User Forum

Visix 2009 Expression Awards Winners Announced

Debbie — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:54:00 GMT

We've chosen our winners for this year's awards. Let me tell you...it was a difficult task. We had almost 200 samples of beautiful content to choose from. Thanks again to everyone who entered.

See the winners at: http://www.visix.com/expressionawards09.html

2009 Expression Awards Finalists Announced

Debbie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:44:00 GMT

We had almost 200 entries this year and the judging was tough, but we've chosen our finalists for the 2009 Expression Awards.

Finalists and honorable mentions for the following categories can be seen at http://www.visix.com/expressionawards09.html

Best Visual Communications Campaign
Best Composite Layout
Best Original Motion Content
Best Original Still Bulletin
Best Remix Motion Content
Best Remix Still Bulletin

You can see also samples of the awards entries in our Expression Awards 2009 photo gallery, here on the forum.

Stay tuned for the winners - to be announced on Tuesday, September 8.

Thanks to everyone who entered this year's awards!

We're Hiring Again

Sean Matthews — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:21:00 GMT

We just hired a Vice President of Product Development with years of experience at Coca Cola, Turner Broadcasting and ADP. This is in addition to the three people we hired in the first quarter of the year. We have a solid backlog, a growing sales pipeline and a ton of opportunities for talented people.

We are looking for field sales representatives to cover areas West of the Mississippi and a sales manager. A little later in the year we will be looking to place an additional developer on our team and a international business representative.

If you know a talented individual looking for an opportunity, please send them my direction.

2009 Expression Awards Judging is Underway!

Debbie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:59:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who entered this year's awards contest. I've been overwhelmed by both the number and quality of the entries. We have almost 200 examples of the terrific content that our customers are using to communicate their messages and ideas - layouts, campaigns, stills, flash and videos.

We will announce the finalists and winners in each category in early September. Stay tuned to http://www.visix.com/expressionawards.html for details and links to the winning content samples.

Solid First Half Fiscal Performance

Sean Matthews — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:21:00 GMT

Visix hit 96% of its' 2009 sales growth objective in the first half of the year. I have to believe that is not bad considering the macro economic conditions. The second half of the year is historically more productive for Visix. We have a strong sales forecast and I look forward to another record year.

Thank you to all of our loyal customers for continuing to support our products and making recommendations in the market.

New Visual Communications Reference Guide

Sean Matthews — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:40:00 GMT

We are about to release our new visual communications reference guide. It's at the print shop and should be delivered in several weeks. Some of you might complain that this 100 page project is in print instead of on the web, but the client consensus was that it should be in print. It’s an overview of technology considerations, implementation planning and has lots of great content and creation tips. It’s not specific to AxisTV, but is more of an overall introduction to how you can think about and use your visual communications system for maximum impact.

It doesn't matter if you are using our solution or something from someone else. We have been at this for 10 years and identified themes common to the most successful deployments of visual communications technologies like ours.

If you want to learn more about any of the topics noted below, please reach out to someone on our staff and get a copy of our new publication.

1. Alert communications

2. How this technology might impact human behavior and your "green" initiatives

3. Modifying corporate culture to impact the bottom line

4. Producing effective visual communications policies

5. Content and design ideas

6. Event schedule management

Some early readers had this to say...

"The content creation parts were good-looking and engaging," Michael Bialas, Anadarko Petroleum

"If I read this as a newcomer to digital signage, I would want to read it all," Marvin Marozas, Coastal Carolina University

Boise State - Using our Technologies Effectively

Sean Matthews — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:07:00 GMT

I just wanted to recognize the work of the ILCTV team at Boise State University and especially Drew Ash, Academic Technologies, for the work they have done to facilitate the adoption of our visual communications platform in their environment. This is the type of deployment that we all enjoy. The really cool thing about this deployment is that it has the ability to affect human behavior. There is a great collaborative effort here between Boise State, Visix and AATronics, the integrator.

Let me know what you think.

http://sites.google.com/a/boisestate.edu/ilctv/links

Visix and VBrick Partner

Sean Matthews — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:29:00 GMT

Today we announced a new partnership with VBrick. The two firms have jointly created a best-of-breed solution that allows end-users to increase the value of the typical digital signage implementation and extend the reach of digital signage delivery. Under this new collaboration, organizations can utilize VBrick video appliances and video-on-demand servers, combined with Visix Channel players, to easily configure and display dynamic content to digital signage displays, as well as PCs, Macs, set top boxes, and mobile devices.

Bundling Vbrick's streaming technologies with our content management tools provides communicators with an extremely powerful message delivery platform. Communicators can further improve the effectiveness of alert communications, reduce the environmental impact of printing and distributing traditional communications and further affect human behavior to improve productivity or reduce energy consumption by delivering data visualization illustrating consumption in the building where they work.

You will find the complete release here.

Our passion is helping people communicate better.

What do you think about the AxisTV manual?

Debbie — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:04:00 GMT

We've had some recent comments from folks about our AxisTV Comprehensive Manual that leave me wanting to know more.

Some folks seem to love it, while others think it is lacking. One client specifically asked for step-by-step instructions with screen captures for basic tasks like creating bulletins and importing media - not realizing that there is a full user guide included with just such material in it. If you can't find what you need, then we need to consider how we're organizing our information.

We want to be sure that our manual is practical and useful, and I'd welcome your suggestions on how we can improve it. Should we split it up into two books - technical manual and user guide? Should we keep it whole, but trim down some of the bulk? Or, do we need to add more to it to make it more useful when implementing, using and maintaining your system?

We also want feedback on how we're delivering the manual. We currently deliver one printed manual with the system, and then post the most recent version on this forum as we make updates. Does the PDF work for you? Would you prefer an online version instead? These are the things we'd like you to tell us so we can continue to improve our materials.

I appreciate your comments.

We're Hiring

Sean Matthews — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:07:00 GMT

We continue to hire talented people.

We have two open positions - an expansion position on the help desk and a new position as a usability and integration analyst. You can find details about the two positions out on the web and job posting boards.

We met our Q1 percentage growth expectations and are bullish on the next two quarters. Though we have demonstrated double-digit annual growth for the past four years, we projected single-digit targets for 2009 in Q4 of last year. There are a number of internal and external reasons for the projection, but it should be noted that this is part of our longer term business forecast.

We have already been notified that we are an Inc. 5000 finalist and hope to be one of a few companies to receive "three-peat" recognition.

Taking Green a Little Further

Sean Matthews — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:09:00 GMT

We have been considering a migration to recycled paper for all of our marketing collateral. The visual downside to the recycled paper is that glossy paper is not available. All of our current marketing materials are printed on glossy paper. Will you get less out of our material if it is not glossy? I would like to get rid of all the printed materials, but people keep demanding them. We handed out more than 1000 product catalogs in the first quarter of this year.

We fully support a green philosophy at Visix. We contribute $5.00 to carbonfund.org for every PC we ship. The theory is that PCs have an adverse impact on the environment at the time of disposal. Unfortunately, software requires PCs or PC like devices. They all damage the environment and we want to at least help mitigate the impact. We support recycling within our operations. We support Extron device control solutions within our applications and encourage users to turn off digital signage displays when not in use.

A recent UK study found that when compared to printed posters, digital signs reduce carbon consumption by more than 7%. We believe that electronic desktop delivery can reduce the consumption by even more.

So, let me know what you think. Can we still deliver effective marketing materials on recycled paper without the gloss?

Hiring Another Network Administrator for Helpdesk

Sean Matthews — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:10:00 GMT

We are actively searching for another Network Administrator to expand our helpdesk. We contiune to improve our product and service offering while expanding our business. This is an Atlanta (Norcross) based position. If you know someone who might be interested, please direct them to Tonya Pritt at tpritt@visix.com.

Visix has a solid first quarter

Sean Matthews — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:10:00 GMT

Despite the challenging economic indicators, Visix produced a solid first quarter. With still another day to go in the month of March, we are 98% of our inbound target; backlog covers the revenue side of the equation. This target includes Q1 growth on top of our record setting year in 2008. I am confident that as we continue to execute our business plan, we will hit our 2009 growth objectives.

On the development side of the business we delivered our remote control API and web page playback tool. The API and associated SDK will enable third parties to control modes of operation within our application. As an example, a third party might use a mass notification, text messaging application to trigger our players into an alert notification mode. The web page playback tools enable users to point to and playback web pages, regardless of content. This technique is effective in data visualization applications.

Our client services team delivered more web-based (WebEx) training sessions in the first quarter than in any other quarter in history. We have proven that there is a correlation between rapid adoption and quality training. We do not buy into the model that it's so simple to use that it requires no training. Our product is simple to use, but virtually nobody has any real experience in creating effective campaigns, image retention avoidance and the nuances of effective screen design. Training is effective.

Internationally, we shipped one of our business development consultants off to Australia for the next three weeks. We have had a presence there since early 2006. We are optimistic we can incrementally grow our business in other parts of the world while we continue to saturate North America.

New Products in Two Weeks

Sean Matthews — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Within the next two weeks we will release a couple of new offerings that will have a very positive effect on our communications solution. The first is a fully embedded channel player based on Microsoft’s XPe (embedded) operating system. The embedded OS offers a number of security and reliability benefits unmatched by consumer operating systems. The most notable security advantages are related to reduced network vulnerability and the prevention of the installation of rogue applications or domain policies that can interrupt channel player operations.

The second is a remote control API. It is through a publically available API that third parties can trigger our applications to respond to external commands. This feature opens up a variety of opportunities for current users and others looking to further unify communications infrastructure. One obvious use is in alert notification situations. Interested parties could trigger our software to change modes of operation to convey important information during a temporary crisis and then return to a normal digital signage operation.

After this, our next generally available release is slated for June 2009. In the interim there will be several new builds.

I am Committing Myself to Blogging

Sean Matthews — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:12:00 GMT

At the urging of our Director of Marketing Communications, I started reading Wikinomics on a flight to Vegas. I’m out here for the Digital Signage Expo. In any case, it’s a good read. I’m 100 pages in on a updated 2008 edition printed in Great Britain. If you don’t know, Debbie, our MarCom person lives in the Czech Republic.

It is clear that I am behind the times when it comes to blogging. From this point forward, I will be here once a week, maybe more if I have something relevant to post. By relevant, I mean something that might impact our business, our channel partners, vendors, clients and or competitors.

Financially, we had a solid January. We did not meet our growth targets, but we were 13% ahead of our performance for the same period last year. February doesn’t look as good, but it is always a strange month for us historically. I have looked at data going back 12 years and February is always the poorest producing month of the year. Some years it has produced 50% less than the proceeding and subsequent months.

We continue to execute our 2009 strategic business plan as we expected. 2008 was a record year for Visix. Our three year growth has been 141%.

In January we added three new employees – two software developers and one senior software support engineer. We also delivered our 1000^th visual communications (digital signage) system. The system was deployed by a channel partner with support from our staff. You will see the full details in a press release pending approval. The exciting thing for me is that of the 1000 systems, more than 40% have been delivered in the past 24 months.

Oh, we also received an award in February from Rave ProAV publications for the "Best Digital Signage" product. Thanks everyone!

I’ll keep you posted with what happens at the show.

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.