In a crowded marketplace, what differentiates one vendor from another?

Some might say it’s the quality of the swag given away at tradeshows. And at Sencore, we know we’re at the top of our game on that front – we’ve evolved far past branded pens and stress balls. If you don’t believe us, just stop by booth W2500 at the NABShow and see what we have to offer – though we hope if you come for the freebies, you’ll stay for the technology. Setting aside our swag bags for now, at Sencore we’ve spent time contemplating the question. We have always sought to set ourselves apart from other vendors in the broadcast market. How?

For decades, our knowledge meant that we could bring excellence to our sales and support activities; advising customers in a way that genuinely met their needs – both present and projected. And this is something we will continue to do. But in the last few years, we’ve managed to leverage that expertise, experience, and knowledge to offer even more.

Knowledge as the basis of innovation
The most recent way we’ve done that is through the development of Centra. We won’t devote too much space to telling you about it, not least because we’ve written about it quite extensively here. But essentially, Centra represents an end-to-end, comprehensive platform that allows broadcasters to manage the full extent of their media chain (covering a range of video standards) from a singular, centralized, and remote location, making use of a logical workflow process and intuitive GUI to allow even non-technicians deep insight into the operation of their network. We developed it precisely because we understood what clients needed; we’d listened – really listened – time and time again to their initial requests, and perhaps more importantly, to the obstacles, complexities, and challenges that they encountered in trying to string together disparate technologies to solve their problems. Centra was our solution.

Providing the service of stress elimination
While our efforts are poured into creating products and solutions, our expertise goes into services too. Anything that can be bought from the extensive Sencore catalogue – covering contribution, distribution, monitoring and much more, across events of all types and sizes – can also be rented from and implemented by Sencore on behalf of clients.

One of the central benefits of offering our expertise in the form of a service is that it provides huge scalability; we can offer end-to-end solutions to small customers undertaking duration-limited projects, whilst just as easily accommodating the needs of Tier One Broadcasters looking to push out a suite of channels to entirely new geographic markets. Because we offer rental from one to twelve months, and financing from six to twelve months, we provide an opportunity for everybody to gain access to top-of-the-line equipment and access to the knowledge needed to use it, with the overall benefit of service certainty, reliability, and a reduction in upfront capital expenditure. Whether software or hardware-based, remote, or on-site, in essence what we do is take the stress out of video delivery – from the initial paperwork and work order, right through to the close of the project.

Combining experience with energy to provide service excellence
At the heart of our ability to do this lies our knowledge: we don’t just provide and install equipment but offer a full consultation to clients – leveraging our experience to advise them on exactly the solution that will meet their needs. Regardless of industry segment or implementation type, the accumulation of expertise we have gathered over 72 years of operation means that we possess both the technology and the knowledge needed to deliver projects with complete success – though we’ll admit, proud as we are of our 72 years of operation, some of the things we knew seven decades ago don’t quite apply to broadcast operations now!

But what does apply from all those years ago is our philosophy – particularly when it comes to bringing together a team that can deliver the kind of expertise, we pride ourselves on so much. We think that fostering new talent isn’t just an important responsibility of established industry players, but a strategy that yields significant advantage too. Combining the experience of industry veterans with the new eyes of recent graduates works to create an environment where idea sharing, and innovation come naturally. It’s for that reason that we’ve fostered close relationships with local universities in our recruitment and developed an internal culture that values mentorship and knowledge exchange. It’s this that allows us to deliver such comprehensive service, regardless of sector, need or size.

Service as sales support
It goes without saying – but we’ll say it anyway – that this level of service is not just something that can be purchased, well… as a service, but something that accompanies all our product sales too. In many cases this will be delivered through our incredible business partners, who we have sought out precisely for the fact that they share our knowledge and philosophy when it comes to customer service. But we also provide support to our customers directly. This comes right from the beginning, where we listen carefully to ensure that the products, we sell are the ones our customers need, not just the ones they think they want. This then continues through to installation and – if needed – training provision, and then extends far past the ‘traditional’ conclusion of the sale, with warranty provision, repair, and a range of extended service agreements.

We offer all of these because at Sencore we don’t just ‘make a sale’, we build a relationship with clients – one that we intend to maintain just as carefully as we maintain their equipment. If you’d like to find out more about how your company could benefit from our service provision visit our website at sencore.com or contact our sales team at sales@sencore.com.