Harman has announced the appointment of Ramesh Jayaraman as vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific. He will report directly to Bryan Bradley and Kevin Morrison, senior vice presidents of Harman Professional Solutions for entertainment and enterprise, respectively.
In his new role Jayaraman will be tasked with leveraging the strength of Harman’s brands to drive growth throughout the region. He will lead teams across Harman offices in Singapore, Japan, Korea and Australia as well as work together with channel partners in Asia Pacific.
In addition to the appointment, Harman has also established a customer experience centre in Singapore. The site is expected to give users and prospective customers a chance to have a hands on experience with products from JBL, Crown, Soundcraft, Studer, AKG, Martin, AMX, BSS, dbx, Lexicon, and more.
The product demonstrations at the experience centre were organised according to applications. Jayaraman said: “Singapore will serve as the main hub for Harman in Asia and the remaining channels will be the spokes for our presence in Asia Pacific. At the experience centre customers can visualise how Harman products can function in tandem and serve in their spaces.â€
A notable product demonstration at the experience centre was for the hospitality sector. This comprised of AMX processors and panels, multiple different JBL speakers, Crown amplifiers and Lexicon units. Users could change the output speakers at the demo to see how the sound profile is altered.
Networked AV, a hot topic in the industry, was also addressed with a range of encoders and decoders being demonstrated at the location.
Jayaram said regarding the drive behind the experience centre: "Everything is 'connected' and this is changing how customers are looking at products. End-users are looking for simple, integrated solutions. At the experience centre we can show the whole range of products we have at Harman and also show how they all work together. Previously we would fly customers to our factories and other locations to demo products. Now we can bring them here."