this technology.”
Vineet has consistently been a solid contender at the Inavation Awards, and it was his stellar work on the Wallmart India Bangalore project that tipped him for this year’s well-deserved win. The project saw Vineet and the HMPL team take the reins to overhaul Wallmart’s fragmented infrastructure and ensure a consistent experience with technology and user interfaces. Under Vineet’s leadership, the team underwent a process to assess and identify the client’s needs, keeping the key stakeholders in the project on board and satisfied at every step throughout the project lifecycle.
The result was a robust AV infrastructure in a vastly improved technology space for Wallmart, looking at the project not just from an integration perspective but from the perspective of an immersive end user experience.
Vineet said: “You have to have an active engagement with all the involved stakeholders. We as consultants act as a client, thinking about how money is spent, how the project is designed and managed, supervised and overseen; that becomes our duty as well. We don’t design something in isolation and expect the client to follow that. We need their provisions to be taken care of and they also have a dependency on our scope of service to bridge that gap.”
Vineet believes that the Inavation Awards add value to businesses looking to get recognised, especially in developing countries like India where international recognition of hard work can make a solid impression on the global stage.
Vineet explained: “The Inavation Awards are a validation for what we do. While we’ve been nominated for an award many times, it’s very important for the team that works behind the curtain, believing in the vision of the business. Being in India or other developing nations, it can be difficult for us to be seen on the world map so it’s a recognition for the team that has been working relentlessly all these years. It’s satisfying to know that your work does get seen and recognised and it also helps our clients to have much more confidence to know that if they partner with us, they know that we mean business and that we bring quality and international standards to the table.”
Looking to the future, Vineet predicts continued evolution in the needs of customers to dominate the work of consultants, requiring consultants to keep at the forefront of continued innovation and growing use cases to best understand and meet the needs of clients from every industry segment.
Vineet said: “The industry moved forward a year and a half ago when we were dealing with the global pandemic. A lot of repurposing has happened in terms of designing and implementing solutions with the evolving use cases as well, so all the elements which were on the sidelines [IT, automation, IoT] have become more relevant, that’s what we’re heading towards.
“Everyone’s talking about workplace strategy today and that strategy is not just being looked at seriously by corporations but also by architects and project management companies. They’re investing in that vertical now because they believe that’s where the future is and we are happy to be part of this evolution and putting the subject matter expertise in place for them to leverage that.” So what is it that makes an industry-leading consultant?
For Vineet, the answer can be broken down into owning your project from conception to completion, seeing a project from the perspective of the client and stakeholders as well as from the perspective of a consultant.
Vineet closed: “I feel that it is very important that when we go to a client, the intent should never be to create a need. They have a need and that’s why they require a consultant to ‘hand hold’ them through the process. Integrity, accountability and independence are the three key elements to success. Every project, every client, every fitout is a new space that you have to look into. You may apply templates to respective spaces to a design, but those templates still need to be customised to suit the on-site conditions for every project as there will be variables in the use cases that impact the on-site conditions. You have to keep your eyes and ears open to what is being asked for you to deliver.
“It’s important for you to also think of yourself as an extension of the client; you have to be accountable to what you are spending and you should not shy away from picking up a screwdriver if you need to fix things for the client. You have to own your designs and own the responsibility, that’s where larger integrity comes into play.”