STATESIDEQUIXANT


DF: Going back to our two years, we’ve done a lot of research with our existing and prospective customers in terms of what they really look for. That is why we implemented the three different board propositions. The value proposition which we’ve called IQ, again playing on the Q, is designed to drive entry-level resolution imagery and a certain number of screens to drive a price point that is valid to those root market categories, but still at a high-quality. IQON is a middle tranche product in our portfolio which drives more screens, more high-quality content and more video. Then we have QMAX which is the ultimate. We’ve been focused on developing power-based solutions for the appropriate price point so customers have a choice. One of the things our industry has been guilty of is creating products and assuming it is right for our customer base. That wasn’t just us in the past, that was our competitors as well. What have we been doing? To answer your question, we have been collaborating further with our customers to come up with solutions that are totally tailored to them. The big thing that is going to change is that AMD, who we currently use for our graphics part of the solution, have made the decision to de-prioritise the embedded platform game. Over the years, we will be migrating over to an Intel-based solution, so for the next 10 years we’ll have both Intel and AMD. That means we can offer choice across our portfolio of products in the future, for those who want to use Intel over AMD and vice versa. That’s what we’ve been doing, creating the right price points for the right customers, and working out how to create an Intel-based solution to run alongside AMD.


CI: Tell us about the Quixant Hub… DF: Through the last couple of years, we have been enhancing various aspects of our customer experience. We had a customer portal, where customers who used our products could log on to fi nd out more about the products, raise tickets if they had an engineering question, etc. But it was an old system that we started in 2005, and it needed upgrading. We believe coming out of this period, there is an opportunity to mean something more to our customers. Everything about our touchpoints with our customers we are upgrading, and the Quixant Hub is the fi rst part of that. The customer portal is being replaced with our new and improved Quixant Hub. It is now easier to use, it is direct communication to our engineers, it is easy to navigate around future and different propositions they want to work with us on. It is not so much about the branding; it is about creating a brilliant customer experience all the way through our touchpoints. We are trying to be different from others in the industry, have brilliant commercial people and brilliant pre-sales people who can advise on technology and onboarding in a smooth and seamless way. It’s about making the customer experience the front of everything we do.


CI: Most customer interfaces are designed to put as many barriers between customer and customer-facing employees as possible. It is refreshing you have created something to get to the right people at the right time… DF: We have a software team based in Italy but you can access any of the software engineers through the Quixant Hub if you are a customer. The great thing is it is visible to both sides. We will know if customer A is looking at the Software Hub and working out how the video de-coder works, so we can


proactively drive communication to them about that subject. It has got that intelligence that allows us to be proactive as opposed to waiting for people to call, it is much more based around call centre technology where it is live and real-time. While this isn’t a sales call, we want to expose our customers to everything else that we do, it gives everyone a chance to look at all of our datasheets for all of our products for all the benefi ts that each of them can bring. That drives better understanding about what they could do differently and how they can continuously strive to create the best gaming content. We are an outsourcer; we create outsource solutions for people to concentrate on their day job. They don’t want to spend their time worrying about whether they can get through to a software engineer or what the new platform might be, they need to focus on what they can do to make brilliant games. The supply chain world we’re in at the moment is another example. They outsource their provision of complicated and expensive computers to us, it’s not good enough for us to say those components are hard to get, that’s not their problem. It’s our problem, it’s a real focus on what the customers need and when they need it. We’ll get it no matter what and we’ll be very open about the challenges and prices, but our job is to supply brilliant computer platforms to create great games. It’s very simple but that customer interface is key at every level. The supply chain part of our world is new territory, the focus on us as suppliers in the supply chain of game manufacturing is really critical. Particularly as the world comes back to normal, they cannot have their production lines down as a result of someone they’ve outsourced part of their business process to. The reason we’ve come out of the pandemic well is because we’ve been honest about the challenges we’ve faced when trying to get products together. We’ve managed to do it at every point with no loss of customers, and no customer issues. For instance, pricing has gone up signifi cantly, and the price implication is quite impactful to some of our customers but the honesty element has got us through it. We’ve put prices up when we’ve had to and instantly reduced prices when components have come down. The key for us as an outsourcer is not to take advantage of where we are now so we’re not profi teering out of anything. It’s a real refl ection of the challenges in the market.


MARCH 2022 37


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