Making a Market: Rich Media Marketer SoftVu Takes a Hard Look at Rapid Expansion. |
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April 27, 2007 - As Seen in the Kansas City Business Journal
SoftVu LLC CEO Steve Garver (left) and founder and President Tim Donnelly say the company has figured out how to humanize communication between companies and their clients, which in turn fosters better business relationships. by Jason Shaad SoftVu LLC is on the cusp of a growth spurt that will aim to quintuple employees and increase revenue by more than 1,000 percent during the next five years. Rapid growth, of course, often brings growing pains, but SoftVu's executives are confident that they can nurture the Overland Park-based company through adolescence into maturity. SoftVu combines video production, software development and marketing to create online video content that connects companies to consumers. Think of it as sending a customized, business-centric YouTube video to potential and current clients. The company recorded $2 million in sales in 2006, up 100 percent from 2004. By 2012, CEO Steve Garver said he hopes to hit $25 million and add 175 employees -- a process that begins this year as SoftVu goes from 20 employees in January to 35 by year's end. SoftVu charges a professional services fee -- usually about $20,000 to $50,000 -- to develop video, software and marketing strategy. The company also charges about $75 a month for each user operating software that tracks client interaction with the marketing. In mid-April, SoftVu doubled its office space and moved into 12,500 square feet of new space in Overland Park. At the same time, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce named the company as one of the Top 10 small businesses for 2007. "You just get to a point when you have to start scaling," Garver said. Some growth will come from maximizing its niche in financial services. SoftVu works with 25 online lending banks and 15 other financial services companies, including North American Savings Bank, Commerce Bank and American Express Incentive Services. The company also has entered the medical and pharmaceuticals market. David Peterson, president of Lenexa-based MedAccuracy LLC, uses SoftVu's services to contact busy hospital and pharmacy administrators who don't have time to take phone calls and seldom look at mailed materials, he said. MedAccuracy's pipeline of prospective clients has more than doubled since working with SoftVu, he said. "We also do not have to go out and actually go into a building or fly around the country to do a face-to-face sales call," he said. Whenever a consumer requests information or services, SoftVu's software automatically sends a rich media message, which blends audio, video and animation with sales information. Typically, clients' users receive an e-mail or Web page with a prerecorded video of their loan officer or sales associate explaining a service or offering instruction on the next step of the process. At the same time, SoftVu President Tim Donnelly said, software notifies the client when a user views the video and tracks how long the user watches, enabling more efficient interaction. He said it's more personal and engaging than e-mail or direct mail -- because it involves a personal video presentation rather than text -- and more responsive than traditional TV marketing -- because it tracks information that TV ratings cannot. "The majority of the points of pain in the industry are that you're chasing your tail to try to get a hold of the (client)," Donnelly said. "We have figured out the secret sauce with regard to humanizing the message and enabling (companies) to have a better relationship with the consumer." Donnelly steered SoftVu through the tech meltdown and in 2004 started recruiting an executive team. He lured Garver from his post as senior vice president of Cerner Corp.'s consulting business. Then Garver hired former Cerner colleague Tommy Hinton as chief technology officer in 2005 and another Cerner alum, Jamie Oakes, as vice president of sales in July. Garver said he plans to increase financial services clients to 100 in the next 18 months. SoftVu has developed a new version of its software that it can adjust rapidly to meet the needs of different clients in different industries. "You scale up so that when you get one going, you should be able to get two going, and then you can really take it from there," he said. Garver also plans to tap new markets. Health care, pharmaceuticals, real estate and franchise businesses all are fertile sectors, he said. SoftVu should have ample opportunities there because the online rich media market remains fragmented, an issue Garver helped Cerner capitalize on in health care IT. As the company enters new markets, Garver said he looks for industry experts to recruit and expand SoftVu's market penetration. Those experienced hires take care of client services and sales to industry executives. For back-end operations such as software and marketing development, Garver said he intends to hire about 50 percent of new employees straight out of college. He expects the slightly relaxed and more intimate culture of a growing small company to be attractive. SoftVu will manage employee growth through small "start groups" designed to acclimate new employees to the company's vision and strategy as well as give them sense of community within the company. Training several new hires at one time is much more cost effective and culturally sound than training one at a time, Garver said. He and Donnelly plan to raise about $1 million in venture capital this year. Since starting SoftVu as a one-man operation out of his home in 1999, Donnelly has closed on $2.4 million in capital from 38 angel investors and the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp., which contributed about $160,000. KTEC CEO Tracy Taylor said SoftVu has reached a development stage that most startups struggle with: They usually are big on innovation but limited in aggressive, growth-oriented executives. With Donnelly and Garver, he said, SoftVu has found both. "The management certainly has experience at growing rapidly and keeping the wheels on while they expand," he said. Online video marketing just now is becoming popular with a variety of companies, said Lori Baerg, CEO of Kansas City-based Prizm Productions LLC, an online video production and marketing company similar to SoftVu. Spending on online video marketing is expected to increase from $410 million in 2006 to nearly $3 billion in 2010, according to a report from Internet research agency eMarketer Inc. Large creative marketing agencies have not yet established the software development expertise to claim domain of the market, SoftVu's Garver said. But they will eventually, he said, either by building software teams or by acquiring companies that already have. "So, in the long run, that could be an opportunity," he said. "There's a bunch of launching off points as we go forward." SoftVu LLC This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it | 816-421-5900 |