Why LG Australia wants to go deeper in the solution provider space

The Australian arm of the display company has partnered with several channel businesses, including, Crestron Electronics.

LG Electronics Australia known for its home entertainment offerings, has worked in the B2B for decades, but now wants to go deeper into space and become a pseudo-solution provider.

The tech giant partners with several channel-based companies to implement their tech, including automation AV company, Crestron Electronics.

Chris Wilson, head of vertical sales, business solutions division, LG Electronics Australia works with his team to cover different markets from education, government and hospitality to provide large format display or endpoint solutions.

Speaking to CRN Australia, Wilson explained that LG has been on this solution provider journey for the past 24 months.

“We've got a number of partners that are already delivering both our organisation solutions,” he said.

During that time, LG has been doing projects for brands like GIO Stadium on an ad hoc basis, but now they want to go to the mass market.

“We’ve produced on ad hoc solutions, but now we want to go mass market and then promote it, so we can get more of a drive in that sense, but it's more ad hoc,” he said.

Wilson said he wants to move away from silo, individual hardware options and to work with more partners like Crestron.

Commenting on the partnership with Crestron Electronics, Wilson said, “It is a very important partnership on how we get that message to move singly away from LG as a display vendor to LG as a solutions provider.”

Brendan Doyle, strategic account director ANZ, Crestron Electronics said, “Our goal is to always be a good partner for [LG] to enable them to develop solutions and experiences for their customers, and to support them ongoing afterwards.

“We're a market leader, but we're always looking to innovate and provide new solutions and experiences for our end users, who ultimately the ones paying for it.”

LG Electronics is looking to work in all verticals.

"Key ones be workplace technology, corporate and government that all tie into that workplace,” Wilson said.

“Then education as well, Crestron is strong in education, especially around the university space, and we're building momentum in that space as well too.”

Education

In terms of educating the market around LG Electronics being a solution provider, Wilson said it has been “really good” as everyone is familiar with the LG name.

"Everyone we speak to, whether it's C-suite level, they've had that experience already with the brand, so we don't have to spend the first 15 minutes explaining what we do,” he said.

Taking their offerings to enterprise level, Wilson noted they need case studies, which is where partners like Crestron come on board.

“I mentioned GIO Stadium before, but then we pitch to other major corporates we use those technologies that we articulate. We then present to those opportunist customers and show them we can deliver that,” he explained.

In the B2B world, Wilson highlighted that clients want “proof” of their offerings.

“It's very much ‘prove it to me, how have you delivered? I want to know. I want to see it, rather than telling them that we can do it’,” he said.

"That's where we've been able to reinforce and drive that.”

He said these pitches have been successful, “We've got some very strong end users that we can articulate and especially in that discussion with potential customers, we can share information and those real-life opportunities.”

Partnership with Crestron

LG Australia and Crestron have been working together for the past decade with Wilson calling them both “market leaders”.

"Crestron is an automation and enterprise control solution partner and market leader in their field, and we follow the same path as a market leader in the in the commercials and display field,” he said.

Wilson explained how LG Australia and Crestron work together.

“We co-develop and develop those solutions from a from a manufacturing level, from a development level, and then we take that to market together,” he said.

“For example, we'll take a Crestron product, which could be a control background, AV system, technology networking device, then they'll plug that straight into an LG endpoint display.

“We can then provide a seamless experience, whether it's from an integration point of view, or even just day-to-day on how they interact with those displays.”

Doyle added, “There has been some new software development, as the LG has baked into their products, and that's just enabling us to go to market together with a couple of interesting points for the channel, who are going to get some value out of it.”