Integration firms have plenty of options when it comes to providing their employees with training and certification in technology disciplines. InfoComm and Electronic Systems Professional Alliance (ESPA) come to mind. Meanwhile, there are countless business certifications out there that sprawl from industry to industry.
At this week’s Business and Leadership Conference in Dallas, NSCA will launch a series of online business training programs catered for the unique requirements of the systems integration industry. Through Certified-Systems Integration Professionals (C-SIP) integration firms can provide employees with training and a professional certificate in four tracks: sales, project management, marketing and operations. Each track requires participants to take five audio training segments, each followed by a quiz that they need to pass with a score of 70 percent or better.
The first segment is the same for each track — a “welcome to the industry” session led by NSCA executive director Chuck Wilson. Then it breaks into four topic-specific sessions. Those discipline-specific segments are offered subject matter experts from NSCA’s Advisory council. Daniel Newman, co-founder of V3 Broadsuite, handles the marketing content; corporate sales coach Bob Lobascio is sales; Nadim Sawaya of Enterprise Performance Consulting is project management; and Wilson teams with industry experts on operations.
The fifth and final section is also the same for everybody and focused on how integrators manage their financials, says general manager and VP of operations Katie Chism. “What are the benchmarks? What are the things you want a person in your organization to know about how to monitor financials and their impact on the organization?”
Upon successful completion of all webinar segments and quizzes, the individual will be issued a professional Systems Integration Professional certificate in their respective training area. It costs $295 for all programs, quizzes and the certificate. Individuals have 90 days to complete all programming.
It’s meant to be a one-time certification and an onboarding took, Chism says, so no continuing education units are required. While C-SIP isn’t necessarily targeted at individuals attending BLC, she adds, it’s a good platform at which to launch it since those company leaders are responsible for putting the right people in place and making sure they have appropriate training.
