OKI rolls out Academy programme across Middle East region

The OKI Academy aims to enhance the level of professional technical, engineering and support resources available to the company's customers across the Middle East region.

"The OKI Academy is a programme designed to create a critical mass of expertise across the region, building a resource of certified professionals in a range of service centres that offer the highest standards of service and support to our customers," said John Ross, general manager of OKI Printing Solutions Middle East.

The first round of training workshops and events involved OKI's regional partners visiting the company's regional headquarters at Dubai Airport Free Zone, as well as a number of training sessions conducted by OKI specialists traveling around the region. The Academy programme has so far resulted in Qatar Computer Services achieving Gold Service Centre authorization, while the UAE's Utmost Electronics becomes a Silver Service Centre. Jordan's MABCO joins the programme as a Bronze Service Centre. In addition, OKI's partners in Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt have all now acquired OKI Colour Professional certified engineers - the highest level of individual certification achievable under the programme.

"We've moved ahead in a very real way indeed with the Academy programme but we still have more to achieve. Our goal is to now move towards creating a second generation of qualified engineers and moving our partners as quickly as possible to Gold and OCP (Oki Colour Professional) status across the region. The goal is to provide great service for our customers every hour of every day," said Ross.

The way OKI structures its certification programmes is that each partner has to have at least two engineers qualified to one of four standards to qualify the partner to that status: bronze, silver, gold and OCP. Bronze level covers general faulting techniques, Silver covers networked devices and communications, Gold covers colour theory and product support and OCP covers high end advanced colour technologies.