Kramer has been working to improve its operational efficiencies. And apparently, it has succeeded: In September, the company announced a revised pricing structure for North, Central, and South America.
Amit Ancikovsky, president of Kramer Americas, told SCN in an exclusive interview that the supply chain issues that began during the pandemic were marked by increased logistics and material costs. "As these increases were relieved in the last two years," he said, "we decided to roll to our customers these savings. Since the savings affected most of our portfolio, we reduced our prices accordingly."
[Supply Chain Lessons Learned]
Kramer expects the U.S. market to lead the region in growth, though the company is seeing consistent growth and momentum in Mexico. "In the last 18 months or so, we are seeing a normalization of the demand into a more natural course," Ancikovsky said. "The U.S. market is the most resilient, most agile, and flexible market in the world. The market reacts fast and furious to changes in both directions."
Since the pandemic, Ancikovsky has seen increased demand for AV projects. "The trend for networked solutions adoption shows no sign of depleting, and the end user experience continues to be, rightly so, front of mind," he added.
Last year, the company introduced a services portfolio to support its channel partners and provide a better experience for their customers. "These services serve as a the ‘glue’ between the different project parts and enable our integration partners to execute on the project at high quality and in a timely fashion," Ancikovsky said. "We see a clear difference in end-customer satisfaction between those projects our partner has sourced project services from us and those they opted not to. As mentioned, with operational savings now passed on to our customers, it’s a win-win for all parties."
Earlier this year, Kramer reinforced its approach to the UCC market with its acquisition of Ashton Bentley, a U.K.-based company focused on commoditized meeting room solutions. Ancikovsky said Ashton Bentley's approach is a paradigm shift for the industry.
"Ashton Bentley provides a 'space in a box,'" he explained, "everything you will need for your corporate space in one solution. Having a total solution is key to streamlined, successful business. This solves one of the most challenging aspects of a corporate project: the costly and intensive labor deployment and coordination on the installation sites. A corporate space becomes a blank canvas that can be dressed up and fully functional in minutes, not days."
According to Ancikovsky, AV-over-IP is the company's most important pillar within its video management and distribution product family. Over the summer, the company reinforced its commitment to growing its AVoIP presence with the acquisition of ZeeVee, which provides AVoIP signal distribution solutions including encoders, decoders, and its ZyPer4K management platform.
"We were impressed by ZeeVee’s achievements, products, and their subject-matter expertise," he said. "We see synergies across the board between the companies and teams. One of the most significant additions the acquisition provides us is the SDVoE 10G product line—a high-end niche we were not a player in—plus their stellar management software platform, which we plan on integrating into our Panta Rhei ecosystem in the future."
With Kramer's headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company also continues to deal with its country's ongoing war with Hamas. "Our R&D is spread in multiple locations including outside of Israel, whereas our productions and all customer-facing activities and support is performed in the various countries and regions," Ancikovsky said. "Unfortunately, the teams in Israel are well-accustomed to these type of security events ongoing in the background. There was no interruption to the company’s work and business throughout this last year."
