Welcome to the Rivergate Marketing Podcast. In this episode, Grace Clark interviews CSIA CEO, Jose Rivera, along with CSIA, members Don Roberts of Exotek and Peter Moskal of Engineered Energy Solutions.

Jose Rivera – Control System Integrators Association (CSIA)

If you could just say your name and your title and what company you’re with here at the conference.

My name is Jose Rivera. I am the CEO of CSIA.

What are you most excited about for this year’s conference?

This year is a great conference at a great location. I would say again, we normally have very good locations and I’m very excited about all the discussions and networking taking place between system integrators and between system integrators and partners. It is a very exciting time for our industry. We have bonanza time and that creates its own challenges of trying to get enough experts and staff to deliver on all the opportunities that are made available to system integrators.

Speaking of changing industry and things like that, what are you most excited about for the future of this industry?

I think that this industry is able to deliver on some big challenges that we have here in North America. We are reshoring or nearshoring and that means the need to implement automation to make it economically viable to produce here in the United States and nearby. And so, our system creators and automation industry are able to contribute to this goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US. So that is very exciting times for all of us living here. And I will also include nearby like Mexico and Canada that will be benefiting from relocation of manufacturing.

Absolutely. And what is the significance of the CSIA? What does CSIA bring to the industry?

To be able to deliver projects, you need to put products into solutions and that is basically what system integrators do. They put the different components into a solution to deliver on the needs of the manufacturer. And so if you don’t have this ability to put things together, you don’t have a solution. So, you are not producing and delivering to the market. So it’s a big contribution done by system integrators and the overall automation industry.

Since Rivergate Marketing does marketing, to you, what is the significance of marketing to the system integrator industry?

System integrators in the past have relied very heavily on word of mouth and that changed dramatically during the pandemic. In today’s way of selecting vendors for their projects, people rely on a good digital presence to be able to find and gain confidence in the different providers. System integrators have been ramping up their presence and they have become more proficient, but they still need help and help comes from experts. And Rivergate is one of the experts that can provide that help to help them be visible in America such that they can be found.

Yes, absolutely. Those are all my questions. Do you have anything you want to add?

What I would say is that automation sometimes is viewed as eliminating jobs. I think that it’s time to rethink that approach. Automation is there to get the job done. In the case of North America, it’s bringing back jobs. In the case of some position industry, it allows us to manufacture things that we no longer can produce by hand. So it’s a big contribution that we are delivering to our economy and our community. And so I’m very proud to be part of this community.

Don Roberts – Exotek

To start, if you could just say your name, your title, and what company you’re with.

Yeah, sure. Grace. My name is Don Roberts. I’m with Exotek. I’m the principal of Exotek. It’s a consulting company that deals with systems integrators.

What brings you to the CSIA conference?

I’ve been coming to the CSIA conference since 1999. This is basically where all of our customers get together. So it’s pretty important for us to be here. Customers have questions, we need to be here to help them.

Looking to the future, what are you most excited about or looking forward to for this industry?

Oh wow. We take a look at what’s going on in the world and take a look at how many different countries are nationalizing manufacturing. Again, primarily focused around automation and things of that nature. I think this is just a phenomenal opportunity. It’s really a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity for this industry for being able to do the automation that we’ve all wanted to do. And now there’s seems to be budgets to do it.

Since you’re a consultant to system integrators, do you have any advice you would instill to listeners?

Well, certainly. The first piece of advice is to join CSIA, right? I think that the association is one that helps you build the business. So there’s, when I first started with systems integration, I had my own system integration company. I looked high and low to try and find out, well, ‘how should I run a business of systems integration?’ And there really wasn’t a good model. There were models for professional firms, like a legal firm or a retail firm or manufacturing, but not for a systems integrator. And so CSIA is fantastic in that because they actually help you understand how to build the business of a system integration company. And at the same time, when you have firms like the one that we’re at right now where they bring the vendors to play, then it helps introduce some of that too.

For my last question, since we’re a marketing company, I like to ask why do you think marketing is important to system integrators?

I think the very first component of marketing that has a pretty big influence is integrators tend to be a little bit myopic. They tend to be internally focused as well, and marketing helps them understand that, look, we need to get the customer’s perspective. Let’s get the voice of the customer out there. Let’s understand how do we get them interested in our business. So value propositions and things of that nature that we just don’t see come naturally from a bunch of engineers. So, I think marketing is totally underrated in this industry and we need to see a whole lot more of it.

Any final comments or thoughts?

Thank you very much for having me do this. I think that’s great. Really do appreciate the things that you guys bring to it. I’ve worked with Rivergate on a few different occasions and have certainly really been impressed by what you’ve been able to do. And even when we talked a little bit about Georgia and her ability to get the voice of the customer. Awesome. Totally awesome. So yeah, thanks for what you do.

Peter Moskal – Engineered Energy Solutions (EES)

To get us started, if you could just say your name, the company that you’re with and your title.

My name is Peter Moskal. I’m with Engineered Energy Solutions. I’m the VP of production.

What brings you to the CSIA conference?

This is actually my third year attending. It’s really a great place for comradery for an up-and-coming generation and the existing generation that’s currently in place to transfer knowledge from one to another. CSIA really does a well good job of when all of these individuals arrive here, everybody just kind of lets it all out. There is no holding back because these people aren’t competitors. That’s not what CSIA about. It’s really about sharing all the knowledge you’ve gained over the year and the things that you can take away with from this conference to another.

You’re also a part of the Emerging Leaders Group. What significance does that have for you?

The Emerging Leaders Group is really ideal for people that are starting to transfer into different positions within organizations and to have support of other people that are doing the very same thing. The reassurance and backing that ‘Yeah, we’ll get through it.’ And somebody might be going through a struggle in which you were going through at one point.

In terms of 2023 and beyond, what are you most excited for in the industry right now?

Just knowing that this industry is not fading away. If anything, it’s clearly developing and becoming more pronounced in regular day-to-day operations for facilities to your energy efficient conscience building owners.

To you, why is marketing significant or important to the system integration industry?

Marketing takes a key role because of the lack of knowledge of the common end user. Most end users are not necessarily aware of how much cost savings there are on making their facility more energy efficient. Production line efficiencies across the board. And yes, you may have a system in place, but making sure that that system is still current. In today’s day and age, you might have a dinosaur in the background that’s still running well, but it may not be the most efficient dinosaur that’s out there.

What have you found then on that note, beneficial about working with the Rivergate team and a marketing resource like this?

The strategies in which you guys can take what information we have and put it in a platform that is easily readable for the end user who’s not an engineer. A lot of the terminology that we use is not something that the everyday person is just going to understand. So the fluff and common language that you can take to what we’ve said and turn it into something leg readable is really key.