When crises strike, such as the clouds of ash and pumice spewed by the Iceland volcano last month that threw international travel into chaos, Tom Morgan's business blooms.
Passengers were stranded as the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier burst its top grounding flights and filling hotels with stranded travellers. Those who could avoid travel to Europe did so, booking airline losses of about $200 million a day. And Qantas refused to take bookings until the middle of the month.
It's mana from heaven for the likes of Morgan and his rapidly growing Sydney reseller of video conferencing and telepresence networks, eVideo Communications.
He saw similar lifts in business during the 2004 H5N1 Avian Flu crisis and the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Although last month's eruption hasn't had the same impact on the Asia-Pacific as those earlier crises, Morgan says potential customers are coming back and dusting off the video conferencing proposals.
"One of our customers is looking at doing more video conferencing in other parts of the world because they see it as an edge.
"Everyone can see that this technology is something that you need to have as a backup or if someone doesn't want to make the journey," says Morgan.
A Brisbane customer wants to deploy the technology in its offices in Kuala Lumpur, South Africa, Denver, Colorado, in the US and in 10 more sites, Morgan says.
Last month one of Morgan's chief vendors, video conferencing equipment maker LifeSize, granted eVideo its highest accolade: direct partner status (the reseller has a similar status with video conferencing vendor Polycom).
This will allow the reseller to buy at the best price and get the fastest turnaround on customer requests. As a symbol of that relationship, LifeSize Asia-Pacific vice president Simon Claringbold will be on the eVideo stand at this month's Sydney CeBIT trade show to demonstrate the company's latest, yet-to-be-released technology, Morgan says.
A big frustration Morgan faces is convincing customers to treat video conferencing as a strategic investment. He rails that too many CEOs hand the search for a suitable partner to their PAs as if it was "just a fax machine or a phone". He says a senior executive must take point "from day one".
"What's this mental thing that you must get three quotes? If you're buying on price then you need to add a margin to cover your risk. We're not a cheap-price company.
"When we're competing with those who have just got into video conferencing we ask [the customer] what references do they have? And a lot of them have no track record in video conferencing."
"We just got a company out of the you-know-what [because] the people who went in before [from another reseller] didn't have a clue," he says.
He says that many users are slow to appreciate that the reach of video conferencing is as great as that of the phone system.
"They only think of their own company. We say, ‘You know you can put it on your business card and you know your customer and suppliers have them so why aren't you using it?'"
And vendors are slow to spell out the benefits of the technology to the market, he says.
"All the manufacturers around the world have done a poor job of education of how does video conferencing work?
They think it's mysterious and sure there are problems with firewall traversal, gateways, IP networks and integrated phones but that's our job to advise the customer.
"There's a lot of audio-visual guys who say we can do video and then the customer asks for help with their network and they have to call in a third party to advise."
Why eVideo?
Morgan says the prime point of difference between eVideo and most of its competitors is its ability to integrate a system, from the point of buying and provisioning bandwidth to knitting it into the customer's infrastructure and installing the lighting, audio and Crestron control systems in the conference rooms.
The reseller bundles broadband from telcos such as PowerTel (owned by AAPT) and Nextgen Networks for customers who need to bolster their networks against the strain of video conferencing.
"A lot of [customers] already have a relationship [with a carrier] but a lot don't know what's needed for video conferencing," Morgan says.
"A lot say they have ADSL 2 but our guys ask if it's business grade, has low contention, what is its quality of service like and customers don't know. That slows decision-making process because the customer goes back to their carrier and the carrier says they don't know about video.
"Customers don't have time to shop around; they may as well just come to us. Video conferencing is bandwidth-hungry - it really wants that network and you must have experienced, certified video engineers."
The reseller spends $150,000 a year on search-engine optimisation: "Because if you're not at the top [of results] no one will go page two". The brand exposure also help this year as eVideo launches its line of "E" services, including video bridges and managed services.
Morgan's sights for the company he founded in 1998 in his Sutherland Shire home 45-minutes' drive south of Sydney expanded north last month to the growing business hub of South Port on the Gold Coast. He is also about to take office space in Melbourne.
While a staff member scouts for offices in Perth, Morgan considers expanding overseas.
Word of mouth is important for growth, he says, as is following up sales leads. Morgan says sales staff don't get new leads until they exhaust the old ones. Many of the deals that go through eVideo's books were the result of an extra phone call.
"So many sales people never ring the potential customer back," he says. "They leave their quote behind and that's it.
"All our leads are documented and measured; we know where they come from and we follow them up. We would rather have an annoyed customer because we followed up.
"So much business comes our way because they say we're the only people who rang them back."
The reseller spends a lot of time with users and those who support the technology in their customer sites. Especially because some of them, such as the state-government owned Stanwell power plants in far north Queensland, may be out of easy reach.
"When we do training and installations, the trainer gets an eVideo installation pack - booklets, laminated instructions, helpdesk numbers - at each location. If you're not doing that the customer goes, ‘I'm just buying a box'."
Services are becoming more important for eVideo and its expanding network of reseller partners, chiefly audio-visual installers who have customer relationships but don't have the smarts to handle their customers' more challenging network infrastructures, Morgan says.
"We've got various partners around Australia but we don't want fly-by-night guys. We have to be in touch with their customer. Our brand is on that product being sold with our services so we're very choosy when it comes to working with partners.
"[But] we're not a distributor; more of a ‘quality organisation' that finds out what the customer wants."
The reseller
Name
eVideo Communications
Web www.evideocomm.com
Founded
1998
Founder
Tom Morgan
Work Telepresence, video conferencing networks
Offices
Sydney,
Gold Coast,
(Melbourne, Perth late 2010)
Staff 18
Partners LifeSize, Polycom, Crestron, PowerTel, NextGen
What's behind eVideo's growth?
Crises: Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, terrorism and the like discourage travel but business still needs to be done.
Green: Organisations want to cut their discretionary travel for environmental reasons.
Bandwidth: High data speeds at cheap prices introduced video conferencing to more people. The cost of a 384Kbps London call that was $1200 an hour has been slashed.
Cultural: Members of globally distributed teams need to see each other to improve productivity and collaboration.
Social media: People want to move beyond Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to see who is on the other end.
Skype: A technology that introduced the benefits of video conferencing to more than 500 million people but is too limited for many businesses.
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
.png&w=100&c=1&s=0)
