On July 31, 2010 at 16:28, sofa_king_CI said...
I agree and disagree. Yes you reach the end of System builder and you are still miles away from what you CAN do, but not necessarily what you need for many jobs. Prodigy alone is very powerful and can be treated like an RTI 2-way system with a few extra perks and can all be done within System Builder AND be very competitive in terms of price.
My argument is that a good programmer will be able to beat you on price because he is more efficient. Lets say you spend 10 hours total programming with system builder. A CAIP can do the same programming in 3 hours.
So right now it seems like its worth it because you do the programming at night or on the weekends whatever to make it happen. But lets fast forward to 3 years from now when your average job is 30 or 40 hours of system builder programming and a CAIP can do it in 10 hours. What is your time worth? Are you going to be the programmer full time or are you going to focus on sales and running the business? My argument is that if your answer is "then we will hire a caip" then you should stop investing your time in System Builder right now and spend it generating leads or learning D-Tools.
I am drawing my conclusions after working with Crestron for 6 years straight. We have been dealers for more than a decade but we were doing mostly AMX/Phast back in the day. What happened was we spent 3 times as long at each job trying to do the programming ourselves. The imagined savings were spent 3 or 4 times over when you total up the initial installation and all of the drama dealing with the system every day after that.
And no big deal for those 1 room systems right? Except for the fact that our 10 year old 1 room systems were done in crestrons first wizard program which i cant even remember the name of now. You cant even run it simultaneously with application builder or system builder. So when we need to swap 1 component we have to rewrite the whole program and woops.. they dont have the ST-1500 in the interface data base anymore so what do we do? Then our 6 year old systems are in application builder which.. you guessed it.. is not compatible with system builder and no longer supported so those all had to be rewritten. And any current/small systems are written in System Builder. I know Crestron thinks that System Builder is here to stay and the program is fine but my money is on them replacing it with something else causing this same sort of thing to happen allover again.
I understand the reasoning behind using it because we used it for the same reasons. Things cost what they cost. What happens is instead of you hiring a CAIP and billing the client for the 3 hours of programming now.. you eat the 10 hours + trying to do it yourself in System Builder. And.. every time that system gets upgraded you have to go back to that System Builder file to edit it.
The argument of C4/RTI whatever can do the same thing, is sometimes true, but the only benefit was the same thing for less $$, with Prodigy that isn't always the case. Along those same lines, a Prodigy client is the type of client that has room in the budget for advanced programming features.
C4 and RTI haven't reached 50% of Crestrons capabilities. But i agree that for a large number of systems it doesnt matter because those additional bells and whistles are not something they are interested in if it will significantly grow the budget.
What i was getting at is that when you compare 2 crestron systems with identical hardware.. installed by different firms.. 1 with System Builder and 1 with simpl. The simpl programmed system will knock the socks completely off of the other system without a significant increase in programming labor. So what happens is that your client gets a more feature rich system for the same price as his buddy.
So, IMO, a System Builder group is essential for guys like me that are working with Prodigy and maybe some Adagio Systems. I look at Adagio at for the same money I could have replaced my Denon 3808, XP8 & Niles ICS system with a Crestron System. By using SB, I could offer the SAME level of functionality and at pretty close to the same price, BUT have tons of options to expand, at which point, a SIMPL programmer would likely be needed.
I am not arguing against a System Builder forum. I am just saying that you guys, especially you business owners.. need to look at things long term. We went thru what your going thru but we have a 6 year head start. Your time is better spent increasing your knowledge of engineering crestron systems and running the day to day operations of your business. If the sales guy is doing the programming then no one is making sales.
I don't think learning SB is a waste of time at all, its essential for the small and cookie cutter custom jobs. Especially for those of us that don't qualify for any other level of training.
What i was saying is that you shouldn't take any of the training. You should partner with a programmer. An hour on the phone with a good programmer is more valuable then 2 weeks of training. Those guys have worked with everything you are about to sell and they can tell you whats reality and whats marketing hype. They know what 3rd party products are needed so that the holovision intercom chime rings over the DA system. They know what your options are when you want to give your client caller ID on the touchpanel.
