Posts Tagged ‘Big Broadcast Survey’

How Systems Integrators Rank Broadcast Technology Vendors for Reliability

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Top Broadcast Vendor Brands, broadcast technology market research, market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Dec 07 2009

This is the fourth in a series of posts that discusses how a global sample of more than 325 systems integrators (SIs) who participated in the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS)* ranked broadcast technology vendors in a variety of measures. For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post**.

In an era when many broadcasters are shedding technology positions, SIs have become an extremely important part of the technology value chain.  Broadcasters now routinely outsource their project work to SIs, who are called in for their expertise and experience.  Thus the relationship that vendors have with their SI partners is very important to their business. 

Previously I have looked at How Systems Integrators Rank Broadcast Technology Vendors for Great Customer Service; and How Systems Integrators Rank Broadcast Technology Vendors for Innovation; and How Systems Integrators Rank Broadcast Vendors for Quality.  This post looks at how the global sample of systems integrators ranked vendors for reliability.

This is the third time I have written about how broadcast technology vendors have been ranked for reliability.  Previous posts include Reliability Rankings for Broadcast Technology Vendors, which looks at how the overall market ranks vendors for reliability, broken down by geography; and How Broadcasters of Different Sizes Rank Broadcast Technology Vendors for Reliability.

The chart below shows the responses from more than 325 SIs.  It is broken out by geography to show the responses of the global sample of all SIs who participated in the study, as well as the responses of SIs in EMEA and the Americas.  Due to a small sample size, SI rankings for Asia-Pacific have not been included as a separate column.  For the sake of comparison, I have also included in this chart the rankings of all respondents (regardless for organization type, geography etc), and all broadcasters (regardless of size or geography), in the first and second columns respectively.

 

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

 

Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Great Customer Service] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market?

Reliability -- by Systems Integrators

 

As always these findings are extremely interesting.  Here are a few quick observations about this table:

 

* There are 9 vendors on this list (out of 25 studied), the same number as in the innovation rankings.  This makes innovation and reliability the least varied and most concentrated of the metrics in this series of posts about perceptions of systems integrators. 

 

 * The complete list of vendors in this table (in alphabetical order), and how many times they appear is as follows: Evertz (2), EVS (4), Harris (1), Miranda (1), Omneon (2), Snell & Wilcox (5),  Sony (5), Thomson / Grass Valley (3), Utah Scientific (2)

 

* As always, there are some interesting differences in the rankings of vendors by SIs versus the rankings by other organization types such as broadcasters, and even the overall market. 

 

* Out of the 9 vendors in this table, only Snell & Wilcox and Sony made the top 5 list for reliability in all five categories (the overall market, the global sample of all broadcasters, and the three SI categories).

 

* EVS appears four times in this table.  The company made the top 5 list for reliability for all categories except systems integrators in the Americas.

 

* Utah Scientific and Omneon each appear twice in this table – in the Global SI and EMEA SI lists.  However, neither company is listed in the top 5 reliability for the overall market or the sample of all broadcasters. Interestingly, these results for Utah and Omneon go against the geographic bias exhibited for other metrics.  Both Utah and Omneon are based in the Americas, but neither company makes the top 5 reliability list for SIs in the Americas.  Instead, both companies are listed in the global SI and EMEA SI categories.

 

* One company that does make the top 5 reliability list for SIs in the Americas is Thomson / Grass Valley, which also appears in the top 5 reliability list for the overall market and the sample of all broadcasters.

 

* Other companies that make the top 5 reliability list for SIs in their home territories are EVS and Snell & Wilcox (EMEA) and Miranda and Evertz (Americas).

 

* Harris appears in the global sample of all respondents, but not in any of the SI samples.

 

* Appearing two times in this table, Evertz makes the list for the global sample of all broadcasters as well as SIs in the Americas.

 

* Miranda makes one appearance in this table – in the SI list for the Americas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 * The annual Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) is the largest and most comprehensive studies of broadcast technology vendor brands and industry trends.  The BBS provides insight into market trends and the perceptions of leading broadcast industry vendor brands by practitioners across the world.  It also delivers vendor brand ranking “league tables” in a variety of product categories; all of which can be segmented by geography and customer type.

 

** Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers such as innovation, reliability, quality and great customer service.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentio

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

How Broadcasters of Different Sizes Rank Vendors for Quality

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Top Broadcast Vendor Brands, broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Nov 09 2009

This is the fourth in a series of articles about findings from the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS)* that shows how a global sample of more than 1,000 broadcasters of different sizes ranked broadcast technology vendors on a variety of metrics.  For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post**.

Previously I’ve discussed how broadcasters of different sizes ranked broadcast technology vendors for innovation, reliability and great customer service. Today I am going to look at how this group ranked vendors for “quality.” 

The table below shows the top 5 brands in the broadcast technology vendor league table for quality, as ranked by broadcasters, broken down by organization size.  For the sake of comparison, I have also provided the global ranking (responses of all 4,000+ respondents from all organization types) as well as the ranking for all broadcasters (regardless of size or location).

 

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

  

Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Quality] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market? 

 

   Quality by broadcaster by org size

Once again this chart makes for very interesting reading.  Here are a few quick thoughts on these findings:

 

* There are a total of 8 vendors in this list.  This makes quality the most concentrated and least varied of the metrics I’ve explored. 

 

* When you compare the four metrics I studied (quality, reliability, innovation and great customer service) broken down by broadcasters of different sizes, a total of 11 vendors made the list for “innovation;” 9 vendors made the list for “reliability;” and 12 vendors made the list for “great customer service.”

 

* What makes the appearance of these vendors interesting is where they appear in the charts (what size of broadcaster), and in which other metrics were they also ranked highly by broadcasters of different sizes.

 

* All the vendors in this chart are large and / or well established.  This was not necessarily the case with the other metrics where there was a much broader range of vendors listed.

 

* Two of these eight vendors in the top 5 quality rankings – EVS and Sony – appear in all six categories in the chart above.  These two vendors appear very consistently in the top five rankings for all the attributes I have broken out by organizational size. 

 

* The other vendors appeared in to top five rankings for quality as follows (in alphabetical order): Evertz (2), Harris (4), Omneon (2), Quantel (1), Snell & Wilcox (4), and Thomson GVG (5). 

 

* Thomson / Grass Valley makes an appearance somewhere in the top five of all the metrics in this series of posts (quality, reliability, innovation and great customer service).  In the case of quality they appear in all categories except one — the mid-sized broadcasters with 501-1,000 employees.

 

* Harris makes the top five quality list for the global sample (all respondents, regardless of company type), and the sample of all broadcasters (regardless of size or location).  When the broadcast sample is broken down by size, Harris appears twice – in the 50-100 employee category and 501-1,000 employee categories. In addition to quality, Harris appears in the top five rankings in two of the other three categories, reliability and great customer service, but not innovation.

 

* Omneon appears in the top five quality list for the two categories of mid sized broadcasters (101-500 and 501-1000 employees).  Like Harris, Omneon appears in three of the four metrics covered in this series of posts.  In addition to quality, Omneon appears in the top five ranking for both innovation and reliability (both in the 501-1000 employee category), but are absent from the top five rankings for great customer service.

 

* Evertz in appears in the top five quality list for small (50-100 employees) and medium (101-500 employees) broadcasters, but not in the lists of larger broadcasters.  This is fairly consistent with the other findings about Evertz.  The company makes an appearance somewhere in top 5 list for all the metrics (quality, reliability, innovation and great customer service), but it seems that Evertz typically appeals to the small and mid-sized broadcasters.  The exception is “great customer service” where Evertz made the top 5 list in the 501-1,000 employee category.  However the company did not make the top 5 list for large broadcasters (1,001-10,000 employees) in any category.

 

* The opposite is true of Snell & Wilcox.  S&W made an appearance in the top 5 list of each metric, but only in the large broadcaster categories (501-1,000 employees and 1,001-10,000 employees). 

 

* Another vendor to appear in the top five for only the largest broadcasters (1,001-10,000 employees) is Quantel.  In addition to this appearance for quality, Quantel also made the top five ranking for innovation among the largest broadcasters (1,000-10,000 employees).

 

* Finally, it’s worth pointing out that Axon is similar to S&W and Quantel.  Although Axon does not appear in the top 5 list for quality, the company shows a similar pattern to S&W and Quantel because for all categories where Axon does make an appearance (in the reliability and great customer service charts), it was only in the large broadcaster categories.

 

 

 

 

 

* The annual Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) is the largest ever and most comprehensive studies of broadcast technology vendor brands and industry trends.  The BBS provides insight into market trends and the perceptions of leading broadcast industry vendor brands by practitioners across the world.  It also delivers vendor brand ranking in a variety of product categories; all of which can be segmented by geography and customer type.

 

** Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers such as innovation, reliability, quality and great customer service.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

How Broadcasters of Different Sizes Rank Reliability of Broadcast Technology Vendors

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Top Broadcast Vendor Brands, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Oct 26 2009

Ordinarily when I write about how broadcast technology vendors were ranked in the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS),* I show the opinions of the all 4,000+ of BBS respondents, broken down globally and regionally in order to highlight geographic variation in opinions.

A few weeks ago I did something different and posted an article about how one type of customer– broadcasters – ranked broadcast technology vendors in one category – innovation.  I received strong feedback about this post and many people asked me to show other data broken down this way.  I’m happy to oblige and I’ll be doing this over the next couple of posts.

Today I am going to look at how broadcasters of different sizes ranked broadcast technology vendors on reliability.  For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post**.

The table below shows the top 5 brands in the broadcast technology vendor league table for reliability, as ranked by broadcasters, broken down by organization size.  For the sake of comparison, I have also provided the global ranking (responses of all 4,000+ respondents from all organization types).

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

  

Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Reliability] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market? 

 

 Reliability by broadcaster by org size

 

 

 

 

 

As with the previously published results for innovation, these results are interesting because of the variation of what brands appear where.  Here are a few quick observations these results:

* There are total of 9 vendors on this list, versus a total of 11 on the previously published for innovation.  Thus it appears that there is slightly more agreement among broadcasters for reliability than innovation.

* Apart from Sony and EVS, here is the breakdown of how often other vendors made the top five, including the global sample, (in alphabetical order): Axon (2), Evertz (2), Harris (3), Miranda (1), Omneon (2), Snell & Wilcox (4), Thomson / Grass Valley (4)

 * There is interesting variation between the global ranking and the broadcaster rankings.  For example, Evertz is not listed in the top 5 for reliability for the global sample, but does make the top five reliability list for all broadcasters.  Harris conversely makes to top 5 list for the global sample, but not the overall broadcaster list (however it does appear in two of the organization size breakdowns).

* Harris and Thomson / Grass Valley each make the top 5 list for the smallest (51-100 employees) and largest (1,001-10,000 employees) broadcasters, but both are absent in the top 5 list of mid-sized broadcasters (101 – 1,000 employees). 

* The opposite is true for Axon and Omneon.  Neither company made the top 5 reliability list for the for the smallest and largest broadcasters, but they do appear in the top 5 reliability lists for broadcasters with 101-500 and 501-1,000 employees).

* Snell & Wilcox makes the top reliability 5 lists for larger broadcasters (501-10,000 employees), but is absent from the lists of small and mid-size broadcasters (50 – 500 employees).

* Miranda and Evertz, two direct competitors, appear in different places in the size breakdown, with Miranda appearing in the top 5 for broadcasters with 51-100 employees and Evertz making the list for broadcasters with 101-500 employees (Evertz made the overall top 5 list, Miranda did not).

 

 

 

 

* The annual Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) is the largest ever and most comprehensive studies of broadcast technology vendor brands and industry trends.  The BBS provides insight into market trends and the perceptions of leading broadcast industry vendor brands by practitioners across the world.  It also delivers vendor brand ranking in a variety of product categories; all of which can be segmented by geography and customer type.

 ** Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers such as innovation, reliability, quality and great customer service.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

Purchase Preferences of Broadcasters, Broken Down by Geography and Organization Size

Broadcast technology channel strategy, broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Oct 22 2009

In a previous post I wrote about the IABM’s US market workshops, which I attended last week in San Francisco and New York. During my presentations about the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey, a few people asked for clarification on some data and/or for a cut of the data that is different than what I was showing at the time.

When I got back from the meetings, I extracted this additional information and sent it to the relevant parties. I figured that others might be interested to see this as well, so here it is.

One question was about whether there is significant regional variation in the preference for broadcasters to purchase from a single vendor versus a range of “best-of-breed” suppliers.  A follow-on question was whether there was variation in purchasing preference based on the size of the broadcaster.

My original post on this topic showed that there is a strong preference for buyers to evaluate multiple vendors and select a best of breed solution. You can read this post here: Do broadcast technology buyers prefer to purchase from a single supplier or from “best-of-breed”?

Here’s the chart from this post, which shows that the majority of buyers, regardless of their type, prefer to  evaluate multiple vendors and purchase best-of-breed solutions.

 Q: When purchasing broadcast technology products, do you prefer to buy from a single “one-stop-shop” or select “best-of-breed” solutions from multiple vendors?

Best of breed preferred purchase method

 

The above chart looks at the total market on a global basis, and does not break out the responses for each customer type geographically. 

 I thought it would be interesting to do this for broadcasters, and the results are shown in the chart below, which compares the response of the overall global sample (called “everyone” here), with the responses of all broadcasters and then regional broadcasters — there is some regional variation.

 

Broadcasters -- Best of breed preferred purchase method

The chart above shows that broadcasters have a strong preference to purchase “best-of-breed” solutions, but there are some variations.  Broadcasters in the Americas show a higher preference towards a single supplier versus the average of all broadcasters, while Asian broadcasters show a higher preference towards best-of-breed versus the average.

The next question takes it one level further, and asks whether these preferences hold true for broadcasters of all sizes — i.e. how do broadcasters of different sizes prefer to purchase broadcast technology products and services?  To find out I did another cut of the broadcaster data from the chart above.  In this case I did not look at geography, but at the size of the broadcaster.

The results are shown in the table below:

Broadcasters By Size -- Best of breed preferred purchase method

 

As you can see, the results are fairly consistent, and once again there is an overwhelming preference is to evaluate multiple vendors and choose best of breed solutions. 

You’ll note that there is an extra bar on this chart — the one for US Network Broadcasters.  As an interesting point of comparison,  I have also included these results since I happened to have collected this data during the research.  US networks are some of the industry’s largest customers and they are usually in the largest cities (such as New York) where many vendors have sales offices.  US broadcast networks show the strongest preference towards buying from a single supplier when compared other broadcasters — more than double other large (1000+ employee) broadcasters.

If you’re a broadcast technology vendor, is this consistent with your experience?  Please let me know.

Tags: , , , , ,
1 Comment »

How Broadcasters of Different Sizes Rank Innovation of Broadcast Technology Vendors

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Top Broadcast Vendor Brands, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Oct 08 2009

I have recently been writing about how various broadcast technology vendor brands were ranked in the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey  (BBS)* on measures such as innovation, customer service, reliability and overall opinion.

For the most part, when I have discussed these results in previous posts I show the opinions of the all 4,000+ of BBS respondents, broken down globally and regionally in order to highlight geographic variation in opinions.

Of course this global list includes a wide variety of customer types such as broadcasters, systems integrators, cable/satellite/IPTV operators, government etc.  As a result, one of the questions I am frequently asked is how a particular brand was ranked by a single customer type (e.g. broadcaster) or buying group (e.g. multiviewer buyers).

To address this question I decided to look at how one customer type – broadcasters – ranked broadcast technology vendors in one category – innovation.

Rather than showing a breakdown by geography, I thought it would be more interesting to show variation by organization size rather then geography.

For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post**.

The table below shows the top 5 brands in the broadcast technology vendor league table for innovation, as ranked by broadcasters, broken down by organization size.  For the sake of comparison, I have also provided the global ranking (responses of all 4,000+ respondents from all organization types).

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

  

Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Innovation] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market?

  Innovation -- by Broadcasters by Org Size

 To me, these results are pretty interesting for a number of reasons.  Here are a few quick observations about them:

 

* There are total of 11 vendors on this list, and an interesting distribution of vendors

 

* Sony is the only broadcast technology vendor that ranked in the top 5 in all categories 

 

* Apart from Sony, the breakdown of how often other vendors made the top five, including the global sample,  (in alphabetical order) looks like this: Axon (1), Evertz (3), EVS (3), Miranda (2), Omneon (1), Quantel (1), Snell & Wilcox (4), Thomson / Grass Valley (3), Utah Scientific (1)

 

* Two of the companies that appear in the table above just once (Axon and Quantel) are seen as top five innovators by the largest broadcasters (those with 1,000+ employees)

 

* Two of the companies that appear in the table above just once (Network and Utah Scientific) are seen as top five innovators by the mid-sized broadcasters (those with 101-500 employees)

 

* There is an interesting distribution of vendors that were ranked as top 5 innovators by all broadcasters.  For example both Evertz and Miranda are ranked in the top 5 overall by broadcasters.  However when you look at broadcasters by organization size, Evertz appears in the 501-100 employee category, while Miranda is found in the 501-1000 employee category.

 

So does size matter?  Larger broadcasters probably have significantly greater buying power than their smaller counterparts and a couple of contracts with a large broadcaster can be enormously valuable to a vendor.  Having said that, very large broadcasters are few and far between.  The bulk of broadcasters probably falls into the middle of the size range in terms of employees, and some very successful broadcast technology vendors (in terms of recent revenue growth) such as Evertz, Miranda and Omneon are best regarded by these mid-sized customers, while smaller vendors like Axon and Snell & Wilcox are highly regarded by the largest customers.    Nevertheless it is important for vendors to understand how opinions about them vary among customers of different sizes as they plan their sales strategies.

 

  

 

* The annual Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) is the largest ever and most comprehensive studies of broadcast technology vendor brands and industry trends.  The BBS provides insight into market trends and the perceptions of leading broadcast industry vendor brands by practitioners across the world.  It also delivers vendor brand ranking in a variety of product categories; all of which can be segmented by geography and customer type.

 ** Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers such as innovation, reliability, quality and great customer service.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment »

Evertz Named to Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 50″ Companies in Canada

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Top Broadcast Vendor Brands, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Oct 05 2009

Deloitte Canada recently announced its annual “Fast 50 Technology Companies,” which it calls “the country’s pre-eminent leading technology awards.”  According to Deloitte, these awards ”rank companies based on their past five-year revenue growth rates.”  Broadcast technology vendor Evertz Microsystems once again made the list, and was also singled out for a Leadership Award.

Evertz ranked #47 on the list with a 5 year growth rate of a very impressive 318%, but in my view, the Leadership Award from Deloitte is more significant. 

Here’s how Deloitte Canada describe these awards:  “Leadership Awards single out companies that are the elite members of the Canadian technology industry, whose ability to create a distinct competitive advantage in a high-growth market allows them to dominate their sector and quickly join the ranks of other Canadian global leaders.”   To give you an idea of what they mean, this leadership award puts Evertz in the same category as leading smartphone vendor Research in Motion — not a bad result. 

Here’s a link to the Deloitte announcement

There’s no doubt that Evertz has become a significant player in the broadcast technology space.  My research shows that Evertz has a strong brand in the broadcast technology industry, although it’s very clear that the company’s brand is stronger in the Americas than in the rest of the world.  Nevertheless, the company’s “international” sales (which Evertz describes as outside of the US and Canada) continue to grow.  It will be interesting to see how the company is ranked when my next round of research is published.

In the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey, Evertz placed in the top 5, on either a global or regional basis, in the following categories:

* Net Change in Brand Image

* Overall Opinion

* Great Customer Service

* Innovation

* Reliability

 

This is also not a bad result for Evertz.

Tags: , , ,
No Comments »

Overall Opinion Rankings for Broadcast Technology Vendors

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Top Broadcast Vendor Brands, broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Sep 08 2009

This is the fourth in a series of posts about how the brands of broadcast technology vendors were ranked in a variety of categories in the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), which includes responses from nearly 5,000 people in 110 countries.  (For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post)*.

I have written previously about how broadcast technology vendors were ranked by BBS respondents in terms of customer service, reliability and innovation.  Now let’s look at which broadcast technology vendors are ranked highest in “overall opinion” by broadcast industry insiders around the world. 

Study participants were presented with a list of vendors and asked to rate them on a scale of 1-10 based on their overall opinion of the company.  The table below summarizes the results by showing the vendors who were ranked in the top five for “overall opinion.”  In order to show geographic variation, these results are presented globally as well as regionally.

 

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

  

Question: On a scale of 1-10, where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market, please rate your overall opinion of each of these broadcast technology vendor brands.

GLOBAL

EMEA

AMERICAS

ASIA PACIFIC

EVS

Harris

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

EVS

Omneon

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

Evertz

Harris

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

EVS

Harris

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

  

On a global basis, the top five spots were taken by large and/or well-established players, with three companies – Snell & Wilcox, Sony and Thomson / Grass Valley — taking one of the top 5 spots in all three geographic regions, as well as in the overall rankings. 

Strong regional showings by both EVS and Harris were enough to put them into the top 5 overall, despite being ranked outside of the top 5 in the Americas and EMEA respectively.

The other vendors ranked in top five in one of the regions were Omneon and Evertz, who appeared in the top 5 ranking in EMEA and the Americas respectively.

Of course “overall opinion” is a subjective measure and does not necessarily imply superior brand loyalty or purchase intent.  However, being ranked as one of the top industry companies  in this category by respondents worldwide is still an important achievement, and the vendors that were ranked highest in terms of overall opinion scored well in other measures.  For example, EVS scored very well in the customer service category (the only company to be in the top five in all geographic regions);  S&W, Sony and Thomson / Grass Valley all scored in the top 5 for reliability; and Harris and EVS were in the top five for innovation on a global basis.

 

* Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
2 Comments »

A Ranking of Broadcast Technology Vendors for “Great Customer Service”

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Sep 02 2009

This is the third in a series of posts about how the brands of broadcast technology were ranked in a variety of categories in the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), which includes responses from nearly 5,000 people in 110 countries.  (For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post)*.

In previous posts I have discussed how broadcast technology vendors were ranked by BBS respondents in terms of reliability and innovation.  This post focuses on something that all customers care about deeply — customer service. 

In order to get a true feel about what respondents think about the service offered by broadcast technology vendors, I didn’t just ask about customer service — instead I asked about “great customer service” so that I could really gauge which vendors truly deliver excellence in this area.

The vendors who were ranked in the top five for “great customer service” are shown in the table below.  In order to show geographic variation, these results are presented globally as well as regionally.

 

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

  

 Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Great Customer Service] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market?

GLOBAL EMEA AMERICAS ASIA PACIFIC

Evertz

EVS

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

Axon

Crispin

EVS

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Evertz

EVS

Ross Video

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

EVS

Florical

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

  

On a global basis, the top five spots were taken by large and/or well-established players.  However, things were different on a regional basis.

Only two companies — EVS and Sony — managed to achieve a top 5 spot across all three regions, and unlike just about any other metric in my research, including the ones that I have discussed previously, the top five regional spots were not necessarily taken by the broadcast industry’s largest vendors.

In EMEA, four of the top five spots were taken by smaller players — Axon, Crispin, EVS and Snell & Wilcox — although the latter two are not insignificant players and are well established.

In the  Americas, strong regional players Evertz and Ross made the list along with EVS Sony and Thomson / GVG.  Interestingly, the strong showing made by Evertz in this market was enough to propel it to a top 5 spot in the global league table ranking, despite the fact that the company did not make the top 5 in either EMEA or Asia-Pacific.

In Asia, the large  and well established vendors were joined by Florical, a small US-based provider of broadcast automation.   

There are a couple of interesting take-aways from these findings. 

Although you can’t see it here (beacuse this post does not show the full league table), it’s worth noting that on an overall basis, respondents to the BBS were much stingier with their “grades” in this category compared to all the others.  Many companies received very high scores for metrics like “overall opinion,” “innovation,” “reliability” etc., but no company was ranked “off the charts” in terms of the perception of “great customer service.” 

Because of this, it’s clear to me that there is a real opportunity for vendors to step up to the plate and differentiate themselves on the basis of great customer service.  Whoever does this will be rewarded by their customers with increased loyalty.

The good news is that my research shows that a commitment to great customer service can be made by all vendors, whether they are large or small.  Indeed, a review of the rankings in the industry league table for “great customer service” shows that this can be achieved by small vendors as well as large ones.  Let’s hope that more companies make this a central part of their strategy in the future.

 

 

* Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

Innovation Rankings for Broadcast Technology Vendors

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, broadcast industry technology trends, broadcast technology market research | Posted by Joe Zaller
Aug 31 2009

I recently started a series of posts about how broadcast technology vendors brands were ranked in a variety of categories in the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), which includes responses from nearly 5,000 people in 110 countries.

For information about how these results were collected, please see the bottom of this post.

In a previous post I looked at the reliability rankings of broadcast technology vendors.  Today I’m going to look at how they were ranked for innovation.

The table below shows the top brands in the broadcast technology vendor league table for innovation.  In order to show geographic variation, these results are presented globally as well as regionally.

Please note that in all cases, these brands are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order of their ranking in the study

  

 Question: How would you rate [Brand X] on the following attribute [Innovation] where 1 = very poor and 10 = best in the market?

GLOBAL EMEA AMERICAS ASIA PACIFIC
EVS

Harris

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

 EVS

Quantel

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

 Evertz

Harris

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

 Evertz

Harris

Snell & Wilcox

Sony

Thomson / Grass Valley

 

As you can see, the mix of the vendors in the top five spots around the world were taken by the industry’s largest vendors, as well as several smaller (though not insignificant),  players including EVS, Snell & Wilcox and Quantel, who produce hardware and software for specialized post production and live production applications.  All the vendors on this list are well established players that make a significant investment into research and development each year.

While there is a great deal of consistency across the regions, it’s internsting to see some geographic variation.  In particular, strong European players (EVS and Quantel) did well in their home market, while Evertz and Harris came out in the top five in both the Americas and Asia-Pacific market.    The other three spots were taken by the same players (Snell & Wilcox, Sony and Thomson / Grass valley) in all regions.

 

* Respondents to the BBS were asked to rank their opinion of twenty-five broadcast technology vendor brands in a variety of categories including awareness; overall opinion; change of opinion; recommendation; and a variety of brand attributes and brand drivers.  The responses were then aggregated into a series of industry “league tables” that rank each broadcast technology vendor brand against the metrics mentioned above.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
1 Comment »

EVS Posts Q209 and First 1/2 Year Results for 2009

Broadcast Vendor Brand Research, Broadcast technology vendor financials | Posted by Joe Zaller
Aug 28 2009

Yesterday, EVS released their results for Q209 and first half of the year.  Like many companies, they are feeling the impact of the weak economy and their financial results show this.

Here’s how their latest results compare to Q208 (which of course was when purchasing for the Beijing Olympics and US election were underway).

* Revenue: -45.8% 

* Operating profit: -62.5%

* EBIT margin 44.3% versus 64% a year ago

* EMEA: -49.2%

* Americas: -27.2%

* Asia: -61.9%

Neverthless, the company has a strong cash position and those 44% EBIT margins are still pretty strong. 

EVS is an interesting company to me because they have a very strong brand in the broadcast market.  Indeed, as I mentioned in previous post, EVS was ranked as one of the top 5 brands for reliability in both EMEA and Asia by the nearly 5,000 respondents of the 2009 Big Broadcast Survey. 

The EVS brand is also very highly rated in a number of other categories, as I will detail in future posts about broadcast technology vendor brands.

For more info about the recent EVS results, have a look at the following:

Link to press release:   http://bit.ly/19VSqq

Link to presentation to equity analysts: http://bit.ly/3h1BT

Tags: , ,
No Comments »