Industrial Video Production
Omron — IT and OT Convergence Sales Training Video
Read Full Transcript of This Video
Transcript: Omron — IT and OT Convergence Sales Training Video
Hello and welcome.
**Joe Hower, Strategic Account Manager:** My name is Joe Hawey, Strategic Account Manager for the Logistics Industry at Omron Automation Americas. Thanks for joining us on this quick discussion of Information Technology, IT, and Operational Technology, OT, and where they converge.
The goal of this video is to help the sales team understand how to manage the OT and if needed the IT team.
Often times our customers do not fully understand each other's roles, processes, and procedures. Yet to implement a successful application with mobile robots, you will need to navigate both groups.
Understanding if the customer's IT department needs to be involved is paramount. We often find topics at phase one of the sales cycle.
Lately, these questions have been coming in earlier and earlier with the increase in cybersecurity intrusions we've been seeing globally. The most risky time to get IT involved is phase two and three, once project schedules are established and operations are underway.
The two leading factors to IT involvement are simply Wi-Fi and the EM-2100 Fleet Managers form factor. Oftentimes the IT department manages the Wi-Fi configuration at the plant and the mobile robots will increase the load on this infrastructure.
The second trigger for IT involvement is that the EM-2100 is not passively cooled or designed for a rugged environment. It needs installed in a temperature controlled, relatively dust into brief relocation, much like a customer's local computer room or data center.
If you have not caught IT's attention by this point, it's time to ask, "who is responsible for those decisions throughout the project's life cycle?"
In the event you do need to work with IT, let us cover what they are more generally responsible for.
The IT team at your customer is tasked with maintaining enterprise business systems. These are systems critical to running the business. Examples include email and telecom systems, resource planning systems, employee record systems, desktop services, cloud-based tools, and ethernet networking.
Comparatively, the OTT team at your customer is tasked with production, producing the thing that generates revenue for the business. These are often machines or series of machines interconnected and oftentimes running 247 on the shop floor. Some of these machines are even already interconnected with the use of Omron mobile robots.
You will often find other factory automation systems interconnected with these robots and machines like DLCs, HMIs, SCATA, and warehouse management systems.
The OTT environment generally receives production schedules and recipe data from the IT environment. This is because the IT environment has the tools and people to analyze consumer data and build the production strategy for the factory to execute.
This area is the critical intersection for computer, integrated manufacturing, CIM, and more recently the industrial internet of things IIT or as we like to call it industry 4.0.
IT and OTT convergence.
To understand the basic tenence of information security and bring us back to our friends in the IT and OT worlds, we should understand the CIA triad.
The CIA triad is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Confidentiality consists of protecting information of various levels to help the business share information only with intended parties.
Integrity deals with the authenticity of the data. Can we trust the data, and has the message been changed or tampered during transit?
And finally there's availability. This is having the data available to make the decision in real time. IT prioritizes CIA emphasizing security. OTT prioritizes AIC emphasizing speed and uptime.
Both IT and OTT have relatively complex systems to build and maintain. So the teams are often broken into many groups or subteams.
For instance, when dealing with a straightforward plant, floor project like installing a mobile robot to transfer goods between machine A and B, we find ourselves working with the project engineer and the development engineer.
Their goal is to make the changes as stable as possible such that it can be turned over to maintenance or operations.
Likewise, our friends and IT have similar processes and projects, but they may be a little harder to realize as we are often dealing with conceptual ideas that are not easy to walk and point out like on the shop floor.
Enter the Application Architecture Diagram and its importance and communication throughout the project.
This architecture diagram is representing a pretty typical installation based on the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture or PERA. While many customers have a modified version of this, it is helpful to represent where and why things exist in these layers.
These layers effectively combine network capability, vers security, to enable the convergence of IT and OT, thus completing the CIA triad.
Let us quickly review the steps needed to be successful with your IT and OTT arbitration:
First, understand if the project will require IT involvement. Who manages the Wi-Fi infrastructure? Show them a picture of the EM2100. Does its form factor lend to an IT discussion? Ask for a meeting with the IT department to discuss the project plans and confirm if they'll be involved.
Do not be surprised if the wrong people show up or too many people show up. Several meetings may be necessary to find the correct person. Your OTT counterpart may not understand his own businesses IT policies. Find the IT project manager personality that works with your OTT counterpart to help make projects successful.
Finally, ensure communication and understanding between both IT and OTT parties.
Remember, IT will likely not have any robot expertise and may need help with some of the most basic questions. Use this as a training opportunity.
So what happens if you are successful at completing these steps?
All of the dominoes will fall in the right place. The project will execute faster, the risk and stress from late in the game IT involvement will vanish.
Omron will show added value throughout the sales process.
The customer will have better success with mobile robots and our positive customer relationships will increase.
About This Video
This is an internal training video for Omron's sales team — not a customer-facing product demo. Strategic Account Manager Joe Hawey walks through a single, specific problem: when you're selling mobile robots into a manufacturing facility, you'll eventually need to talk to both the OT team (the people running the shop floor) and the IT team (the people managing the enterprise network). Getting that wrong — or getting IT involved too late — kills project timelines. This video is built to prevent that. The structure is precise. Hawey opens with the two triggers that pull IT into a robot deployment: the facility's Wi-Fi infrastructure and the EM-2100 fleet manager's form factor, which requires a temperature-controlled environment like a data center. He walks through the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability), the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture, and a step-by-step checklist for navigating the IT conversation. The close is all outcomes: faster project execution, less risk, stronger customer relationships. That's the discipline of <span class="strong">B2B sales training video production</span> — it doesn't just explain the topic, it gives the audience a tool they can use on Monday.
How do you produce an internal sales training video for a technical B2B audience?
Use a credible subject matter expert, not a narrator. Joe Hawey's effectiveness in this video comes from his title — Strategic Account Manager for Logistics — and his fluency in the specific challenge. He's not reading slides; he's describing a problem he's lived. A training video that leads with 'here's the situation you're going to face and why it matters' holds a sales audience better than one that opens with frameworks. The practical checklist at the end is what makes it usable — not just informative.
What should a B2B sales enablement video include?
A real problem, a structured solution, and a concrete payoff. Omron's IT-OT training video opens with the risk: late IT involvement in a mobile robot deployment causes project delays and stress. It explains why (two specific triggers), gives the sales team tools to recognize when IT needs to be involved, and closes with the outcome: faster projects, less risk, stronger customer relationships. That problem-solution-outcome structure works across any technical sales training topic.
What video format works best for internal technical training videos?
Single-presenter SME format is usually the right call for technical sales training. A subject matter expert — not a voiceover narrator, not an actor — speaking directly to the audience creates credibility and keeps the content grounded in real-world experience. When Joe Hawey says 'the most risky time to get IT involved is phase two and three, once project schedules are established,' a sales rep believes it because Hawey has been in that situation. No narrator can replicate that.
How long should a B2B sales training video be?
Long enough to be complete, short enough to be watched. Most internal training videos fail on one side or the other — either so short they omit important steps, or so long the audience loses focus. Omron's IT-OT training runs about seven minutes and covers a structured set of topics with a checklist close. That length is appropriate when the content is genuinely complex and the audience is motivated to learn. The checklist format helps — it signals to the viewer that the video has a destination, not just information.
