SVG Sit-Down: Grass Valley's Tim Banks on the Next Phase in the Company's History

SVG Sit-Down: Grass Valley's Tim Banks on the Next Phase in the Company's History The chief revenue officer sees a virtuous cycle of growth and investment' By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Tuesday, September 26, 2023 - 10:20 am

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Grass Valley's presence at IBC this year signaled a new chapter in the company's history: it has completed a multi-year transition that finds it focused on a new stage of corporate growth. Its AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform) has been a major focus in recent years, but, as Grass Valley Chief Revenue Officer Tim Banks explained to SVG during IBC, the company is still more than happy serving up quality hardware products as well.

Grass Valley's Tim Banks: We've recently made lots of smart organizational changes to deliver great operational efficiencies.

It has been an interesting time for Grass Valley. What was the mood of customers compared with NAB 2023?

The big difference is, at NAB, we were having to explain the context for the business transformation. There've been lots of changes not only in our industry but in any industry and businesses that have been transforming themselves. And the parallels are there when you look at some of the major media and entertainment companies in terms of protecting their core business while capitalizing on the opportunity of new business and new services. Most of the revenue and the margins come from the core business, but most of the growth is coming from the new business. That's where they're looking to invest, but it's not yet profitable.

So, there are still customers here at IBC who are looking for hardware.

Candidly, I think we may have overemphasized the software aspect at NAB. From an engineering perspective, most of our hardware products are made up of ever increasing proportions of software. The switchers have a lot of software. The cameras have a lot of software. The infrastructure products have a lot of software. When we messaged earlier in the year that we were doubling our investment in software, people [questioned whether it was] at the expense of hardware. But that isn't what we said: it was that the hardware that we're delivering is composed more and more of software. That required a change in skillset, resources, processes, and NAB was about explaining that context.

The cool thing about coming to IBC is, we can now say that transformation is complete. The end of June marked the end of Phase 3 of the business transformation since Black Dragon acquired Grass Valley, and all the reorganization, all the operational efficiencies that were needed to be made, are complete.

The history of Grass Valley saw several businesses amassed together, but they were not integrated. We had six business units each with their own P&L and their own management structure. We've recently made lots of smart organizational changes to deliver great operational efficiencies, and, by the end of this year, we'll have hired 400 new hires in the past 24 months into R&D and engineering positions. Those hires will allow us to accelerate our R&D roadmaps and deliver a best-in-class customer experience. For live production, we continue to innovate with our industry-leading solutions, such as the LDX150 and LDX135 camera platforms and the latest generations of K-Frame switcher and Kayenne panel. And we've also been investing heavily in the infrastructure products, like the IP gateways and the multiviewer range. There are lots of clients who want to keep buying their infrastructure from GV. It's what they're used to and what they're confident in and have a huge amount of trust in. Our credibility is based on core principles to lead through innovation and deliver the highest levels of quality and reliability.

One of the things COVID and the supply-chain disruption taught us is that we should take more control of our own destiny. For instance, we've recently made the move to in-source camera manufacturing; previously, the assembly of the PCBs was contracted to a manufacturer in Europe. All the cameras are now manufactured in-house in GV's main manufacturing facility in Montreal. Final assembly and testing will still be in the Breda[, Netherlands] facility, which is where all the R&D is located.

We're now transitioning into GV's next phase of growth and investment, and with that comes the appointment of some new key positions, like Ian Fletcher as CTO. Ian has been in the business for a long time, and I can't think of anyone better to lead the next phase of evangelizing about our vision, our technology strategy, and how we leverage the best agile software-defined architectures to create the future of media.

Also, Adam Marshall has been appointed chief product officer. He comes from a broadcast-operations background as well as solution architecture. He is responsible for the product portfolio in terms of product management and also the marketing function.

Most recently, we've made the appointment of Jon Wilson, who, as of Oct. 1, will be president and COO. He will be a great addition to the leadership team, as will Stephanie Sanchez, who has joined as chief strategy officer. She'll be working closely with Executive Chairman Louis Hernandez and Jon on the planning process for 2024 and our key strategic initiatives.

You mention the next phase. Can you walk me through some rough details of that phase?

There's not an end date on it because it's likely that it'll be a virtuous cycle of growth and investment. The key aspect of that is, the business is surging across the portfolio. For example, we've seen 200% revenue growth for AMPP year over year. We're also going to deliver our strongest revenue since the pandemic for cameras, switchers, and infrastructure as

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