S News meets Fabio Andreoni, Country Manager Samsung Italy.
Mr Andreoni, Samsung Techwin have always been very strong in terms of the quality of the products you have brought to market, in recent times you also seem to have invested heavily in developing your management team both globally and in Italy.
Historically Samsung Techwin have invested heavily in research and development, in 2010 we opened a new R+D facility in Korea which has facilitated some great product innovations, as you can see from our recently announced Wisenet III range.
In addition to the investment in R+D we have also invested in people, you have may seen the news about the recent appointment of Jonas Andersson as Senior Vice President of Product Planning and Strategic Marketing. As the previous chairman of Onvif, Jonas brings a wealth of experience to our team. On a local level in Italy we are also developing our team to help meet the needs of our customers; we now have a marketing manager in Italy which means we are able to offer further support to our customers. We are proud to offer local marketing, local training and local technical and sales support, Samsung Techwin are not just about great product, we can now promise great support at the same time, this means that Samsung Techwin in Italy can be a great partner not just a great provider of product. It is very encouraging that even in these difficult economic times we continue to invest, we think this investment will help all of our customers overcome any challenges they face.
What particular challenges do you face in the medium and short term, what developments are planned to help you face these challenges?
Our challenge is to match our recent success and continue growing our business, we are in the process of further strengthening our local team, this will allow us to offer a consistent and high level of support to the new partners and customers we are working with.
Recent additions to our product range have been very exciting and make us believe the future for Samsung Techwin looks very good. Our Wisenet III range is packed full of exciting features and some very clever technical developments; in particular the improvements made in bandwidth usage are very impressive. Our SSM software has proved to be a very flexible tool, this combined with the excellent integration we have with our VMS partners means we can offer great flexibility and peace of mind when choosing a software solution for Samsung products.
In addition to the new products in our network range we continue to innovate in the analogue market. Our new 960 TV line recorder can offer dramatic improvement in picture quality at a very reasonable cost. AT Samsung Techwin we have very strong heritage in analogue products and we intend to continue our success in this sector.
What specific activities do you have planned to support the channel in 2013?
We have recently announced a number of new dates for our SIPI training courses, this has proved to be very successful, and many of them have sold out already.
We also intend to continue running our Smart Security Roadshow. This will be the third year that we have run this activity, it is a great opportunity for customers to come and see the product in action and meet the Samsung Techwin team.
We have also launched a new certification programme for our key channel partners who have invested in our product and training. The programme offers a number of benefits including access to Samsung marketing support and also training and sales support. Our existing partners have found that association with the Samsung brand can be very beneficial.
What do you see happening in the Security Market in the coming years?
It will be a very interesting time, the drive towards network product will continue and with this there could be some very interesting developments in storage and management solutions. Although the move towards network product will undoubtedly continue we still see strong demand for our analogue product, for some customers analogue may still offer the best required solution, when this is the case we will be able to support them.
by Monica Bertolo
