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Projected Vision - Katsuaki Shimaoka, Director, Panasonic Projector Business Unit
Conceiving the Perfect Solution - Yuki Sakamoto, Product Manager, Panasonic Projector Business Unit
Market Analysis - Mike Fisher, DTC
European Vision - Jerome Berrard, Head of Business Unit, Projector Systems Business Unit Europe & Christian Sokcevic, Sales and Marketing Manager, Projector Systems Business Unit Europe
Panasonic Projector Premium Service… - Donald Maidment, Service Manager, Projector Systems Business Unit Europe
Technology Intelligence - Markus Ries, Technology Manager, Projector Business Unit Europe
UK Vision - Tony Brecht, Country Sales Manager, Projector, Panasonic Business Systems UK
Adding value in distribution - Toby Wise, Managing Director, Snelling Business Systems Ltd.
Key Panasonic People
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During the official launch, in Paris, of the F100 series at the annual Panasonic dealers’ event, Cleverdis met with a number of Panasonic representatives as well as Channel partners in order to sound out their thoughts about this new machine. After the parade of staff and partners, Yuki Sakamoto appeared at the door of our meeting room with one final person to meet… Markus Ries is Technology Manager for the Projector Business Unit, but according to Yuki, that title is not at all indicative of the importance he has within the company. With a reverend tone in his voice, Yuki announced, “…This is the one guy you should get to know here if you want to understand everything. He knows everything… everything there is to know about this business!”
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The Story Behind The Training Centre… and Markus…
With the onset of diverse new display technologies, Panasonic realised some years ago that as long as potential buyers remained confused, selling these products would be an uphill battle. For this reason, Panasonic has made a concerted effort to educate and inform staff and channel partners about these technologies, in order that they in turn be able to explain them properly to buyers. In 2006, Panasonic took the final leap, opening a spacious new purpose-built training centre in Wiesbaden, Germany. But a training centre is only effective if, at its heart is a faultless knowledge base. In this case, nothing could be truer, thanks to its “soul” – Markus Ries…
Tell us about the background to the training centre…
MR: We opened the training centre in June 2006, but the history behind it goes back much further. April 1st 2006 was the date I officially joined Panasonic, but I have been working with Panasonic since around 1999. At that time I was working as a technical director for the largest distributor in Europe – Lang AV. I had a long close relationship with the engineering team in Japan and they hired me the first time in 2003 for the launch of the 7000 series to give the global training for Panasonic in every continent.
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© Photo: Panasonic
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These training sessions had immediate success in the market, resulting in an increase in business, so at a certain point we simply decided it made no sense for me to remain on the “outside”, and that we should put this into a concept, which ended up being the training centre.
The training centre concept is a flexible one based on three activities. There is of course the classic class-style seminar that we’re doing at the training centre, but we don’t put that much fixed installation equipment in it, only basic. All the main equipment we have, like HD sources, switchers and so on, is portable, so I can also take the training sessions onto the road for such things as open houses of our distributors or the seminars that I’m doing for sales companies all over Europe.
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How would you describe the training sessions?
I’m offering basic technology training, which is not product specific. It all starts with light… the reception of the human eye… it goes over into our eye’s sensitivity to contrast and brightness… then I go into the details. I explain that there is no technology that is superior, underlining what is weak and strong about DLP, LCD and LCoS. Even if a sales person has a very low technical background, if he is able to understand in very simple words what the basic differences are between these technologies, it is much easier for him to understand a product and why a product is designed in a specific way. I also give specific product training, and to this end I am now training people about the F100 series. It took a long time to explain to the people that this is not a service seminar, it’s is how to handle or demo the product… explaining its key features.
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