Tim Kridel speaks with Kramer UK marketing manager Nick Mawer and national sales manager Andrew Smith about AV certifications and how training is regarded in the industry.
TK: What are some trends in pro AV training, certification and professional development? For example, as AV products get more complex, are vendors requiring integrators to have more training than in the past in order to properly sell and support them? Nick Mawer, marketing manager: It really seems to depend on the integrator. Some invest heavily in CPD for their employees; others perhaps don’t see the value. Often time constraints dictate what they can do, and training tends to be related to a specific project in most cases.
I’m not sure about vendors in general, but Kramer has certain new products that we suggest people are trained on before installation. As technology advances, some of the installation (and in particular troubleshooting) can become a little more complex. There is always value in knowing your products prior to specification, and especially prior to any engineering efforts.
Andrew Smith, national sales manager: Sadly not. As a general rule vendors don’t insist on their dealers having trained staff to access their product rage. There are exceptions to this rule, AMX and Crestron requiring programmers to be certified before they can work on their products, Kramer requiring people to be trained on K-Touch 3 and VIA prior to product access etc., but do NEC insist on all the sales and technical people at a dealer being certified before they sell their displays? No, they don’t. Perhaps they should.
TK: Is the AV industry as a whole doing enough when it comes to training, certification and professional development? If not, what are some gaps that should be filled? And who should be filling those gaps? Individual vendors on their own? Or should it be an industry effort led by organisations such as InfoComm? NM: InfoComm definitely has a place, and whilst historically it has seemed to be more valid to certain regions, it is gradually changing to encompass the global industry in a better way. I feel it is the job of the vendors to ensure that sufficient training is available for their products – to improve the experience for everyone involved. However in terms of official certification, perhaps that should be left to one or more governing bodies.
AS: The industry is not doing nearly enough when it comes to training. But the reason the industry isn’t doing enough training is because the systems integrators, dealers, etc. aren’t committing their staff to go on training courses, despite the fact that these courses are available. More courses would be available if the take up from the SIs and dealers was better. The vast majority of SIs, etc. think it costs too much to send their staff on training courses. They don’t realise that it costs even more to send engineers repeatedly back to a site to fix problems that wouldn’t have occurred if the staff had been trained on the products specified in the first place.
There is a strong argument for not allowing SIs, AV dealers, etc. access to your products until they have undergone training but that would no doubt affect sales levels and dealers would choose to sell something else so they didn’t have to ‘waste time’ (as many dealers call it) having their staff trained to a level they can actually do their job. InfoComm have a role to play here and need to push the training aspect harder.
TK: In your experience, do enterprises and other clients understand and value AV certifications such as CTS? In other words, are they critical for helping integrators and consultants win projects? NM: Some do. Certainly some require it for certain positions. Likewise for certain tenders or projects the client may specify a minimum qualification level for the integrator to be recognised. I think this shows that the qualifications are recognised, and even the clients can sometime see the value in certification.
It of course doesn’t entirely dictate how skilled the integrator is (there are many excellent engineers out there with no qualifications), and so this can also be detrimental in some cases.
AS: Some do; some don’t. A number of end users look for a CTS as a minimum qualification when recruiting. When selecting a consultant how many are asked if they have a CTS / CTS-D or potentially a CTS-I? Not many. There is a lack of knowledge about qualifications such as CTS outside of AV. InfoComm have a role to play here.
TK: In your experience, do enterprises and other clients prefer AV integrators and consultants who have IT certifications such as CCNA? In other words, are they critical for helping integrators and consultants win projects? Or are clients typically more focused on AV expertise even when some or all of that equipment will piggyback on their IT network? NM: If aiming for contracts that are being requested by an IT department, you may find recognition for being Microsoft certified, or CCNA certified. Certainly there are times where it can help in terms of smoothing the whole process (knowing what to ask, and to whom – and understanding the do’s and don’ts). I feel that clients are more focused on the AV expertise, if the job they are speaking of is more of an AV nature.
But with the advance of products such as Via, integrators will need to be armed with more information to be able to carry those technologies into some environments. Especially in the case of Control System Programmers – I think there is an expectation of a higher level of IT competency, and there may be new hurdles to overcome in comparison to a pure “AV†install.
AS: All SIs should have someone who has a network qualification of some type. Just about every AV system these days is network based and a lot of SI’s lack IT knowledge. Thinking about it the whole industry lacks AV knowledge! AV and IT converged some years ago – the AV guys haven’t kept up with the IT guys in terms of skillset.