At present, the world is impacted by the pandemic, and all industries are affected. In the face of adversity, we want to find out how companies can adjust themselves to respond to the external environment and other challenges. In this article, Jun Luo, Director and VP of Zeno Videopark, offers his insights.
At present, the world is impacted by the pandemic, and all industries are affected. In the face of adversity, we want to find out how companies can adjust themselves to respond to the external environment and other challenges. In this article, Jun Luo, Director and VP of
Zeno Videopark, offers his insights.
Regardless of the COVID-19, the video surveillance industry has already been full of competition, with a number of major companies dominating the market. For a small-to- medium sized company, who aims to grow and be sustainable, it needs more strategic thinking and planning, especially when the internet of the things (IoT) and AI technologies become more important for all industries and applications.
Based on the observation of Jun Luo, Director and VP of Zeno Videopark on the security and IoT industry, Alibaba and Hikvision are the ones that are rapidly changing the security competition landscape. One thing that makes them different from other enterprises is their ability to fully utilize, manage, and integrate with external resources in order to build an ecosystem. Luo said, “The resource integration capabilities can strongly affect the company’s value and performance, and this is the key to stay competitive.”
Collaboration with the external partners
Jun Luo, Director and VP,
Zeno Videopark
Due to IoT trends and COVID-19’s impact, security companies also face another challenge of digital transformation. Not only for the company itself or its clients, the trend of using digital communication and services to engage customers in order to generate sales revenue has become very obvious. “Network collaboration and integration with external resources can also help the company quickly embrace the digital transformation and easily meet the client’s customization demands,” Luo suggested.
“I believe developing new products and conducting R&D in collaboration with an ecosystem of partners is the way to go,” emphasized Luo. Take Zeno’s product development via external alliance as an example. “We selected local unicorn enterprises and upstream and downstream suppliers in the Yangtze River Delta Eco monic Zone, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions to form an enterprise R&D alliance. Through resource integration and the interaction with the dynamic environment, we realize the collaborative evolution of the enterprise and the network, with the ultimate goals of reconstructing the business, which can satisfy customers’ customization needs, and upgrade competitive advantage from network effect to collaboration,” said Luo.
Zeno’s transformation to IoT solution field
Zeno achieved success after the company adopted the network collaboration with its ecosystem partners. Zeno Videopark, founded in 2009, is a manufacturer and solutions provider of a full range of smart IoT products, based on video surveillance technologies. It has been more than four years since Zeno Videopark was listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ, known as the New Third Board), in May 2016. Luo said, “From 2017 to 2018, due to certain debt-raising projects led by the local government, we were faced with a receivable crisis and bad debt provision risk. Zeno Videopark adjusted rapidly from 2019, focusing on our core business and providing distinctive products and solutions in verticals such as banking, power, education, and industrial parks.”
At present, Zeno Videopark’s performance continues to improve. The company expects to turn losses into profits in 2020. “The volume of our new video-based smart IoT products continue to increase. The commercialization of these products also become faster. Now we have acquired more than 300 authorized patents and software copyright registration certificates and the number is continuing to grow year by year.”
Zeno Videopark has become a leading global provider of smart video products and industry platform solutions, including a series of intelligent video solutions such as, face recognition, license plate recognition and behavior recognition; intelligent IP video platform for big data analysis and mining applications; Internet of Things technology applications; and municipal emergency command center solutions. All these are deployed in smart finance, smart cities, smart construction sites, smart industrial parks, smart power and other fields.
Luo concluded, “To maintain enterprises’ competitiveness and keep our supply chain in the ecosystem innovative, we should adopting this kind of ‘core competence with outsourcing’ approach.” Finally, Luo provided the following three solutions or principles for a company to follow, especially in a difficult time or a company's transformation period:
- Reinvigorate the founder's pioneer spirit – that is, work closely with the management team to overcome difficulties and re-invigorate the company's attitude and behavior;
- A company with stagnant growth should vigorously reduce complexity and redundant costs, update corporate development goals, and transform itself into an enterprise that values first-line sales activities;
- Cultivate a leadership mentality to prevent bureaucracy and improve response speed and sense of responsibility.
Get ready for the smart IoT business
The applications of using smart IoT solutions are just about to grow. A company who is able to quickly deliver the right smart IoT solution for the market can only be sustainable in the industry. Zeno Videopark shares its own story about how the company deals with the difficulties and financial risks and how it has finally found the keys to stand out from these competitors, which provides a good example for many companies to follow.
About Zeno Videopark
Zeno Videopark, founded in 2009, is a manufacturer and solutions provider of a full range of smart IoT products, based on video surveillance technologies. The company has 148 million outstanding shares and is a Zhejiang-based high-tech company, part of a&s’s Security 50. At the 4th All Things Grow Conference co-sponsored by the Hangzhou Municipal People's Government and the China Investment and Development Promotion Association in 2019, Zeno Videopark was selected as a 2019 Hangzhou Smart Manufacturing Unicorn-to-Be. On June 29, 2020, Zeno Videopark was selected as a 2020 Hangzhou Artificial Intelligence Unicorn-to-Be.