8 steps to becoming a UC expert

Step 4: Write your business case

Some UC training programs are relatively expensive and take a long time. A strong business case will justify the number of staff required and their certification levels.

It is impossible to cover every area of UC; the contact centre market alone is huge and requires dedicated resources to tackle, for example. Make sure your business plan identifies the minimum number and cost of certifications required to cover the technology and the target customer market, without eating up all your margin.

And don’t forget to write a timetable for staff training so that you know your capacity for taking on projects.

“It’s very easy to get in a spiralling situation where all you’ve got is guys off doing certification after certification to meet vendor requirements,” Friend says. “While you need those guys to be certified
you need them to be out there selling and installing otherwise all those certs count for nothing.”

Video-conferencing vendors have “raised the bar” in checking certifications, Morgan says. He has watched a lot of audio-visual companies drop out of selling video-conferencing because it was too difficult.

And as a consequence he says has picked up a lot of business from dissatisfied customers.

“Their bread and butter was doing a couple of boardrooms and projectors but when it came to video- conferencing it was too complicated,” Morgan says. “If you don’t know the products and you don’t know how to implement it on various networks then you don’t get the cert and you can’t sell the product.”

Morgan estimates his VC team spends at least 10 hours a month on vendor portals checking software releases, new products and updating certifications. And it’s not just the engineers.
High-definition video-conferencing vendor Lifesize (now owned by Logitech) requires sales people to carry certifications too.

Most UC vendors take a layered approach where resellers start with a basic certification and then specialise. A common progression is to end up with a team that covers the generalities of UC and can bring in a specialist when needed.

Disties and vendors are on call to help with specialisations to provide coverage and backup. “This is where knowing your marketing vertical helps you make sure you’ve got the right skill sets,” Friend says. For example, certifying to support contact centres costs a lot but if no-one does it in your vertical then you’re wasting a lot of time and money.

Vendors are often willing to sit down and help you decide where to go.