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I guess we're going to do Savant
ericmedley
Posts: 4,177
I've been told that I"m going to Cape Cod soon to learn Savant. We're becoming a dealer. This should be interesting... I'll be reporting what I see and hear like a good soldier.
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Sorry to hear. Don't you love it when the programmer's suggestions and pleads fall on deaf ears?
How much training should it need, after all (from their website)
An advanced, intelligent, and easy to use graphical user interface (GUI) tool for configuring, programming, and customizing the system software, and the entire suite of Savant?s user interfaces.
Sounds like the software does it all for you.;)
Oh, I'm not too worried about it on a personal note. We already have too many systems out there that need feeding and care. I'm just really curious about this thing in that they've been courting us pretty hard and have had nothing but bad demos every time they stepped up to bat.
I think they have some very cool ideas that we all could learn from. There just seems to be noone in the camp who isn't a Koolaide drinker. I think there should be a healthy amount of skepticism about anything.
And I too think it's kinda funny how it's obvious from our discussion so far that it all ends up being us sub-ing out our engineering and programming departments. I'm gonna laugh at how hard they find it to be. I just don't think they understand just how 'in-the-box' their solution really is. Every time we'd disscus how they'd handle a certain contingency that a client of ours would (and in fact has on many occasions) bring up, thier plan of attack was to ridicule the notion in the first place and say that the client really dosen't need it.
We'll see what happens.
I have heard from someone that the only systems currently installed are in the homes of the employees. Given the source, it might be wishful thinking or jealousy, so I wanted to get a little less biased report on the answer.
We have had some interaction with them, and I second the notion that they tend to ridicule concepts that they are not able to support or implement. My favorite tho has to be the conversation about how they have a new product that is designed to eliminate the clutter of having to have a mac mini in the rack for every touch panel in the system. (or something like that). The solution is a housing the contains 4 mac minis. This revolutionary item makes it easier to manage wires and charge your client even more for the mac mini
I do think that they have some interesting concepts and ideas, but so far, I have not been impressed with the translation from concept to implementation.
Jeff
I will saw, they are making a great impact on builders and architects in the area from a marketing standpoint. AMX is doing absolutely nothing in the Residential market. We keep hearing from our sales staff, that they don't want to have to spend a 1/3 of their meetings with a prospective client selling AMX over Savant or C_tron. They would rather use that time to sell more services and build a better relationship with the client.
Like some other AMX residential dealers I talk too, if they don't step it up in the residential market, we too, will have no choice but to switch (don't know to where though...).
We too have been courted pretty heavily. We went to their shin dig last year. We sent one of our installers so he could enjoy some lobster. At Cedia this past year the owner and I got a very indepth walk through of the programming and the poor guy showing me how to program at the end of the discussion had about 20 different windows open, because every sub-change, nuance in the code I would want to make required another program to run in the background. At the end I asked, well let's say I'm taxing a system pretty hard and I want to create a way to only poll the device when I'm on that page... so I would need access to some part of the UI code to do that. He said "we don't open that up to you, you'd never need that". I have healthy skeptism, but am not open to new ideas...drag and drop programming isn't new URC, RTI, C_Tron, AMX all have some form of it. I really think Savant wants to position themselves to be purchased by Apple....
This has been my position since last year about this time. We went to their first shindig in Florida a couple three years ago.
On their visit to our office in Charleston SC, I noticed a distinct change in their presentation. They've obviously shifted their focus. I think they just want to get the right amount of buzz going so the investors can dump the thing to Apple. They'll get a pretty good return on their money and Apple can do all the grunt work on actually developing the last stages of the thing. I could be wrong. who knows.
This is just my opinion of course
Jeff
Even if true, I wouldn't put too much weight on that. Not many homeowners want a parade of people coming by to help sell a product.
I wouldn't necessarily expect a homeowner to open his/her house to a parade of people, but if they are happy, I would hope that a couple of people out of 100 would be willing to provide a referral and/or be willing to take a phone call or email about the job. We have more than a handful of clients that are willing to speak with prospective clients. We even have a couple that don't mind us taking a prospective client to their house, provided we give them enough notice and work with their schedule. (We also help these clients out with discounts on additions.)
Jeff
I've kinda felt similarly about the complaint about not being able to see a working system. Our clientele are ?ber rich type folk. One thing they all really make a big deal about is their privacy. I answer more questions about it than anything. "Can anyone hack this touch panel and see what I'm doing?" (I leave speculation as to why they're so worried about it to the taboids. )
Having said that, one of the policies we have is to repect that privacy at all costs. So, we just don't even ask the clients to allow us to 'show' their homes. Our only saving grace is their are also proud of what they've done and quite often look for ways to show it off when they can get a jolly out of it. So, we do let them know that certain trade and lifestyle magazines are always looking for examples. When presented this way, they seem a lot more willing to let people with camera's come in.
So, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing that they don't have a cadre of clients with testemonies ready to go.
Having said that I do think there's still some deception going on. My discussions with their higher ups always smack of polical-speach. I asked the same question: "How many systems do you folks have up and running." I got the same answer of around a 100. I then said, "how many of those are in client's homes" the answer was, We have one in a friend of mines house and he loves it. It seems a bit evasive. Questions to them that call into question any of the normal concerns one might have are met with glazed over eyes and rote recitation of the company line. My boss asked point-blank, "Tell me about a problem you've had with your system. " and the responce was, "We have a great staff of smart people who work real hard to correct them."
It's that kind of behavior that tells me they're trying real hard to protect the rapidly dwindling capital as they pedal as fast as they can to get orders. (IMHO, as always)
I've done 29 since taking this job. I came in with 7 already in place. We've also inherited (SP???) and redesinged/fixed 4 systems installed by someone named Guy Trunkslammer. I also know of quite a few commercial systems installed around here that were done by other bidnesses all around the US.
So, if our little shop counts for anything, we already have installed more than 1/3 of all the known Savant systems in the whole world. And we're certainly small potatoes...
I have over 150 main units and almost another 200 units that I maintain, installed, programmed. So that would be about 3x the Savant systems.
Brian, am I right in thinking you were talking about AMX Home (the solution) rather than residential AMX systems (the category). Just clarifying