News & Trends

Latin America’s First AVIXA Gold Member Speaks Up for the Value of Membership

Year 2018 started in Brazil with important news when two of the largest AV integrators of the country — Solutione and Eletro Equip, both AVIXA members — decided to join their capabilities in a merge previously unheard of in Brazil. To culminate their decision, they took AVIXA’s GOLD level membership, being the first company in Latin America to go for such a high membership level.

We talked to Odair Tremante, Sales & Marketing Director of the newly formed company, when he explained the value the company sees in becoming an AVIXA™ Gold member.

• Mr. Tremante, how did you get started in the AV industry?
  I worked for 6 years at Siemens in the videoconferencing area and then 4 years with PictureTel/Polycom. I left Polycom in 2e003 to join Solutione and with Ricardo Durão, CTS®, to make the move of the company into the AV market. Now, we have together already 15 years at Solutione, where I was leading the sales and marketing areas and Ricardo Durão was performing as CTO. Eletro Equip started in 1971 in the broadcast area and jumped to the AV business in the middle of its history, under the direction of Claudio Younis, becoming one of the most relevant players in this market by keeping its excellence and the capacity to deliver complex projects above the market.


• And what is the AV industry like in Brazil?
  Any technology industry in Brazil is always challenging due to the high level of taxes and the complexity to deal with imported solutions, manufacturers and all the complex tax rules, and also due to the dollar exchange rate that is always high. On top of all of that, we have had many political and economic issues developing in the last few years. At the moment, we share the belief that things are becoming more stable, the economy starts to give some recovery signals and we expect a good season. The market has been kept frozen for many years and needs to react to go after all international progress we have had in this period.


• What do you most enjoy about your work?
  Always working to differentiate us from all others is something that keeps me motivated every day! We understand that AVIXA is one of the most important resources in our industry and that we were not using AVIXA at its full capacity and availability. So, after we merged with Eletro Equip, we decided now is the time to look for global standardization, to have all our engineers certified with AVIXA and with this, reflect all these benefits to our customers. It is very common to see customers not well assisted. That is one good reason why we always will keep refreshing certification, global standards, and Manufacturer Trainings. AVIXA has a huge amount of tech information to bring all our joint staff to the same page of knowledge quickly and efficiently.


• Is there a particular project you would like to share with others?
  During the last few years, we have delivered many important projects, and a good portion of them are maintained by on-site technicians nowadays. This was possible due to the investment in AV trainings and a good plan for the strategy of the company. One of the most important projects we can mention is the Innovation Center from Accenture Brazil (located in Recife) delivered in 2017 that gave us the “Best AV Project in Latin America Award” by AVI Latinoamerica magazine.


• Why is your AVIXA membership important to your business?
  Our company focus is on global customers and due to that we have to provide them with the same level of experience/quality that they have in the USA and in Europe. AVIXA helps us to provide a standard level of information that helps us understand and deliver it with no differences all around the world. As we move forward into our recent merge, more and more global customers are naturally potential customers to be attended, and being prepared with the skills they expect is a very important step in the sales cycle.


• And to you personally?
  AVIXA promotes lots of local events, webinars and information that brings us the most recent available technologies and market trends so we can always be prepared for the new challenges. We do keep an eye on all events because they provide a good chance to become quickly updated!


• Why did your company decide to become an AVIXA Gold member?
  Customers’ technologies are becoming very challenging nowadays. We are seeing many changes in this world and in order to be able to follow the trends and the technology refresh, we must have the best people and best practices. By being AVIXA’s Gold member, not only do we have access to special training that guides us through this path, but we also are able to achieve some prerequisites in terms of certification, skills and other technical capacities that help us increase our quality delivery and improve our processes.


• Why would you recommend that your peers in AV join the AVIXA community?
  By having all AV companies going after this same path, we would elevate the entire market and have all customers experiencing a better service. It is hard to make progress for the entire market without an entity like AVIXA creating standards and guidelines to be followed and learnt by all of us.