To support these new services, Convergint has focused on strengthening its sales and technical skills. Sales colleagues are increasing their technical knowledge in the areas of enterprise solutions and IT networks, and growing their sales skills as they need to build relationships across departments, Moceri emphasizes. “Our technical colleagues have had to expand their knowledge beyond security systems and into the IT world with Microsoft certifications, network certifications, and learning query and programming languages,” he says.

Convergint’s annual training budget for 2011 was $2,059,000 and is on track to exceed that this year. The budget has increased 72 percent over a three-year period from $1.2 million in 2009, to $1.7 million in 2010, to over $2 million in 2011.

Colleagues hold hundreds and hundreds of certifications, including 117 professional NICET certifications; hundreds of product certifications from more than 25 manufacturers; dozens of IT certifications including Microsoft, Cisco, and Comp TIA; Certified Protection Professional, Physical Security Professional, and Certified Security Project Manager certifications; and others.

Another essential component of Quadrant Four is iCare, an internally developed, Web-based real-time service management tool that provides customers with the ability to generate and track their own service work orders, plus their preventative maintenance work. The portal is protected by a 256-bit encrypted SSL certificate to enable customers to meet their corporate security requirements. It also allows for user-defined access and permissions.

All of the information is updated on a real-time basis as the work order progresses to completion. “Through the use of Web-enabled cell phones, our specialists electronically receive their work-order dispatch, access their scheduled work orders and have been trained in the standard iCare work order response process. All activity from the time the work order is created is captured in the history. Specialists’ activity in responding to the work orders and resolving the problems are recorded through time stamps and notes that the specialists make as they work,” says Jan Lumpp, senior program manager.

There are management reporting capabilities and document management in which virtually any electronic document can be stored, managed and shared through the iCare portal. “The real-time status and metric reporting and analysis capabilities of iCare allow customers to easily view reports covering performance, financial, work order status, equipment repair history, etc. The metric report is the quantitative measurement of our performance to the customer’s required response times,” she conveys.

“These reports are a benefit to the customer and Convergint, driving us to be more responsible and accountable. This transparency of our service work and performance required us to standardize our service operational process. This has improved the level of service that we deliver to customers as well as provided consistency between offices,” Lumpp says.

Measuring Results of Quadrant Four

There are a number of ways that Convergint Technologies can measure the success of its Quadrant Four vision and the programs it has implemented to fulfill that vision, including Professional Services and iCare. The company likely would say that its customers are the first measure of Convergint’s success — and in fact, they can prove it.