MarketScale Technology

How We Bought and Sold Companies During COVID-19 Without Putting on Pants with David Henderson and Sam Saintonge from XPV Water Partners

When’s the last time you thought about your IT system? It’s likely you have critical applications that need to run with maximum uptime, but if your system isn’t modernized, it may not serve your needs.

Modernizing a system may not be the right decision for everyone, but it’s a choice users of IT systems should consider, especially as technology continues to change.

“When you look at [Scalable Process Architecture, or SPARC], you’ve got to try to hit the pause button a moment and really decide what’s your best bet [moving] forward,” McCay aid. “So, you can modernize where you’re at or migrate off to a different platform. What we see available to customers is a choice of what’s the best [plan]. We can modernize the SPARC and create a simpler path forward for conducting today’s businesses and preparing for tomorrow’s business.”

COVID-19 sent many clients scrambling, especially some of the government clients that the trio of Fujitsu, Oracle and ViON have long been working together to assist.

That history working together and having so many years hands-on with SPARC and similar platforms is something few other groups are able to replicate.

“There is no substitute for experience in doing this. … You can lay out a nice road map and show how those things happen, but to get it done on time, on budget, and at low risk to the customer, experience is the most important thing,” said Bob Netherton, Master Principal Sales Consultant at Oracle.

In this episode of the MarketScale Software and Technology podcast, Stenograph Training Program Manager Cindi Lynch joins host Daniel Litwin for a discussion on how COVID-19 and other factors have asked technology to elevate training across nearly every industry, particularly when the trainees and trainers are forced to engage in remote learning.

Stenograph is the leading provider of writers for stenography, a profession that asks a lot of its members in terms of specialized knowledge. That makes Lynch, who’s spent more than three decades training writers, particularly qualified to provide an overview of how the pandemic and more have forced evolution in training.

“I’m a second-generation trainer. My mom was a trainer before me,” Lynch said. “I was always her guinea pig, and I learned how to train from her. … I’ve seen the hardware change. I’ve seen the operating systems change, and I’ve seen the people change tremendously over time.”

However, Lynch said the methods of training stayed the same for many years, with human trainers heading out to customers to train them in person on the software and more. This transitioned into in-person classes, then, a dozen or so years ago, to forms of remote and digital learning.

The search for training efficiencies in terms of time and cost are made more complicated by the fact that many stenographers need specialized, particular knowledge.

Now, further accelerated by COVID-19, training options in stenography and elsewhere have been forced to evolve further.

“When COVID hit, we were already providing a combination of in-person and remote training,” Lynch said. “Suddenly, we had to offer training not only on our own products, but also on web-conferencing applications. … We had to learn how their jobs were evolving, as well as how our own were evolving.

“All in-person conferences ended. … So, what we had to do was participate in virtual conferences and create our own series of webinars.”

Companies that want a seamless look for their lobby video communication screens have begun turning more and more to LED applications. Ryan Wilhelm, Regional Sales Manager for Unilumin, and Frank Milesky, Southeast Area Director for Cenero, joined The Direct View to talk more about the LED solutions taking place in today's corporate lobbies.

“Four to six years ago, we started to see a trend where LED started to take over,” Wilhelm said. “Because they could customize these lobbies to make them more current, but they could also make them as long as they wanted, as high as they wanted, and the content is infinite.”

The experience for visitors to these lobbies is increasing with the interactive nature of today’s LED technology.

“The real estate in lobbies began to be re-imagined with the increase of flexibility and customization with LED,” Milesky said. “We’ve seen less custom artwork, fewer fountains and fewer TVs and more of these custom pieces of LED art.”

Milesky stressed the importance of getting LED solution ideas into the hands of the people designing these spaces, so that the solutions work in harmony with the company's goals and costs involved are understood and budgeted.

“As you’re working with a building team early on in the stages, you can talk at a square foot level of what an LED solution might cost in a good, better, best scenario,” Milesky said.

Ryan Wilhelm, Regional Sales Manager at Unilumin, offered a preview of exciting things to come. He helped host Tyler Kern kick off the first episode of The Direct View Podcast.

“This podcast is going to be extremely educational,” Wilhelm said. “LED is not just a transactional sale anymore. These are completely customized, designed and engineered solutions for a multitude of settings.”

Through this podcast, audiences will learn the many uses and applications of today's LED technology.

What excites Wilhelm most about the Direct View podcast?

“That people are going to have the opportunity to learn different aspects of this business,” Wilhelm said.

He looks forward to taking deep dives into LED projects and discussing facets such as financing and interactivity.

“I think this podcast can help AV integrators when designing these projects and the end-user, as well,” he said.

A tour of the facilities to entice the top recruit used to be the purview of college basketball and football, but universities are increasingly using esports to woo students to their campus.

It’s just the latest sign of an industry that is growing rapidly, something that even the unprecedented situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been able to slow down thanks to the built-in ability to operate remotely.

But the esports arenas being built across the country aren’t going to sit vacant forever. As the COVID-19 pandemic draws to a close, the demand for esports events won’t dip, and crowds will once again come see their favorite Fortnite, League of Legends or Overwatch players in person.

Not only do venues need a beautiful screen to display the action, said Jeff Volk, Vice President of Alpha Video, they also can use the same technology to give attendees a full experience and maximize sponsor exposure.

“As we shift back into using venues and facilities, a lot of our clients are looking to install large-format video screens to be able to host watch parties and various different marketing and promotional events that have their sponsors, their team and their brand,” Volk said.

Some universities, esports arenas and other venues may look at projection options rather than going with LED, but Miles Dean, Business Development Manager, Sports & Entertainment at Unilumin USA, said that may be a shortsighted approach.

“That cost is going to be very comparable to the projected on a five-year term, and, with LED, you have much more flexibility, a large color gamut, greyscale, white scale, blacks, all solid colors,” Dean said. “That’s what’s key and important, because a lot of these organizations, when they want a display, they want it to look nice.

“They want Coke red to look red, they want Facebook blue to look Facebook blue. That’s the important thing – LED can give you that large color gamut as a performance standard.”

With esports looking to be in it for the long haul, a decision made with a stronger vision in mind might be the way for institutions to brighten their futures.

Shaun Roos, Western Regional Sales Manager, Unilumin USA, dropped by the Direct View podcast to share his insider knowledge on various considerations when determining LED needs and requirements.

As someone who works on the manufacturer’s side of the AV industry, a significant part of Roos’s job is educating the client, whether it’s a dealer, integrator, end-user, or consultant, and providing them with all of the information necessary to make a sound decision.

And that includes helping them understand all of the various terms and jargon that surround LED solutions.

“When considering purchasing direct-view LED, pricing seems to be on the forefront of everyone’s mind,” Roos said. “But I urge people not to make that their sole reason for purchase. When buying LED, you need to look at many things. What type of warranty does the LED manufacturer provide, and how long does it go for?”

And what type of product support does a manufacturer provide? Amid a pandemic, knowing the onsite support capabilities is of vital importance.

How close is someone going to need to view the LED display? Will it be placed indoors or outdoors? These are considerations that matter in terms of what type of LED needs to be purchased, and it is why companies such as Unilumin provide experts like Roos to assist clients with their purchasing decisions.

Another factor that Roos said businesses need to consider but don’t always think about as the first thing when making LED purchases is tariffs. Currently, Unilumin does not incur any duties on their LEDs, but some manufactures may.

With all the LED variables at play, Roos said, “knowing what someone is looking for, the vision of their application, and communicating that information to us [is] going to help us educate the client on the options we can provide to them.”

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