Control rooms are among the most critical solutions for system integration, an area in which 3G Electronics has made its field of choice. Together with Digital Signage, it is the market where it makes the most of its 50 years of experience, celebrated just at the end of 2019
A company like 3G Electronics best illustrates, with its own work style, the idea of ‘value added distributor’, that is, a company that not only deals with the marketing of products, but above all with pre and post sales, as well as installation and training.
And what better way to inaugurate the series of articles we want to dedicate to 3G and its solutions, than to speak with Maurizio Vacca, Commercial Manager of 3G Electronics.
Connessioni- What is the path that led you to specialise in these applications, and how did you develop the necessary skills?
MV – We started the collaboration with Matrox in 1979, but the company has been focusing on the Control Room market for about 15 years; we tried to follow this input by applying it to the Italian market, initially finding the right applications for the controllers, that is the heart of the solutions, and later arriving at the possibility of also offering turnkey solutions, with all the consulting part and installation. In short, slowly we refined the concept of a 360° solution to get to the way we work today. The turning point was the launch of the Matrox Mura series, specific for these applications: at the same time the requests have risen numerically and qualitatively, and we have tried to refine the coaching services both in the pre-sale – planning consultancy, support in competitions etc. – that in post-sales, or assistance, updates, monitoring. In fact, the market has expanded and today many System Integrators also operate that do not necessarily come from the AV.
C – So Matrox is more than a supplier, and you are more than a distributor for them?
MV – We have a very close relationship of mutual influence: we probe the market and collect the needs, including customisation, of customers and end users, indications on which are often based on updates and new productions. Often we also do a ‘beta test’, that is, we receive a preview of products that we test in particular installations.
C – Does your work remain addressed to your direct customer?
MV – Between us and the end user, during the pre-sale sale phase, there is no relationship, we always and only work with our customer, usually a reseller or a System Integrator. But we go with him to visit the customer, look at the place, perform a projection of the installation (even an aspect such as the bracketing is very important), then let the negotiations take place between the end user and our customer. Only in a second phase, almost always, do we deal with the installation, managed by highly specialised internal staff.
C – When did you start with Digital Signage?
MV – Today our work is divided almost in half between Control Room and Digital Signage and, within the latter division we have a further double specialisation: in the Retail world – natural habitat of the BrightSign solution – and in the Corporate with PADS4 of the Net Display System.
PADS4 is a very different solution from BrightSign because in stores there is a tendency to present products and encourage purchases, while in the Corporate sphere it is a matter of managing more complex and layered communications, both internal and external, which illustrate, in addition to videos and images , data from structured databases, also in real time, obtaining an extremely dynamic and automated management and update system.
But we will return to talk about these markets with 3G on subsequent occasions, both in technical and market terms.
