NEWS

Hello from the CSIA Board of Directors! It has been a busy quarter, with lots of buzz after the wonderful annual Executive Conference in San Francisco! For those of you who were able to attend, it was a pleasure meeting many of you in person. And, I hope you found it very informative and were able to take some ideas home to better your business. What a great venue we had this year to hold the conference and you came out in record numbers! Thank you for your support in attending, and I hope you mark your calendars for next year now, so you can attend again in 2019. The dates are April 30 - May 3 in Asheville, North Carolina. The board and Jose have been very busy. AMPED Association Management has been a vital part of our organization for 10 years now, but it has been decided that it is time for both AMPED and CSIA to make a change. We have appreciated very much the service AMPED has provided us and our members over the past decade, and we wish them the very best as they take on new ...

CSIA offers its members a unique insurance program that combines professional liability insurance coverage with general liability coverage in a single insurance policy. This combination presents a number of benefits to system integrators. One of those benefits is that it avoids an expensive coverage fight between two insurance companies over whether a claim should be covered under a professional liability policy or a general liability policy. One consequence of combining the two coverages into a single policy is that the policy has two different coverage bases, as the professional liability portion of the policy covers losses on a claims made basis and the general liability portion covers losses on an occurrence basis. No matter whom you obtain insurance through, it is likely that general liability coverage will be on an occurrence basis while professional liability coverage will be on a claims made basis. This distinction between claims made coverage and occurrence coverage is common ...

Felicitamos a Kamati Ltda de Colombia por recibir la Certificación CSIA. Representan la quinta empresa certificada que gana la distinción en la región. ¡Felicidades de nuevo! Nuestros socios y miembros continúan apoyando nuestros esfuerzos de crecimiento en América Latina. El 5 de junio, tuvimos nuestro evento Q2 patrocinado por Bosch Rexroth, con una asistencia de 24 personas de 14 compañías de integración diferentes. Tuvimos un gran panel de discusión liderado por Roberto de Hoyos y Ricardo Vázquez, Directores de Proyecto para Gersa y ECN, dos de nuestros integradores certificados en México. Los expertos impartieron una presentación interactiva sobre Project Management, involucrando a la audiencia y compartiendo sus propias experiencias. Resultó ser un intercambio muy productivo y dinámico. Gracias a Roberto, Ricardo y sus empresas por su apoyo y excelente trabajo. También agradecemos a Bosch Rexroth por patrocinar el sobresaliente evento y por invitar a CSIA y a nuestros integradores ...

I would like to share my thoughts on our most recent Executive Conference, now that I’ve had several weeks to reflect on it. San Francisco is a very special city and a very desirable destination for many of our members, as indicated by the input we have received over the years through surveys and conversations with members. This year we were finally able to make it happen. I admit that I was a little concerned because San Francisco is an expensive location. I was afraid that this could impact attendance. However, I was proven wrong, and the 2018 Executive Conference was a resounding record breaker, with 599 participants, 61 more than our previous record set in 2014 in San Diego. A very big thank you to the attendees, sponsors and staff. For those of you who couldn’t attend, you missed my Year in Review presentation, dressed in my full Steve Jobs outfit. From the time we first decided to host the conference in San Francisco, I started to think about how to link our conference to the ...

One of the takeaways from Lessons From Touching a Hot Stove: Legal Edition , a webinar Brian Clifford and I recently did for CSIA, was the importance of sanitizing your employees’ e-mails. Integrators, as technically-minded as they are, typically don't think much about the effect of their correspondence until they find themselves on the business end of, say, a subpoena. But, like all lawyers, I like to be on the winning side—and what my automation clients put down in their e-mails can greatly affect whether a win (however you define that term) is even possible. Here, in a nutshell, is the issue. Because what people are saying in correspondence and memos at the time the events are happening has great credibility, these materials are the focus of considerable attention if there is litigation. E-mails, in particular, are popular targets of lawyers because they tend to be more informal—and less well thought-out—than formal correspondence. So, what's an automation company to do? I would ...

This is the second in a three-part series on the imperative and value-add opportunity for system integrators to add cybersecurity to their toolkits when servicing the industrial and manufacturing sectors. Industrial control systems (ICS) are central to the operation of mission-critical infrastructure such as energy and utilities. Yet the increasingly complex and interconnected nature of today's ICS has rendered them vulnerable to malicious attackers who seek to compromise them for political and economic gain. However, as we discussed in the first article in this series, very few SIs are integrating cybersecurity into their offerings even though doing so creates a lucrative opportunity to expand their company’s role. In the same article we go on to explain how SIs can take advantage of cybersecurity and add it to their toolkit, even if cyber isn’t a sweet spot for them. As we explain, partnering with a cybersecurity specialist to augment your offerings is the most seamless route ...

This is the third in a three part series on Mergers and Acquisitions topics addressing the Control System Integrators Market. Read part 1   |   Read part 2 When an owner is ready to begin the sales process of a system integration firm, there are a number of pieces that need to successfully come together. In order for a company sale to occur, it is important for the owner and advisors to jointly manage the sale process. By doing so, the outcome is more likely to be orderly, smooth and lucrative for the business owner. Buyer types The advisor and the seller of a company need to determine what objectives, goals and potential buyer profiles look like early in the process. Finding a best fit for the seller is a vitally important step. Buyer options can include strategic buyers, private equity-backed strategic firms, private equity firms and entrepreneurial buyers. Each buyer group brings unique offerings with advantages and disadvantages attached to each group. It is important for ...