Papering over the cracks
Vendor certifications bring benefits, but many resellers are finding that they do not always justify the time and cost, writes Martin Lynch.
In an ideal world, being certified would add a few letters after the name on your business card and a few zeroes to your income.
For customers using your services, those few letters would be a guarantee that you were the right person for the job and that hiring you would make all their IT problems disappear.
And the vendors running the certification process would bask in the knowledge that only certified and experienced personnel were installing and maintaining their software or networks.
In an ideal world, IT professionals would be over-certified and rich, and customers would never complain because their software and networks would be so well maintained that the disaster recovery market would collapse overnight.
The reality, however, is that certification does not guarantee you a big fat salary or extra custom for your business. Customers are finding that experience counts more than a paper certification; and the only thing the vendors know for sure is that they are making a lot of money from the certification process.
For the channel, vendor certification is a double-edged sword. Certifications are used in the hiring process and to increase business with customers.
However, to achieve special status with the vendor, you have to adhere to the certification process, and this is proving very difficult, particularly for the smaller reseller.
The return on investment (ROI) that certification offers is also uncertain, with some resellers claiming that most customers don't even ask, or care, about whether their employees are certified or not.
Smaller resellers are finding that certifying their staff is an expensive and time-consuming burden which they cannot justify.
Faced with a choice of too many certifications, pressure from vendors to maintain them and depressed market conditions, many firms are reducing further training, preferring to concentrate on their customers.
UK reactions
The feelings of smaller UK players are echoed in the results of the 2002 Certification Study carried out by vnunet.com's sister title Computer Reseller News US.
The study polled 200 randomly selected resellers, asking them to rate the importance of 40 different certifications to their business operations both now and in six to 12 months.
As well as providing channel partners with a guide to the certifications worth having, it gauged the opinions of hundreds of resellers about the value, costs and difficulty of certification across the whole IT spectrum.
Although many resellers thought that certifications were important, they felt there were too many of them and that the process of gaining and maintaining certification was putting a strain on limited resources.
Derek Gamradt, chief technology officer at StorNet, one of the resellers in the report, said: "With all the [vendor] partners we have, it seems like certification du jour.
"I could have two people on staff full time to do nothing but maintain certification testing across multiple vendors, and we could never be profitable that way. Every supplier has gone certification crazy."
On this side of the Atlantic, Trevor McCornish, technical director at Four County Services in Stalbridge, Dorset, said: "There are too many certifications on the market. You would have to be attending courses all the time if you tried to keep up.
"We will never have all of our engineers certified. Some are certified and, if some of the other engineers need assistance, they refer to them."
So, how important is a certification? CRN asked a vendor, a training company, a reseller and an IT skills specialist company what they thought.
"Certification is very important," stated Mark Buckley, partner readiness manager at Microsoft. "It's a way for resellers and individuals to show customers that they are skilled and it's a differentiator in the market.
"The value to the individual can be really high, and the ROI for companies with certified staff is good."
Brian Sutton, chief educator at QA Training, takes a slightly different view. "I'm an employer and am less interested in a piece of paper than in a person's ability to do the job," he said.
"It's more of a differentiator in the interview process. That said, there has been a certification upswing, whether it's for vendor certifications or more general certifications from organisations like the British Computer Society."
McCornish added: "Certifications are not very important. As long as the lads can do the job, that's good enough, not just for us, but for the customers too.
"When we do certification courses we get a lot of background knowledge and a deeper understanding of all of the features, but we often find that all that extra information is not that pertinent to our day-to-day business.
"It would be great to have all of our engineers certified but it's just not possible; we'd never have anyone in the office.
"We tend to pick up most of our new business by referral and we have never come across a customer that asked for our certifications; they want to see our track record. In terms of generating business, having a certification, or not, has made no difference at all."
Alex Charles is a director at The Skills Market, the creator of the popular iProfile electronic CV, used by 320,000 UK IT professionals, or about 60 per cent of the UK total.
"Certification is a good way for people just getting on the job ladder to move up quicker, but it all depends on what certification you have," he explained.
"It's very tempting for beginners to get certified but they have to make sure that the rewards are there at the end. The chances are that if you fork out £5,000 for a certification, you are going to be in a minority of those that have it.
"That is good for a beginner but not so useful for someone with a fair bit of experience. Experience is what companies really want. Less than five per cent of recruiters doing searches with us for IT professionals are looking for certifications."
Read all about it
There has been a proliferation of 'paper certifications', which require little or no hands-on testing. These are usually worth little more than the paper they are written on, especially in the current climate.
With good IT people out of work, employers have more choice and are looking at staff with relevant experience. A certificate comes low down their list of priorities.
"The best validation is fully backed-up work experience," said Charles. "There is a move within the industry towards checking out people's references. I'd rather know about those things than have a list of their certifications."
Sutton added: "A certificate is never a guarantee of a good job. These days, you can virtually buy some lower-level certifications. But it is increasingly important that people have hands-on experience.
"There should be strong practical elements built into the training courses. Evidence suggests that IT salaries are flatlining or going backwards. Common sense has returned to the market."
In the end it all comes down to balancing cost and rewards. And the expense of certification, particularly for smaller resellers, is high.
Apart from the training and the exams, the costs of travel, accommodation and time out of the office have to be factored in. Is the burden on the smaller player too great?
"The costs associated with vendor certifications do put an enormous burden on the channel," claimed Sutton. "It takes a significant number of days to keep up with any one vendor's certs, which places a time-wasted cost on resellers that can lead them to cut corners.
"As well as paying for the training, an engineer in training is also an engineer who is not earning, which can mean a loss of up to £500 a day. Smaller companies cannot afford this; it's a worrying scenario."
McCornish added: "Certification is costly, both in terms of hard cash and the engineer's time and schedule.
"If you take it that engineers have to have holidays as well, and combine it with a couple of training courses for certification, I could lose an engineer for two or three months a year. That's 25 per cent of his time that I'm paying for but am unable to use."
Corporate concerns
It is not just the smaller players that have cut back on training. Belt-tightening in the corporate community has hit IT training budgets, as well as IT spending.
QA Training has been on the frontline of this trend and saw its business take big financial hits in the first half of this year.
"It has been tough all round," said Sutton. "Most companies are going through difficult times. Training budgets have been cut along with everything else.
"Right now, I sense a slight release as companies start to plan for future training, but the purse strings are still tight. Those that are spending are doing it on essential qualifications as opposed to 'nice-to-have' ones."
Buckley also recognises that market conditions are difficult, claiming that it is time to do more. "The channel has been very responsive to our certification courses, but organisations are not investing as much in training as in the past," he explained.
"Most training budgets have been cut as companies need the money for other projects. We need to address this and will have to work closer with our channel. Our relationship will be extended with the channel this year; there will be a more flexible approach."
Blended training
And that seems to be the key for future certification. Traditional, classroom-based training is being supported or replaced in part by 'blended' training methods that greatly reduce the time IT staff have to spend out of the office.
Blended training can combine a wide range of methods, including web-based courses, mentoring, virtual classrooms, video-based training via broadband and discussion forums.
McCornish admitted that more flexible training methods could help. "Take online training: it would help if my engineers could do a course piecemeal fashion," he suggested. "For instance, having an engineer that could do the course at work but still have the flexibility to respond to customers would be a big benefit."
Buckley added: "There is a perception that you have to be out of the office to get trained on our products, but it's not true. Online training, for instance, is becoming a lot more popular and businesses now have wider access to cheaper broadband services.
"Many people find it convenient to train in their own time, but going to a training centre and getting hands-on training is the best first step."
Sutton said: "Blended training has been talked about for years but no one has been doing it. Now it's finally here.
"There is a real move to reduce the cost of time away from the office, since companies have thinned out their staff and no longer have the cover for them.
"For example, an MCSA course used to mean 18 days of classroom training. With the blended approach, it is now down to five-and-a-half days. On the first day of that course we had 53 people, far more than for the classroom-only version."
If flexibility is the key to getting companies and resellers back into training, the next trick is knowing which certifications are the ones that will pay off. Read part two of this report next week to find out.
CONTACTS
Four County Services (01963) 363 639
www.4counties.com
Microsoft (0870) 6010 100
www.microsoft.com/uk
QA Training (020) 7656 8484
www.qa.com
The Skills Market (020) 7354 9669
www.theskillsmarket.co.uk