Daniel J SaitEvery EI Live! is delighted to welcome experts from around the globe keen to share their knowledge in the Technical Theatre and during other important learning opportunities throughout the show. This year organisers are delighted to welcome Keynote speaker and EI regular columnist, Jason Knott.
Register for EI Live! 2024 here.
Find out more about EI Live! 2024 here.
The editor of stateside Essential Install equivalent Ce-Pro for many years, Jason is now Data Solutions Architect And Evangelist at D-Tools and will speak at EI Live! detailing some of the surprising trends affecting the market based on hundreds of thousands of actual proposals and contracts.
With the event just around the corner, EI spoke with keynote speaker Jason to get some insight into his presentation taking place on Wednesday, 18 September.
Jason, for anyone that doesn’t know you, please can you provide some background on yourself?
It’s hard for me to fathom, but I have been involved in the smart home industry for 34 years and counting. Back in 1990, I became the editor-in-chief of a trade publication called Security Sales, which had as one of its primary the professional installation of residential electronic security and home automation systems. Ten years later in 2000, I became the editor-in-chief of CE Pro, a publication and website devoted strictly to informing integration companies concentrating on the professional smart home industry. For several years, CE Pro and EI were sister publications under the same ownership. Last year in 2023, I took my current position at D-Tools, the leading end-to-end business management software solution for integrators worldwide.
What made you join D-Tools after all the years running CE Pro?
The transition to D-Tools was a natural fit for me because the company has the identical mission to CE Pro, which is to help integrators run better businesses. At D-Tools, one of my roles is to take the aggregated data that is gleaned from the thousands of D-Tools users to identify important industry trends related to profit margin, pricing, number of proposals and contracts/installations, service revenue, change orders, sales closing rates, types of equipment being installed and much more. We then take that important information and create free reports for the industry that help guide integrators, manufacturers and distributors to prepare for the ever-changing shifts taking place in the market.
What will your keynote at EI Live! concentrate on?
I can’t wait to speak to the integration community at EI Live! in September. My presentation is going to be fun and interactive in a ‘quiz-show-style’ designed to keep everyone guessing a la ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’. I am calling the session: ‘Is It B.S. or Reality? What Data Is Revealing About Your Business’ because I suspect many in the audience will have trouble recognising if my questions are true or false. Among the topics I will be quizzing everyone on will include labour pricing, discounting practices, sales close rates, the product mix in projects, profit margins, and much more. EI Live! attendees will come away with specific takeaways to help improve their sales results, project performance, and ultimately bottom-line results.
So, with all this insight, what advantages does using D-Tools provide the CI Integrator?
The session is certainly not going to be a sales pitch about D-Tools, but since the data is drawn from more than 100,000 proposals and 30,000 signed contracts between integrators and their customers in D-Tools Cloud, it is hard data that can be relied upon to use as a benchmark comparison. Integrators who are not currently using D-Tools software might realize their performance and efficiency can improve by adopting the software solution if their company metrics are not as strong as the baseline data shows.
How does D-Tools achieve this?
D-Tools is able to achieve this because we have more than 8,000 users from more than 90 countries using the both D-Tools System Integrator and D-Tools Cloud software. The D-Tools Integrated Product Library provides integrators with access to detailed specifications for over a million products from over 400 companies and more than 1,300 brands participating with integrator-level pricing. In the UK alone, distributors Habitech, Invision, Pulse Cinema, Avoke, DbM, Exertis UK, AWE, ADI and Northamber are partners, with more coming onboard.
What are the future plans for the platform?
The software is updated every month with new features and improvements all geared to help integrators implement an end-to-end workflow – from sales to system design, installation and on-going service. Recently, the company made its single-license version called D-Tools Cloud Solo free to all integrators. Also, the company is expanding support for UK integrators by having its integrator-level pricing available in Euros and Pounds, as well as bringing on more and more UK brands and distributors.
