User Forum

Current Corporate Performance

Sean Matthews — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:15:00 GMT

We performed well in the first six months of 2008.Even though we are privately held, I have no problem disclosing some of our results. Below you will find a few key comparisons between Q2 ’07 and Q2 ’08 and comments where applicable.

Key financial results:

·         Revenues up by 44%
·         Inbound orders up by 22%
·         Net income was down, but still positive. As part of our five year plan, 2008 is dedicated to the addition of new developers and technical personnel. These talented people are expensive, but important investments. Additionally, we spent approximately $60,000 more on our tradeshow presence at Infocomm this year compared to the previous year.
·         DSO (Receivables) down by 26%
·         COGS are up by 9%. I contribute this to the overall rising cost of PCs associated with our products. These devices are affected by broader economic influences.

Key Volume Indicators:

·         Player unit volume up by more than 60%
·         Server unit volume up by 22%. We are increasing the ratio of players to servers (larger deployments).
·         Training sessions delivered up by 148%. This is a concerted effort to improve the quality and quantity of training we deliver.
·         Implementations up by 92%. There is a direct correlation between the number of servers we ship and the number of implementations we support. Even though more than 96% of our systems are sold through a channel, an overwhelming number of partners rely on Visix to provide implementation services. The reliance stems from general networking complexities.

Technical Support Indicators:

·         Total number of support tickets handled up by 38%. Again, there is a correlation between the number of systems we deploy and the number of trouble tickets we handle.
·         Number of tickets resolved in less than 24 hours is up by more than 41%. We continue to refine our response processes and improve the time to resolution.
·         Average WebEx support session is down by 33%. This reinforces the previous statement that we are both improving our time to resolution and improving the quality of our software releases.

We will continue our organic growth at these same rates through 2010 when we will evaluate alternative growth strategies.

I will keep you posted.

What are they talking about?

Sean Matthews — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:03:00 GMT

I continue to read claims by our competitors regarding the size of their organizations, market share, number of deployments and more. Don't believe everything you read. Almost none of these claims can be backed with any level of factual support.

Here are some recent claims:

Number One: Posted in the "About Scala" section of a recent (4/30/2008) press release Scala states, "Founded in 1987, Scala pioneered the Digital Signage industry and today remains the world's largest provider of software for creating digital signage networks, driving more screens than all competitors combined." They appear to find support in this claim by pointing to a Frost and Sullivan report that was paraphrased in a 1/16/2008 press release staing that "Scala continues to solidify its position as the global leader in the digital signage industry with the recent market report "World Digital Signage Markets" by leading research firm Frost & Sullivan, finding that Scala commands more than 35% of the worldwide Digital Signage software market."

How much does it cost to commission Frost & Sullivan to conduct research stating that you command 35% of a worldwide market? Does Frost & Sullivan know that Scala reported it's 2006 sales revenues to Inc. Magazine at just over $10 million? That logic would infer that the entire digital signage software market in 2006 was approximately $29 million. In the same year, the only other digital signage company to be recognized by Inc. Magazine, Visix, reported $3.7 million in revenues. This leaves only $25.3 million for the rest of the industry. In 2007, Visix reported $4.6 million to Scala's $14+ million. In 2008, Visix is projecting $6.0 million. Quit getting sucked into the hype.

I could talk all day long about the 150+ companies listed as software providers on digitalsignageuniverse.com, but it is a useless exercise since more than 95% are privately held. The one's that are public are wrapped in companies where digital signage is not the priority - AMX, Cisco, Planar and Thompson are great examples. Their digital signage revenues are pennies on the dollar. The one pure public digital signage company that I can note is Wireless Ronin who posted $1.6 million in revenues in Q2 and $5 million in losses.

Yes, the digital signage space is a growing market, but I would like to see a reduction in the overly-hyped conversations associated with the market. I think the pointless chest pounding is misleading and adversely impacts prospective buyers, users, integrators and the public at large. I welcome an objective conversation.

Video Tutorials

EKelly — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

On behalf of our entire training staff, I am delighted to inform you that with the launch of the new Visix on-line community, we are providing a variety of new training tools and resources to better educate AxisTV users.

New Training Video Series - AxisTV v.6.6

Software Trainer Brooke Martin provides users with a visual "show and tell" with the premiere of our AxisTV v.6.6 video training series. Find out how to use AxisTV's most popular and commonly utilized web tools during these brief, easy-to-follow instructional videos. In only a matter of minutes, users can learn how to create content blocks, configure weather, import PowerPoint® presentations, upload videos, and much more. The AxisTV v6.6 video tutorials can be loacted at http://forums.visix.com/files/folders/training/default.aspx. If you recently deployed or upgraded AxisTV - stay tuned! Our new AxisTV v.7.0 video training series is coming soon!

The launch of the Visix user forum provides AxisTV users with the opportunity to expand their knowledge of Visix, specifically our products and our people. I am proud to be a part of the Visix experience, and I hope that each of you, our valued customers, partners, and colleagues, find this new resource both beneficial and informative. As always, your feedback is encouraged and appreciated. Please feel free to contact me directly and tell us how we can further enhance your AxisTV user experience.

All the best,

Ellyce Kelly

Client Services – New Additions

tpritt — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:28:00 GMT

In recent months, I am pleased to announce that 4 new associates have joined the rapidly growing Client Services Group. Javier Ayala, Alexandria Farar, and James Mize have been a valuable addition to our helpdesk and implementation team. We also welcome Ellyce Kelly, as the newest addition to the training team. Together, our goal is to provide superior service and technical support for customers, resellers, and technology partners. The addition of personnel has enabled Client Services to extend operating hours to better support our customers in other time zones. The new hours are 8:30AM to 7:30PM EST Monday through Thursday, and 8:30AM to 5:30PM EST on Friday. We have also recently completed construction on our new Network Operations Center (NOC). The six-station NOC is equipped with more than 20 displays, servers, workstations, signal routing technologies, and real-time call management and diagnostic applications. This facility addition is designed to provide an active, collaborative environment where Client Services staff are better able to monitor, troubleshoot, and quickly service Visix client calls. The NOC also houses the company’s high-end dynamic visual messaging system, AxisTV Enterprise, which delivers corporate communications to NOC staff, as well as remote and Atlanta-based personnel.

The Challenge of Growth

Sean Matthews — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Visix grew by 136% over the past three years. Though the growth is exciting, it brings a litany of challenges.

Volume is the most obvious. We experienced double digit growth in the number of systems shipped and triple digit growth in the volume of services delivered. Delivering both the products and services over the past 12 months was relatively manageable, but supporting the deployments after the fact has been much more challenging. We took all the traditional steps like implementing new processes, deploying new technologies and refining our offering. In the end, however, it boiled down to adding people.

We added 11 people in the second half of the year with nearly 50% going to support the help desk. Our Channel Player to Server ratio doubled when compared to the previous year and we underestimated the people it would take to support the ratio shift. Compounding our challenge were the continual improvements in network security making it more difficult to support Web applications, proxy access and updates.

Today, every one of our help desk representatives has four to six months of AxisTV time and experience. As a result, we are looking forward to a more rewarding customer service year. We expect to grow and train our staff to meet the expanding demand for our software around the world.

While we will continue to improve the service and support experience, 2008 is the year of development at Visix. We are making notable investments in software developers, UX developers and new products to propel our offering to the next level of functionality and sophistication. We are looking forward to another solid year of growth performance and improvements across the board.

AxisTV 7.0 Upcoming Builds

Steve — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:54:00 GMT

We’re currently working on two key enhancements for AxisTV: Playback Appliances and Device Control.

Playback Appliances are devices that can play a subset of the content that an AxisTV Channel Player can play. They run embedded Operating Systems and do not appear as PCs on the network. They offer fewer features than Channel Players but are easier to deploy and manage.

Device Control is becoming a more popular option so we’re going to enhance it and simplify the workflows for the most common tasks. All key device control scenarios will be examined and improved.

AxisTV 7.0 Build 9 (7.0.9) is Released

Steve — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:51:00 GMT

We're very excited about the latest build of AxisTV 7.0. It includes a frequently requested feature that we are proud to unveil: the AxisTV Display Layout Editor, a WYSIWYG editor that supports drag and drop editing of display layouts used by Channel Players.

The Display Layout Editor can be run from within the AxisTV Web UX, as a “SmartClient”, or can be downloaded and installed onto your PC.

The Display Layout Editor fosters re-use of popular layouts by making it easy to copy layouts to one or more Channel Players or Channel Player Groups.

All of the Web UX pages that reference layouts have been updated to show thumbnails of the layouts as well as dramatically improve the workflow through each task: manipulate hardware, groups, layouts and layout schedules.

How can we inspire you?

Debbie — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:09:00 GMT

As you may know, Visix recently launched a new annual awards contest - the Expression Awards. The purpose of the awards is to create a program for content sharing and recognition for our AxisTV users, whether they are creative contributors or administrators. The winners will be announced on February 29, 2008, and we're really excited about the response we've gotten so far.

Along with the Expression Awards, this User Forum is built around that same initiative to engage our users beyond the technical operation of our products. We want to create a collaborative customer body who can turn to each other for inspiration and problem-solving, and we want you to experience more from Visix than just buying a box or a system. We want to encourage creative communications through content sharing, skills training, design tips and technical articles.

We're evaluating other opportunities for expanding your customer experience, such as client-hosted webinars and a Visix User Conference with seminars and workshops, but we'd like to get a feel for what's valuable to you first, using this forum.

Your constructive feedback is essential to this initiative. Let us know how we can better serve our relationship beyond product features and tech support. How can we engage and inspire you to benefit your audiences and your Visix experience?

Debbie Wilson-DeWitt
Marketing Communications Manager
Visix, Inc.