It seems quite that after 2020, companies and their employees will survive 2021 in virtual reality. With what experiences does LSK Hungária Kft. Look behind it for the period ahead of it, which has now become an unavoidable player in the market as a domestic developer of interactive group work and video conferencing solutions? András Leveli Business and Product Development Director answered our questions
András Leveli: When the restrictions were introduced in March last year, almost everyone, regardless of company size, realized at once that an immediate solution was needed. However, we came across a lot of businesses where the basic infrastructure was also lacking and the conditions for working from home were not given at all. Fortunately, our existing customers were not unexpectedly affected by the fact that the previously acquired interactive visual collaboration and video conferencing ecosystem was able to serve the suddenly changed needs immediately as a complex solution. In-person discussions have moved to online platforms, while local trainings have revived in the form of webinars.
According to our own, non-representative survey, the biggest winners in 2020 are Microsoft Teams, Zoom and they became Cisco WebEx, but alongside them, Google Meet, BlueJeans, and similar UC&C systems also performed well. Last year, we built an interactive video conferencing solution on virtually all known online platforms, which was also an attractive alternative for customers because they didn’t have to vote for one service or another, regardless of platform, each system is perfectly interoperable with the ecosystem we developed. Yet the biggest challenge was how to transfer well-functioning collaboration processes locally to the online space. Think about it: on a classic whiteboard, how can an agile development process work online if everyone joins the meeting from home? This is where the importance of interactivity came into play.
Computerworld: How was all this reflected in the results?
LA: Unlike many other industries, the IT sector performed well in 2020, and this is reflected in our performance. Our sales revenue exceeded the net HUF 1.1 billion, which is special in that we were previously only able to achieve a similar result as participants in a major project. Our corporate interactive visual collaboration and video conferencing ecosystem grew by nearly 230 percent, and we sold a complex solution almost every third day of the year. Our clientele has expanded by about forty new customers; ministries, several county government offices, universities, banks, police headquarters, wineries and county teaching hospitals, among others, have fled innovation and embarked on the path of digital transformation because it has become clear to them that the world and the operation will never be the same again, as it used to be.
CW: We are looking forward to a hybrid future. What vision will come true in 2021?
LA: The development of the ecosystem continues, in which long-term cooperation remains the focus. Our currently available conference camera portfolio is expanded with another member, a 4K resolution ePTZ model will soon arrive, which, thanks to its compact design with built-in microphones and speakers, will be able to serve the conference needs of medium-sized meeting rooms as a device. Telework has other untapped opportunities, so we will continue to support home office operations this year. Because it’s useless to build a star destroyer in the meeting room if remote participants return a depressing quality image from their laptop’s built-in camera. Due to the global but also perceptible lack of inventory in the spring of last spring, we started to develop our Full-HD conference webcam for home use, because a lot of our customers came to us by not being able to get such devices. Since its launch, we have sold more than three hundred pieces of this product. But the changed operation due to the coronavirus epidemic has also generated or accelerated several new developments: we are currently working on our new room reservation system, which features contactless operation: you can also initiate a reservation with a mobile phone or NFC-enabled access card or extend an existing event. Our upcoming wireless desktop microphone will also be equipped with a wireless charging function.
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