Q. Could you please tell us a bit about yourself and work history?
I started out as a musician. Then, because I wanted access to the best tools out there, I started to work for an Avid Premier reseller before finally getting hired by Avid.
Q. When did you start working for AVID?
I started working for Avid in 2001.
Q. What would be your top 3 reasons for AVID's prominent success?
1. Avid’s tools are the industry standards. They keep the community at the forefront of creative techniques and best workflow practices.
2. Avid has the most professional approach to media customers and services.
3. Avid’s product quality – we offer the best and most comprehensive tools and workflow solutions to create, distribute and optimize media.
Q. How long have you been selling software digitally?
We’ve been selling software digitally for several years now. Most of our webstore sales are electronic.
Q. Why did you choose XCHANGE as the platform for delivering codes to AVID resellers?
As our success largely depends on channel partners, we were searching for an opportunity to enable them to deliver software digitally, especially for our newer subscription offerings. After evaluating other options in the market, we discovered a large overlap between the resellers on the XCHANGE platform and our resellers. So, we decided to go with XCHANGE rather than inventing another platform/tool that our resellers would have to use. We wanted to use a method that our partners are used to, that’s easy, can be automated, and is trusted. In today’s world, our partners and customers don’t want to wait for a shipment of boxes.
Q. How do you believe XCHANGE will help your business model?
XCHANGE will help our business model tremendously as we can bring new SKUs to market much more quickly. It also gives our partners access to SKUs that are only offered digitally, which they didn’t have access to before. We have a much quicker go to market and are no longer dependent on physical products being created, in stock and shipped out.
Q. What has been some of the challenges with XCHANGE?
Setting up XCHANGE and integrating it into a large company has been challenging as each of our solutions: Pro Tools, Sibelius, Media Composer, etc. has different requirements. However the team at XCHANGE has been fantastic throughout this process, giving us input on how to overcome certain obstacles.
Q. What features would you like to see in XCHANGE that currently do not exist?
It would be great to have an easy way to deliver monthly subscriptions. An important question for us is, how can we integrate this with our systems to require as little manual interaction as possible?
Q. What is your outlook on the future for software business?
Software sales are growing and will continue to do so, especially as we offer newer and more flexible licensing options for customers. Software is king.