Congratulations, Matt Whyatt! A new member of the InAVate '40 under 40' club. 

For several years, one of the audiovisual industry's leading and most influential publications, InAVate, has compiled an annual '40 under 40' list of AV professionals who have made significant contributions to the industry over the last year. 

When the most recent list was announced, we were pleased and proud to see our very own Service Delivery Manager, Matthew Whyatt, had been honoured! 

Matt joined Carillion in January 2024, and since then, he has spearheaded the essential transformative initiatives needed to keep businesses operating efficiently with their teams working from home, for which he has been justifiably recognised. 

Matt was instrumental in migrating Service and Maintenance operations from predominately 'engineers on-site' to fully remote, over-the-air management. His commitment to customers, combined with his depth of knowledge and ability to innovate, enabled this fundamental change to business practices to be implemented quickly and operate smoothly. With best practice standards, 90% of Service and Maintenance requests are now managed remotely, compared to 10% pre-pandemic. 

Matt began his AV career in sales but soon realised his passion was not pushing the products that were best for his bonus but understanding the requirements of the customers and helping them identify the solutions that were right for them. This customer-first philosophy has enabled him to become regarded as a trusted and respected AV expert by both customers and colleagues. It was this reputation that brought him to Carillion Communications.

As Service Delivery Manager, Matt and his team ensure our customers' systems are efficiently managed and maintained to provide them with the assurance of business continuity. He understands that on occasion, something goes wrong, or when the customer needs help, they need a quick response. With the overwhelming majority of requests now managed remotely through Microsoft Quick Assist and TeamViewer, the time taken to implement and resolve has reduced significantly and is now measured in minutes rather than hours.

Matt feels improvements can still be made, and with the Microsoft Teams Pro Management Portal, more and more services, such as triaged updates and fault notifications, can be managed without impacting the customer at all. He hopes the number of manufacturers and devices that can be supported in this way will continue to increase, all subject to Microsoft's stringent approval processes, and that just about all management and support requests can be completed remotely. By working closely with the Carillion in-house Microsoft Team, Matt hopes to implement change and best practices on a continual basis.

Of course, our Helpdesk receives a wide variety of questions and requests from our customers that first must be diagnosed before they can be resolved. Matt recalls one rather unusual and particularly challenging issue from earlier in his career. The manufacturers of a well-known toy doll, now inextricably linked with actor Margot Robbie, had decorated a meeting room with wallpaper featuring the doll's face. This led to the face recognition cameras in the room continually focusing on the faces on the wallpaper rather than the faces of the people sitting around the meeting room table!

All at Carillion Communications congratulate Matt on his '40 under 40' achievement. We're delighted he's part of the team and have no doubt his insights and vision will continue to shape the future of Carillion Communications and the AV industry.