DEALER VIEWPOINT - Accreditation's what you need

Like most resellers and service providers, Elcom Group expends an inordinate amount of energy chasing vendor rainbows, which take the form of accreditation trails. The Lotus one is particularly complex - it requires everyone to be a developer irrespective of whether development is required.

Microsoft and Novell opted for the worldwide badge, built around either the Certified NetWare Engineer or the Microsoft Certified Professional, and IBM followed with Professional Server Expert or some such nomenclature.

Compaq has the Accredited Systems Engineer and the super deluxe version, the Compaq Accredited Systems Professional. The list goes on.

Now, I value certification and believe all the above introduced welcome measurements and tiers into the channel. But what clients need is a combination of them, with particular focus on their integration.

Why? Because in a few environments, it's not all Compaq, IBM, NetWare or NT - it's a mixture. The systems engineers have to mix up a cocktail of software run on an exotic cocktail of hardware.

All major vendors should run their accreditations the way SAP does. SAP will not certify - it will not support its software on any platform unless the action is performed by an SAP Certified Installer.

To become an SAP Certified Installer, specific to the platform you were trained on, you must spend tens of thousands of pounds. I am in favour of that too.

The logic is simple - if you plough back some of your hard-earned margin, you can at least be assured that no unauthorised person is going to come around the corner and steal your business.

But what if Microsoft, Novell, Compaq and IBM were to insist that only qualified staff could work on their products? Pie in the sky? Maybe not.

Would you fly in a plane if the pilot had seen a similar plane before but never actually flown one of that type?

Extending this rule to all software and hardware would cause short-term havoc and a considerable skills shortage. Imagine everyone who worked on Windows 95 or Office 97 having to be a time-served, fully badged-up Microsoft Certified Professional. Ultimately, this could only be a good thing, even if the thought seems fantastic. It would protect our investments in training. Today, we train staff only to find the client has employed an unqualified contractor who comes in with no guarantees, a high price tag and no interest in client satisfaction.

If qualifications were mandatory, the true professional service providers would survive and the clients would receive consistent, reliable service. As for the contractors, they would be in their rightful place, selling cold drinks on a beach in Majorca.

But we can only dream, and encourage vendors to create the badges and link them irrevocably to their products so that the professionals can rise to the surface. In the meantime, I'm off to sit my Certified Registered Authorised Professional exam.

Steven Smith is Technical Director at Elcom Group UK