Shortly after being appointed Managing Director of Samsung Techwin Europe Ltd, Mr Jong Wan Lim presented his vision for the future of the company at a conference attended by the company’s business partners. Mr Lim stated that 2014 would be “A year of change – A new beginning,” with Samsung Techwin striving ever harder to create new business opportunities for its customers, while providing world class pre and post sales support.
Eight months after taking on the responsibility of leading one of Europe’s fastest growing electronic security brands, Mr Lim, pictured, explains how his vision for change is developing.
Question: What would you say are the most significant changes that have taken place since you joined Samsung Techwin?
Answer: Our world is changing, our customers’ requirements are changing and we are changing the way we do business to meet the challenges of the future. To meet this change we have reviewed and are continuing to review the way we manage our business model. Our new ‘regional powerhouses’ have enabled us to be more efficient in our use of resources to provide a more sales oriented structure. We can better utilise the expertise of our sales and support services across the countries within these regions to provide a fast, efficient and consistent service to all.
To ensure the success of our regional powerhouses, we are continuing to review the way we manage our operations within the countries. This will provide the platform for the continuous drive for sales and service in our “key sales target” areas. Our aim is to be number one in these ‘key sales target’ areas and the key to the success will be achieved through concentrating our focus on these areas.
We all know that successful business partnerships are built around trust. At Samsung Techwin we are no different as we look to have the highest level of trust with all our; distribution, system integrators, end-user customers and technology company partners. This new sales orientated strategy is improving the quality of our processes and policies to strengthen this trust. These shared values are further strengthened by engaging end-users through our vertical market Business Development (BDM) specialists, who are concentrating on key vertical markets in their regions such as Transport, Retail, Banking and City Surveillance where all this business is being driven through our distribution partners. This has resulted, for example, in Samsung Techwin being awarded PADs approval (Network Rail) for a large number of network products, including our award winning open platform WiseNetIII camera range. This places us in a position of currently being the only manufacturer to have IP cameras approved for use on the UK rail network.
Question: Can you expand on what you mean by reorganising and restructuring your sales areas?
Answer: As we continue to develop our IP portfolio creating smarter technologies, we are also aware that in today’s competitive market, working collaboratively will help improve and advance the quality of our service offering. Our European regional centres are benefitting from our successes as we continue to knowledge share. By embracing a transparent methodology, our new regional centres have been able to seamlessly disseminate and replicate successes through a fully integrated sales and business development team. This synergy has allowed us to work smarter, more efficiently and effectively, all of which will help to improve the quality of our services to all our customers, especially our value added partners. As we learn more quickly from the successes of our more empowered local teams, the new regional centres will quickly disseminate and replicate their successes through the natural synergy that has been created from integrating the sales and business development teams. A fundamental part of this reorganisation has been the introduction of the Samsung Techwin Eco Partnership (STEP) program, where we provide support, resources and tools to help our partners extend their business opportunities and increase their profits, with benefits such as Project Registration Discount, Lead Sharing, Co-Marketing, Academy, Marketing and Technical Tool support. In the first couple of months of starting the STEP program over 150 partners have signed up.
Question: The STEP partner program seems an integral part of your new strategy. Is it only open to system integrators?
Answer: Our STEP Partner Program is designed for different types of partners; channel, technology, application, A & E and clients. One main difference is that our customers can access our Open Platform partner’s information and services allowing us to further add value to offering. We also work very closely with our distribution partners, where we not only pull the channel partner’s business through to them, but we also exhibit together at trade shows to highlight the strength of our cooperation. For example, at Essen in Germany this year we are partnering with Videor and at Expoprotection in France with Aasset Security.
Question: At the beginning of the year you discussed the importance of service and support. Is this still the case?
Answer: Most certainly, our market is a very crowded place where there is no shortage of manufacturers to compete with and so we believe that quality over quantity is the key, delivering quality products, quality services and quality support levels which is what customers quite rightly require and expect. At Samsung Techwin we have introduced a staff specific training programme ensuring the service delivered by our sales and technical teams adds value to our customer business. We have also introduced an Advanced Replacement Scheme on all products purchased after 1st July 2013. This is to highlight the confidence we have in the quality of our products and to give our customers peace of mind by putting them first. We have also combined our warehouse and service centre in the Netherlands, a convenient hub for continental Europe and the UK, where we utilise the services of DHL, the global market leader in the logistics industry, to deliver our products.
Question: You mention quality products. What is new this year?
Answer: During 2014 we have expanded our WiseNetIII range so that it now includes 1.3, 2 and 3MP resolutions and were delighted when we won the ‘Product Innovation award’ at this year’s IFSEC exhibition. The powerful processor offers the user simplicity and choice through our ‘Open Platform’ technology and together with our technology partners who are specialists in video and audio analytics and our expertise in camera manufacturing allowing us to create truly exciting solutions, it was at this year’s show that we changed our booth to being vertical market solution centric rather than device centric as has historically been the case.
Question: This sounds innovative. How much of a difference will this make to your business?
Answer: We believe this will help ‘Change the Face of IP’ as the WiseNetIII cameras will accept multiple applications that can be downloaded into the camera in a similar way to adding Apps to a SmartPhone, giving the end-customer total flexibility in allowing them to use a surveillance camera for many more applications outside the scope of security, such as marketing, health and safety and man-management. This approach allows us to offer solutions to different vertical market sectors such as retail, where an App from Agent-Vi, utilising its savViTM software, can provide retailers with a powerful tool to analyse customer traffic patterns or understand the implications of customer behaviour in relation to signage, store layout and promotions.
Question: Samsung Techwin has just introduced a new analogue solution. With the market moving towards IP solutions, can you explain why you have chosen to do this?
Answer: Without doubt, the future is with IP solutions, but we must also support all our customers and there is a countless number of existing analogue CCTV systems where users are not ready for various reasons to migrate to a network based solution. The new Beyond Series harnesses the power of 1280H camera technology to enable the analogue cameras and DVRs to deliver 1000TVL. The key to supporting all existing solutions is that the Beyond Series is interoperable with existing analogue products as it conforms to the PAL standard.
Question: What other areas of your business do you see growth coming from?
Answer: In 2014, our Business to Consumer (B2C) range has grown rapidly into Retail Stores, On-line retailers and telecommunication companies with products such as the Smart Home camera SNH-6410 that uses the WiseNetIII technology designed for the professional market in a form that would grace the smartest of homes. This B2C range has expanded rapidly to meet a growing demand for end-customers who are embracing Smart Technology and High Definition images in the home.
Question: So what does the future hold for Samsung Techwin?
Answer: In 1962, Marshall McLuhan said that we live in ‘a global village’ and this was just when electronics were in their infancy. Today our world is changing rapidly and it is becoming more compact, showing us that ‘big is not always best’. Our changing approach has already delivered value added tangible benefits for our targeted vertical markets, through our partnerships with end-customers, integrators, distributors and technology partners, delivering quality products, services and support. One clear example is the Gabling Prison project where our BDM team have worked with the end-user and systems integrator, HSS Sicherheit Berlin, passing the project through to the distributor, Dekom.
