Nice North America is in the midst of a strategic transformation under CEO Mohamed Ali Vaid, who joined the company earlier this year with a clear mandate: strengthen dealer relationships, simplify brand alignment, and deliver a more unified ecosystem across its expansive portfolio. In this conversation with CE Pro, Vaid discusses the company’s renewed focus on training and dealer support, how the ELAN OS platform fits into Nice’s broader integration strategy, and why he believes competition, innovation, and trust will define the company’s next phase of growth in the North American market.
CE Pro: It seems like Nice is going through a kind of transformation—not quite a rebrand, but a shift in strategy. You’re now more aggressively targeting the North American channel. Is that a concerted effort?
Mohamed Vaid: Yeah, no, absolutely, it is a concerted effort. Nice, our parent company, has put together a very impressive collection of brands that, when you put them together, the ability to create a seamless experience—not just for the end customer, but all of your integrator partners, making it easier to integrate these great brands.
That is a very intentional effort and intentional strategy to bring the best-in-breed products together in a way that makes it easier for our channel partners. The entire focus is going to be on channel partners. How do we help grow our channel partners and increase the number of channel partners? Our success will only come when our channels are successful, and one of the ways they can be successful is if we make their jobs easier by putting together and integrating seamlessly products that on their own are best in class but when you put them together create an unbeatable offering.
CE Pro: So you’re keeping those product identities but bringing them under the Nice umbrella?
Vaid: Absolutely. Product identities will still stay there, but the brand umbrella will be Nice.
CE Pro: Can you talk more about that unified ecosystem as a differentiator for integrators who prefer to mix and match solutions?
Vaid: The integrators will still have that choice. We’re not going to limit that or lock that out. That is the strength of our ELAN product—its ability to customize and integrate with a vast majority of products out there. So we’re not taking that away.
But what we’re trying to do is, if their customer’s situation calls for using a product that is within our brand of products, their experience in customizing, installing, and delivering a superior customer experience will be far easier and far better. So there will be incentive for them to do that, but we’re certainly not going to take away or make it any harder for our partners to customize their projects in any way.
CE Pro: How do you market that as a differentiator in such a competitive market?
Vaid: First of all, having a wide array of products that integrate very seamlessly in itself is a value proposition because we know how difficult, frustrating, and costly it can be trying to integrate different products and having technical issues doing that. We’ve heard that from our partners very clearly. So this strategy is based on the feedback that we’re getting from our partners. Having a broad array of products covering all the different parts that our partners integrate will give us some competitive advantage in the marketplace.
CE Pro: Talk about what you’re doing in terms of training, education, and dealer support beyond trade shows like CEDIA.
Vaid: CEDIA is an important event. Obviously, it’s a catalyst, though it’s not an end in itself. I’ve been in my role three months now, and as I reach out to our partners, our dealers, and installers to learn what their pain points are, training comes up very frequently. So that’s something that we’re going to focus on a lot going forward. We already have some really good training programs, whether that’s in-person programs, or we go to locations for our large dealers, or offering online webinars or personalized trainings.
We do that anyway, but we’re hearing some specific needs out there, so we’re going to bolster that training—especially on the in-person side, because we find that more effective. As people are able to play with the products themselves and learn by touching and feeling them, that’s a stickier way of learning.
CE Pro: What do you like about this industry? You’re relatively new to this niche market.
Vaid: I’m new to Nice, but I’ve been in parts of this industry in the past. I’ve been with security in the past, I’ve been with automation on the industrial side. So I’ve been part of these technologies, either adjacent or within a part of this in the past. What attracts me to this industry is the ability to bring it all together in a package that works very seamlessly and gives a superior customer experience. That’s what attracts me.
CE Pro: There are quite a few players in the control and automation market. How do you plan to compete with those folks?
Vaid: Having a lot of competitors out there is actually an exciting thing for me personally because competition brings the best out of everyone. The fact that there are entrenched players in here offers us an opportunity to do something out of the box, think outside the box, and really get closer to our installers and the end customer to bring not just products but solutions to market that are faster to bring or more flexible to react to the marketplace. Having a lot of competition in the marketplace—I look at that as healthy. It keeps us on our toes, pushes us outside of our comfort zone, and that’s where innovation happens.
CE Pro: Can you clarify the current state of ELAN OS? There’s been some confusion over the branding.
Vaid: We’re just trying to simplify it. Brands like ELAN have a long history, they’ve got heritage, they’ve got recognition, and we don’t want to walk away from that. But we want to also build the ecosystem under the umbrella brand of Nice so we can leverage what the product brands bring while signaling to the market that you can integrate all of these legacy brands in a very seamless way under the Nice name.
CE Pro: What’s your vision for winning more dealers across North America?
Vaid: We want to become their partner of choice by being dependable for them. Nice has to be a brand they can trust and know that when we say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do that and deliver consistently without surprises. We intend to become a company that’s easy to do business with and helps them grow their businesses—whether it’s from their marketing or pre-sales efforts, or through their technical support as they’re installing, or post-installation. Whatever stage of the lifecycle their customers are in, we want to be there to support them in a way that makes it easy and reliable to do business with us.
CE Pro: What are the standout new products on the CEDIA show floor this year?
Vaid: We’ve got quite a few new things that we’re introducing. Obviously, the ELAN OS 9 is something that we’ll be talking about a lot. We’re introducing a whole bunch of new cameras with native capabilities that we’re very excited about sharing.
We’re introducing a brand-new range of sunshades that are fully integrated with motors that Nice produces. Nice is the second-largest manufacturer of sunshade motors in the world, so we’re going to leverage that global capability. We’re also showing more capabilities around the Nice voice assistant, which is a really big differentiator because it’s native in the system. Privacy is a huge thing, and that’s what our system offers.
CE Pro: That’s interesting—especially with privacy concerns around cloud-based assistants.
Vaid: Exactly. That information does not go anywhere else. Privacy is obviously a big concern, and that’s why we made the decision not to go in that direction and take a different route.
CE Pro: Anything else you’d like CE Pro readers to know?
Vaid: We’re listening. Everything we’re doing—from product strategy to training—is based on feedback from our partners. Our goal is to make their lives easier and help them deliver the best experience possible to their clients.
