The inaugural Milestone Integration Expo took place this week in Northamptonshire. The busy event included partners such as Araani, eyevis UK, Herta, Immix, Ipsotek, Nedap, Oncam, Pivot 3 and Zepcam with each company running sessions throughout the day to a keen audience.
We caught up with Neil Killick, Country Manager for UK & Ireland at the Expo to find out more about the event.
What was the idea behind the Integration Expo?
The event was a new approach to how we exhibit our products in conjunction with our key community partners, showing the systems in live demonstrations rather than on a series of PowerPoint presentations. In doing this, customers can get under the skin of Milestone and our integration with partners and also understand in-depth how a solution can work. In addition the event is important for us because we can get direct feedback to our partners, many of whom don’t have the reach that we do, so this is a great opportunity for them to understand what the market is doing. By meeting installers and discussing ongoing and potential projects, partners can even discover if there are features missing from a product or service. Partners can, as a result, understand where the opportunities are – perhaps in areas where they had not previously looked or in different verticals or even with a different partner – and so really understand that they know what the opportunities are for them going forward.
You certainly had a good turnout!
Yes, it’s been really well received, we had a welcome BBQ the night before which was popular and on the day we’ve had a great turnout for the event itself. The best thing for me has been the quality of people who came from sales directors, managing directors, CEOs, installers, end users and some even travelled from abroad. I think that the commitment that our customers have shown is really impressive.
You joined Milestone in February, how has it been for you?
We’ve done a lot in a small amount of time, restructuring the business in the UK bringing on new staff and changing how we focus on the integrator. One of the issues raised last year was the level of support we had in some areas of the UK, so now we have an obvious structure where all areas of the UK and Ireland are supported and not just in terms of account management, but also a technical point of view. We have just offered a distribution manager role to someone which will hopefully be announced shortly. This appointment completes the puzzle in regard to ensuring new business development with distributors, improving support throughout the supply chain and then next month we hope to add a new person in business development. This recruitment will then give us the team we want to head into 2018 after a successful 2017.
Read the full interview in the October 2017 edition of PSI magazine
