Every year, the Pro AV industry eagerly awaits the SCN Top 50 Systems Integrators. The reason isn’t necessarily because the ranking contains a bullet-proof gauge of the size of the channel. Instead, it serves as a testimonial of sorts to the contribution that integrators are making to the industry, as well as a moment of accolade for the work done by the companies that are willing to submit their information, albeit in a self-reported fashion.
Of course, there is a data element as well, with a signal around the size of companies and their growth, which is helpful input for understanding the business. However, what the SCN Top 50 doesn't cover is another part of the AV value chain that provides assistance to the customer before the actual work of the integrator begins: the AV design consultant.
There are certainly many integration firms, both large and small, that serve as design-build firms, similar to the construction industry. But there are also many specialists that serve as an upstream influencer of the exact specifications of a given installation project.
Those specialists sit at the intersection of the art vs. science of Pro AV and are often at the cutting edge of technology as they build out use cases for the latest and greatest. This means they have real impact on what ultimately gets sold and installed in end user facilities and spaces—to the tune of billions of dollars in value.
We can see from the SCN Top 50 how large the top firms are in that segment, but just how much impact are AV design consultants having? One intuitively knows that it's significant but not with any real specificity. Enter this new feature, the SCN Top AV Consultants.
Research and Community
To help build out this article, Future, the parent company behind SCN, reached out to Apogee Insight, a research company I established with Lee Dodson, a fellow Pro AV industry veteran. Our role was to design a data collection effort, with input from AV design consultants themselves. This led to the formation of a working committee to guide the creation of the collection vehicle, along with its underlying metrics.
The trickiest part was to formulate a way of gauging both the diversity of services offered by the consultants and their impact to product selection. The results are visible here.
In terms of the specific methodology, Apogee Insight developed a questionnaire with the input from the AV design consultants on the committee. This questionnaire was programmed and hosted by Veridata Insights. Respondents were asked to complete the profile via a link that was shared to Future's B2B database of subscribers and via social media. The intent was to open the funnel of responses to any firm that might qualify, knowing that the actual responses themselves would be reviewed for qualification to the definition of an AV design consultant.
In short, that definition is fairly simple. To be qualified as a consultant for this list, the company must have staff allocated to consulting with clients on their AV-specific needs. This does leave some intentional gray areas, but respondents focused more on IT or acoustic engineering were excluded. More importantly, respondent companies cannot derive direct revenues from the sale of hardware.
From there, as the data will show, consultants can offer a wide variety of project types across a number of different vertical markets. We also included all geographic regions, though we expected responses to come mostly from North America.
Grain of Salt
In the spirit of transparency, several caveats are worthy of note. First and foremost, similar to the SCN Top 50, data was self-reported and may not be tracked in exactly the same way we expected. This means the respondent estimated to the best of their ability, with potential for inflation given a natural desire to position themselves well.
The good news is that the amount of inflation is likely similar from firm to firm, given the way in which game theory typically applies to this type of data. In other words, apply your desired discount rate accordingly, but also recognize that many of the responses are as honest a reflection of the data as is possible.
Perhaps more important than inflation, though, is the real difference between the amount of volume of impact and the quality of it. This study doesn't attempt to put a gauge around the quality of work done by any one of the companies listed. Certainly, growing into a large company means that organization has been successful at serving its particular set of customers well.
For some, this might mean the company emphasizes taking on a large number of projects and providing a lighter touch, thereby generating an apparently large impact. Others may take on fewer projects and report smaller numbers, but offer a deeper dive to deliver a highly engaging or artistic activation. This is why the SCN Top AV Consultants list is sorted alphabetically, not by value metric. In the end, the value metric serves more as an aggregated sense of contribution than as an individual company differentiator.
Fortunately, there is another way to segment the list of consultant respondents than just the value component. As you will see, each AV consultant offers an array of services to a variety of vertical markets across a host of different solution types. This diversity means that a potential customer would likely first look for relevance of competencies. And geographic presence will be important for those seeking consultants with more familiarity about local culture and preferences. Therein lies our real objective: to highlight the important differences these firms offer, as they have real impact on the resulting experiences delivered.
Analyzing Results
With all that context in place, let’s take a look at what the results actually show. In this first attempt, we are happy to report that a full 38 qualified AV design consulting companies provided sufficient data to support our publication of their profiles. More than 100 companies expressed interest; several started the survey but did not fully complete it, while others were disqualified due to being outside of the realm of AV-specific design.
In terms of the profiles of the respondents, while the largest number came from various major cities around the world, there are several examples of multinational firms or those hailing from specific countries, such as Italy, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, and Brazil.
On average, the companies have representation in approximately four cities, with the highest represented in 13. Across those locations, the consultancies employ more than 700 people who spend at least 75% of their time providing AV-related consulting and design services. Only eight respondents said they subcontract some of their labor to other firms.
Similar to the staffing allocation, most of the survey participants said more than half of their revenues come from AV projects, with the average being 66%. This includes some firms who only have a small portion (less than 10%) of revenues derived from such projects, a reflection of the crossover nature of many consultancies who started in adjacent disciplines. An example here is Salas O’Brien, which has many arms of its engineering business as they service industrial facilities.
This diversity of approach comes through in the data relating to services offered. Although acoustic engineering is viewed as a completely separate competency and market, the most cited service offered was consulting around acoustics, followed by IT systems design and IT/structured cabling. This is a strong testament to the strong overlap between AV and IT these days, as AV technology has become a part of the IP network in many companies. Regardless, the first tended to be fairly focused in their offerings, with each offering an average of four.
The number of application areas covered is a much more varied matter and is likely a more potent selection criteria for a prospective customer. Here the companies cover an average of nine out of a total of 16 tested possibilities, as they seek to ensure broad relevancy.
As you might expect, given the types of AV projects that are commonplace these days, meeting rooms and conference spaces are the most widely served, with learning spaces and large auditoriums in the next two spots on the list. Beyond that is where companies get into entertainment spaces such as enclosed venues. The survey also asked for the respondent to also rank each of these application areas in terms of their contribution to revenues, which yielded the same relative order.
Thus far, all of the data offers a great overview of the types of consultancies that are serving the Pro AV space. But in the end, the question on many people’s minds is where we started: How much impact are these companies having on the selection of goods and services? The data shows quite a lot, even with the caveats provided earlier.
The 38 AV design and consultant firms represented here report specifying a total of $2.39 billion worth of AV systems and solutions in calendar year 2025. Not yet at the value of the total installations done by the SCN Top 50, but a compelling number nonetheless.
Which markets are being so influenced? Consistent with the application areas above, the largest percentage is from traditional corporate markets (finance, banking, and real estate) at around 19%, with higher education in second (18.2%), and performing arts/house of worship in third (9.8%).
This feature represents a beginning point in the study of consultants for the Pro AV channel. As noted here, the 38 pioneers in this study represent a significant level of influence on solution design decisions, as their own customers will likely attest. How a consultant is ultimately selected can only really be answered by a careful look at overall project requirements and how they match the experience and competency of the particular consultant firm and their designers. Perhaps as this list grows, more of the work done by this important segment can be highlighted to inspire others to seek its counsel when designing that next exceptional experience.
Download your copy of the August issue to review the SCN Top AV Consultants 2026.
