Joel Brunson of TANDBERG on How Video Conferencing is Changing Business

ExecutiveBiz recently had the opportunity to sit down with Joel Brunson of TANDBERG to discuss the role of video conferencing technologies in business. He also discussed the public sector sales approach at TANDBERG.

ExecutiveBiz:  Can you talk briefly about your role here at TANDBERG?

Joel Brunson:  I am the President of TANDBERG Public Sector.  I am going to define public sector because everybody has a different view on what public sector means.  If you go back to your math days and you think of Venn Diagrams and the universe as public sector, then the subsets of that would be federal and state & local, education and healthcare.  That’s what makes up and defines TANDBERG’s view of public sector.

ExecutiveBiz:  How large is the public sector business unit?  How would you describe it?

Joel Brunson:  I will describe it as being the largest single vertical within TANDBERG with the largest growth rate.  We are responsible for better than 50% of the US revenue and when you compare it on a worldwide basis we are between 20 and 30% of the world’s revenue.  That is key for a couple of reasons; number one it signifies that we have good market penetration in this space, but the other thing that is most important for the customers to know is that we are a big piece of TANDBERG with resources dedicated to our success.  When customers have a requirement for a special feature or a special need, it’s a lot easier when somebody has that piece of their business dedicated to public sector to talk to engineers to say ‘look we need this feature, we need this enhancement.’  If you look at any high tech company and I urge you to look at any one that you want, you’ll see that their public sector caps out at around 5% of  worldwide revenue.  Going back to that same example, if you need a future code or a product enhancement  - – you have to present a business case for 95% of the other business before engineering, research & development wants to get onboard with that idea.  Here, we’re quick to react because it is such a big piece of the business.

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“[TANDBERG's video conferencing] is state of the art, high definition, secure, fast technology.  It changes businesses by accelerating  decision making, sending out the same clear message to all participants that are on the call, whether they are in a board room, on the battlefield, in a hospital or a courtroom .  It is really business changing.” -Joel Brunson

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ExecutiveBiz:  TANDBERG is involved with a lot of federal agencies; maybe you could share a quick story on an interesting occasion or story that the company is proud of recently.

Joel Brunson:  I would say that a success story that we are very proud of is the market share.  Again, I’m not going to give you the exact numbers because we don’t view it as a bragging right when we talk about these market share numbers, we view it as ‘we have an opportunity NOT to pat ourselves on the back but to deepen our consultative approach with that customer and take it to the next level.’  I will tell you that we have a predominant market share of video conferencing in the federal government.  We’ve been in the federal business and dedicated to the public sector verticals longer than some companies have been in existence.  We have our large customers, I call it the uniforms; the Army, the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy.  We also have good penetration into civilian accounts; Veterans Administration, the Federal Reserve Banks and some of the Intelligence Agencies.

ExecutiveBiz:  We talked before about some of the brain trauma and some of the interesting things that can be done.  Can you talk a little more about that?

Joel Brunson:  I’ll talk about applications.  I’m not going to talk about specific agencies because I need to get their approval before we do that.  One significant way they use video is to diagnose the war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan that suffer brain trauma injury (BTI).  With a BTI you won’t actually see a physical wound, it can be a sound concussion, something that is not visibly detected.  It may manifest itself days later but with the advent and onset of high definition, patients thousands of miles away can video conference with a doctor who can look into the pupils of the war fighter and see they are experiencing trauma and get them to a specialist immediately.  That helps a lot.  Another interesting application in healthcare is in some rural areas where clinics or hospitals are not able to staff a physician that specializes in strokes.  There is a drug called TPA and if you administer it to someone who has suffered a stroke within three hours it is life changing.  Instead of being paralyzed or suffering the severe effects of a stroke, a person will often walk out of the hospital the next day.  The flip side of that is if you administer the drug TPA to a person not having a stroke you’ve signed their death warrant because they will hemorrhage.  Often these hospitals in rural areas do not have a specialist that can diagnose a stroke so one of the applications of video conferencing is to call into a center that has a stroke specialist on call who can do the diagnosis over video.  Can they move their fingers?  Can you see the pupils of their eyes?  Are they paralyzed on one side?  Do they have touch?  Do they have feeling? When they can diagnose this the doctor will say “Go ahead and administer the TPA.”  I can give you application after application after application of how video conferencing is changing how people communicate – to the point of saving lines.

ExecutiveBiz:  Can you talk about your sales approach in the public sector?

Joel Brunson:  That’s something that I spend a good majority of my time on because I want the best and the brightest.  I spend a lot of effort in hiring and retaining the best.  One of the ways that I go about doing that is via word of mouth.  It used to be popular to say somebody specialized in selling to the federal government or the state & local and education and healthcare markets but now we get very granular.  What agencies do you know extremely well?  Where do they have the contacts?  A lot of that is by word of mouth.  I can read a resume and it says a little bit but when you get a personal reference of a co-worker, a former colleague, a former customer, a current customer and get their recommendation –  that speaks volumes.  One of the things that we do quite well at TANDBERG is we ask the customer, the end user – who have you enjoyed working with, who understands your mission, who understands what you’re trying to get done at your agency.  The other piece of our sales approach is we try to foster an environment where people flourish.  It’s a constant balance between getting the best and the brightest and rewarding risk taking and making sure that people don’t get derailed and off the track.  I spend a lot of time and energy in that area.

ExecutiveBiz:  What is your biggest challenge in business today?

Joel Brunson:  The biggest challenge in business today is realizing the daunting task of actually changing the way people communicate.  We believe that we have the responsibility to show people video conferencing today: secure, robust, reliable.  My biggest challenge is people that maybe have experienced it six or seven years ago – it is not your mother’s or father’s video conferencing anymore.  This is state of the art, high definition, secure, fast technology.  It changes businesses by accelerating  decision making, sending out the same clear message to all participants that are on the call, whether they are in a board room, on the battlefield, in a hospital or a courtroom .  It is really business changing.  How many times have you misinterpreted an email or a voice mail that you have received? Video conferencing alleviates that. You can look at somebody on the other end and know if they get it or not.  That’s why a lot of the military services are using video conferencing – a picture is worth a thousand words; troop movements, exercises they can use. People don’t have to speak the language, you can understand a picture.  The task of changing the way people communicate is a big challenge that I see but the wave of the future.  We want there to be a video conferencing unit in every home, in every office environment, in all agencies. We truly believe in the mission and I think you’ll see continual benefits of adopting video conferencing.

ExecutiveBiz:  Can you talk briefly about where technology is going in the next two to three years?  What can we expect?

Joel Brunson:  I think you’ll see more interoperability among the vendors.  I think you’ll see more people pushing those standards.  They want investment protection.  That is something that I think TANDBERG does exceptionally well.  They want quicker refresh of products.  They want speed to the marketplace.  They want graphical user interfaces that are easy, that are consumer friendly, that are as easy as dialing a cell phone.  That’s what they are pushing for.  They want better definition, faster bandwidth, refresh clarity.  I think you will see that continual improvement in this marketplace.

ExecutiveBiz:  What is something most people don’t know about you personally?

Joel Brunson:  Personally – that’s a good question.  I’m impatient.  I’m not ready to apologize for that impatience and I don’t . . . like a lot of successful people I strive to be the absolute best and I don’t settle for seconds.  I have a lot of integrity.  I hit problems straight on in an honest and thoughtful manner.  I love getting good people on my team and supporting those good people so that they feel empowered to go and sell.  I think I do an excellent job of building a good team, rallying the troops and creating an environment that people like to stay here for years.