Tomer Mann On How 22Miles Is A Lot More Than A Wayfinding Signage Platform

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

The Silicon Valley firm 22Miles tends to be thought of in digital signage circles as a company focused on wayfinding, but that’s only part of the story.

It does indeed do a full set of features that help people navigate their way around malls, medical centers and corporate campuses, but 22Miles has evolved through the years into a rich, API-driven digital signage CMS platform that does a lot more than floor maps.

In this podcast, I caught up with Tomer Mann, a senior executive with 22Miles, and in most respects, the face of the company.

We get into what they’re up to, the pivots made to deal with 2020, and how its COVID-19 counter-measure technology has been future-proofed to have a life AFTER this pandemic ends.

We also solve the mystery of the company name. Think horses.

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TRANSCRIPT

Tomer, thank you for joining me. I know 22Miles, I’m sure lots of other people do too, but can you give me the rundown on the company for those who are not familiar with your firm? 

Tomer Mann: No problem, Dave. Thanks, so 22Miles was founded in 2007. Our head engineer is actually the founder, so we’re very much a Silicon Valley, the cultural mindset of a full CMS platform. He founded the company, primarily as a multi-touch way-finding solution and we’ve evolved to an immersive digital signage, visual communication platform and we continued to just innovate and add daily features to the system because him being the Silicon Valley mentality, he’s got 50% of the company being developers behind him and that’s our differentiator that we love to brag about is that we’re this full CMS solution that never stops innovating. 

Is it a public or private company?

Tomer Mann:  We’re privately owned. 

Okay, and how big? Thirty people, hundred people, three thousand people? 

Tomer Mann: We are 50 to 60 people, on average. 

Okay, cool. Silicon Valley is an expensive place to have software developers and engineers. Is the whole headcount there or do you have them dispersed? 

Tomer Mann: We have them dispersed, but we’re actually, especially now with everything and there was that California lockdown for a while, we are slowly merging things to our Atlanta or Duluth office. And I think I’m going to be more in Duluth now than anything else. So we’re dispersed. We have people in Indiana, Rochester, I’m remote, Sacramento. So we’re a little bit everywhere. 

Yeah, these days in particular, but even normally for a software development company, there’s not one hell of a lot of need to have everybody under the same roof.

Tomer Mann: No and I think we’re learning that more and more that remote does work. As long as you’ve got good employees that can be accountable for themselves and want to have the company thrive and which means they thrive, I think that remote is going to work and I think remote will be something that a lot of people will shift for as a normal, going forward into this new world.

I don’t want to say new normal because everyone says that so I’m going to say new world instead. So I think that it’s worked for us for a bunch of years and we were able to not have to worry about remote because we were already doing it. So now it just emphasizes that it is something that makes sense to continue our path forward in. 

What’s the story with the name? I don’t tend to get fixated on names, but when I type in 22Miles, your company comes up and I think with it a Donnie Wahlberg action movie. 

Tomer Mann: Yeah, that Mark Walberg guy, that Miles 22 movie. It was a good movie. He actually might have helped us if anything else. But yeah, so the head founder being an engineer, wanted a name that made sense around the wayfinding platform that he created and so he dug in, and with 22 miles what he found was that in the olden horse and carriage days, no one would travel in any given direction. So radius directional, more than 22 miles, someone randomly told me that horses can’t travel on any given day more than 22 miles so that kind of all makes sense. So for any service from your home, no more than 22 miles. 

Okay. Mystery solved. You started in wayfinding and, as you said, you’ve evolved. Was that an evolution that was driven by customer asks or, your founder and the head engineer just saw where this could go? 

Tomer Mann: Actually without sounding cocky, it was actually all me. When I joined the company, it was me that said, “This is an amazing platform, but it’s not enough and we have to make this a full digital signage platform.” Because we’re wayfinding, sure. It could be 2-5 units in a building, but with digital signage it can be hundreds or thousands of units within an organization, especially in hospitality, especially in healthcare, and especially in education and then obviously agile workplace corporations. 

So I put that seed and within a couple of weeks of ideas going back and forth, we were able to redesign a whole new version of the software and a whole new CMS, to really create this immersive platform. 

Now because you’d already had the foundation, the building blocks for this in many ways, you just had to change the UX to some degree. 

Tomer Mann: That’s exactly it. 

So is most of the business still derived from wayfinding or do you have people coming to you who don’t even do wayfinding? 

Tomer Mann: The majority of the business is actually digital signage now, funny enough, but we are still typecast in the industry for wayfinding.

I think our SEO also is still the strongest for wayfinding and it’s great because it is a differentiator, I think, from our 3d wayfinding that we designed and released, we’re probably the strongest globally for this 3d editing tool for math module map, design, smart pathway algorithm. So people come to us for that when they see our videos, when they see our marketing and then we open their eyes and we open their minds and sometimes their pocket/books to see, wow, we can do so much more with you as a one-stop-shop, and it’s great to see how we can change people’s perspective and make them excited that now they’ve got a cross-platform that they can scale with, and not have to look for other solutions anymore.

Is the 3d side of things important as a user experience or is it as much just like the visual “wow” of it? 

Tomer Mann: It’s a little bit of both, honestly. It was a novelty in the beginning, it was just something cool that we can do. Funny enough, Joey, the founder, has an open forum for all of his developers and if they have a great idea, if they come up with something like, “We can develop this within the source code. Can we do it?” He’s just yeah, do it rock and roll. And so one of the developers is like, “I know how we can use an SVG file to just create our 3d dimensions within our existing module” and that’s how the 3d solution developed. 

So it was at first, really a design scenario, that we added, but through that we leveraged our smart pathway algorithm to create more of a positioning system based on your current kiosk or screen. So actually the screen’s position is the 3d experience, leveraging our 3D engine, as a 360 so it spins you a certain way. So it actually creates a better orientation for where to go, whether you go North or you go South or you go East, or you go West versus the 2d maps or the flat maps that you’re just like, “There’s your arrow” and you’re like, “Wait, do I need to go forwards or backward? I’m not sure.” 

So we can orient that now so it’s more about the physical experience that this 3d wayfinding does. 

How do you counteract the arguments that I’m sure to come up here and they’re saying, “why do we need a big screen wayfinding application when everybody’s walking around with a smartphone and they can just scan a QR code or whatever, and do it off of their phone?”

Tomer Mann: I’m not gonna argue with that. We do mobile solutions on our platform. So if you want mobile, we’re still your solution to go to, so I don’t care if you want a kiosk or a mobile application. I bet some of my systems integration partners might hate me for that comment, but our platform supports full mobile native and HTML capabilities and design. We can also do an SDK plugin. I actually tell every one of my clients and partners that they should be leveraging mobile and they should consider adding that to the scope. 

Now, a lot of the time, yes, because we work with so many AV integrators, they obviously come to us for a kiosk solution but we always tell them and their clients or end-users to add our mobile application, what we call a carry-to-mobile and the reason it’s carry to mobile is that it’s actually starting from the kiosk. So there’s no reason not to have a kiosk as your point A, whereas your reference points or app nowadays as access control or check-in solution that incorporates the hoteling. So you visually have this as you walk into the building. 

Now we’ve added voice control. So now you voice your name or we add an active directory, single sign-on. So it knows where you are at with an exchange integration and shows you visibly how to get there. And then you just scan from the kiosk or QR code and you carry that entire experience on your phone and you go off, on the path. 

So we definitely suggest both. We don’t suggest one or other when we really think both work harmoniously together. 

And it makes sense because for the people who are arguing that a phone is good enough, that UX, that visual experience still has to be developed anyway. 

Tomer Mann: Exactly.

I don’t want to get fixated on wayfinding because I heard what you said that a lot of the business is just core digital signage. 

Why are they coming your way? I mean there are a lot of digital signage options out there so what attracts them to 22Miles, your end-users?

Tomer Mann: Yeah, there is a lot and I think that’s the problem, it’s almost a saturated market with a lot of solutions that are niche that have certain feature sets and that’s really it. They’re stuck in this little bubble. People come to us because they want an all-in-one platform, not just the digital signage software component and so we are that platform better than any other solution in the world because we continuously evolve this product and add more and more features and enhance those features, enhance the workflow and customizations of those property settings and those visual filters, and those API integrations.

So people come to us because we’ve got so much to offer, the building blocks are there for scalability and whether you just want a digital menu board, or you’re starting with the digital menu board, and now you want an interactive video wall, or you want a mobile component to talk to the video, they’re not going to find that in a lot of other software solutions. We are that total package deal and that’s why I think people get really excited when they realize that ‘cause a lot of times they do come for one solution and their eyes open up to everything they can do with our cross-platform application.

So I think that’s a big thing is that we’ve got this total solution, an immersive application ecosystem for digital technology, digital media. Even design firms come to us because it’s a drag and drop WYSIWYG and they don’t have to develop stuff anymore from scratch, they really just still have their design methodology there, their UI/UX, and they’ll still get the exact experience without having to do full development anymore because it’s just a blank canvas and all of the properties, all of the settings, all of the widgets are right there for them to assemble their vision. 

So from a novice to a graphic designer, our platform meets the needs of almost everyone and I really don’t know anyone else that has that story to tell. 

So what you’re saying is you could have a large technology company that’s full of coders and pushes content out to mobile, pushes it out to social channels, pushes it out to the web and they could using your APIs, also push it into a digital signage network without having to do the whole nine yards of your UX and everything, they can just plug into it? 

Tomer Mann: Yep and we’ve actually enhanced a lot, looking at some of the market, where it’s leaning towards more of a web-based, designers and portals and we were historically more of a Windows desktop designer and management system.

So since then, we’ve evolved to have both options. And our web portal has become night and day, especially our new version 6 release, where we have certain features on there.that what we call “quick edit settings” that can be done by someone with zero training to what we call “pro edit”, where someone can now design from scratch and it piggybacks from the web to the desktop version so seamlessly to any kind of player, a BrightSign player, the Samsung Tiezen, the LG Web OS, Android and Windows. I think the only thing we don’t support is Linux, but people definitely see the advantage in simplicity to just make quick edits, quick changes on the fly, and anywhere they’re at.

And so I think the more we’re adding into the web, and taking a lot of the desktop features into the web, the more, again, we’re going to stand apart from everyone else that’s the HTML solution in the world. 

Yeah, I’d been making the argument lately. I just did a presentation the other day, talking about how a lot of the entry-level generalist digital signage CMS platforms are at severe risk of being completely disintermediated because there are platforms out there that are just API rich and don’t require you to even use their front-end or anything. You just work with it the way you work with other things and that’s where I see things going. Is that your sense?

Tomer Mann: Yeah. I think people want things to be autonomous. They want things to auto-sync, they don’t want to have to make changes on a daily basis. So the more a solution can integrate with their existing feeds, their APIs, their management software, their Tableaus vs. their Office 365 vs. their Salesforce vs. Facebook, Instagram. If all of those things can marry very easily together with just  a data source and a token or whatever, and they can be completely hands-off, they’re very happy about that and that’s something that we’ve always had, this API’s strengths really works with anything and people can just be hands-off. The system is going to dynamically update because we’ve added this automation and people love that and so most of the time people are just letting those data sources do a lot of the work for them and then at certain contributor level, cause we got a whole approval workflow scenario, you can you just do like a media zone where they’re changing an image or a slideshow or an MP4 and that’s it, and they’re done in 30 seconds. 

And if a solution doesn’t have those integrations, if they don’t have that simple drag and drop then they’re going to be left behind really quickly.

Yeah, it’s okay for the muffler shops and nail salons and everything, but you’re not going to get very many large clients unless you can do all that. 

Tomer Mann: And we work with Fortune 100 companies, and Fortune 500. We have multi-tenant solutions that have 200 sites worldwide, or 225 offices worldwide with thousands of mixed solutions from video walls, touchscreen video walls, room bookings, mobile wayfinding, the wayfinding, digital communication, or infotainment displays and it’s just a mosh-posh of all these digital components in there.

 They’ve got some central control and then each office has its own localized control as well so yeah, I don’t think a mom and pop shop can deal with that kind of level. 

No, we’ll get into the COVID countermeasure stuff that you guys have developed, but, pre-COVID and now, do you have a sense of what verticals were quite active in 2019 and how things have changed in 2020?

Tomer Mann: Sure. Hospitality very active, 2018-2019 for obvious reasons, no go in 2020. We’re getting here and there. Actually, some of them are coming back in the last couple months, but not a fraction of where they were. Healthcare for obvious reasons has had other focuses in 2020. Education has wanted to do things, but they have no idea when they’re coming back online. Some are trying to reopen, some are like “Nope, we are spiking again, we got to close”. So they haven’t done that well. Those three were really good for us in 2019.

Corporate sas really picked up in the last couple of months, especially since we wrote out that white paper recently about the technology IN the new workplace design from the lobby, you’d leveraging our temperature sensors or temp defense system to now adding the wayfinding and hoteling, so you know where your room is and following a one-way pathway using our modeling rules to hot desking so finding which cubicle you should or can sit at while maintenance and sanitizing and other ones. 

We’re doing voice control or virtual receptionist so you’re able to talk to someone, and then get further information or the delivery service man leaves a package, having the mobile application and now also the desktop notification. So even working from home, we have a solution for them, for an organization or a department to send to their team, either a screensaver or widget information. And I call it the virtual water cooler experience or gossip experience at home. So we’ve literally touched a little of everything in this white paper, did a good job to talk about that and a lot of our partners share that with their corporations and we’ve been really fortunate to have a good uptick in corporate, continuing that Transportation’s down, Shopping malls are obviously down. So I think really Corporate has been like the major bread and butter of 2020, but there are still some amazing projects there. 

Yeah and you would think, with offices clearing out because of COVID restrictions and everything that Corporate would be problematic, but as you note, it will come back and is coming back to some degree and while.

Offices may never quite look the same way as they did, even those people who work from home may be coming in two days a week or whatever and maybe as you say, work at a hot desk instead of a full-time desk and that sort of thing. 

Tomer Mann: Yeah, I think a lot of the property management, the CBREs, the JLLs, the Cushman’s, they created a whole new design around hoteling and hot desking and that experience, and a lot of that is to sanitize certain desks over other ones, to social distance people from each other, so all of that needs a visual experience, not only for the users but also for maintenance, for the admins, and also for security so they’re all aware of what’s happening and it helps with trace tracking and all of that stuff. And then they’re adding sensors into the experience as well. They’re adding occupancy and density control solutions. So all of that’s going to be the technology of the future, I think and it makes sense and it keeps people safe, and is kind of still agile at the same time. 

Right, so tell me about temp defense and protection as a service, in the context of thermal sensing and all that, what distinguishes what you have from the way too many thermal sensor gadgets that drop into my inbox every morning?

Tomer Mann: Did you happen to read the IPVM article by the way recently? They had all of the tests they just did on all of those temperature sensor solutions. They had huge callouts on the Glory Stars, the BMSs, and the Good View and all of those, I’m not going to name some of the names that they made a big list, but let’s just say our name wasn’t on that list. 

The reason for that is all of the solutions out in the marketplace are just basically putting a facelift on a Chinese software application with some sensors. 

Yeah. And it’s just hygiene theaters they say, right? 

Tomer Mann: Yup. There’s no proof in the accuracy. There’s no support, because who are you calling? And a lot of them are just kiosk solutions that literally, they didn’t test the application and just decided to roll this out quickly and some of my system integrators, even partners did the same and I still make fun of them about that.

We saw that experience already in March, cause we were getting hit by Chinese vendors trying to say, why don’t you use our sensors? And I’m like, this is ridiculous. So I immediately said we need to develop our own. So we wanted to have a made in America experience, especially with GDPR and privacy and all of that. We knew that this would happen and we had the foresight to that and we basically pivoted in March by April, we had a working system leveraging FLIR sensors. So a US-based solution. We knew that this company had the best and most accurate sensors for us to work with. We didn’t need a black body for it as well and we just created an algorithm for better accuracies and literally every deployment, we had to go on the fly sometimes and we just continued to enhance the software to make accuracy better, to make the experience better, to add face mask detections that we needed, badge integrations, we needed printing capabilities.

Then we created our own video call server. So we have our own virtual receptionist capability. We wanted voice command into it. So we have the voice commands. You’re not touching the screen with the CDC questionnaires. And then we did a mobile CDC questionnaire that you scan on the sensors. So we continue adding more and more of these features, that I don’t think anyone can say they have that, because they’re relying on a different provider where we are the one-stop-shop.

And so we continue to add more of these features, continue to improve the AI and machine learning and algorithm for our accuracy and I think that’s what’s going to put us apart from everyone else and then ELO has teamed up with us. We’re working with some others, Peerless and Kiosk.com and a lot of display manufacturers, we’re working with Microsoft Surface, to Lenovo, to ELO, to Aida, to MIMO, there’s AOPEN, they’ve all teamed up with us knowing who we are and what we can provide. And so we’ve created a really powerful solution to benefit from safety and agility for business continuity without having to worry about who am I calling or is this real or is it just a fake?

And I think that’s the story and the value add that we want everyone to know. And we’re happy about that and the extra benefits and this is how you and I started in the first place. I’m like, “I need to talk to Dave” because you made a comment about a lot of these solutions are probably just gonna be put in the closet cause they’re not going to be needed anymore. And I was like, no, not 22Miles, because again, you’re buying 22Miles software when you’re buying temp defense and so you can repurpose this application for another solution if you feel like you don’t need sensor temperature-sensing anymore. So if now you want to do interactive wayfinding or an interactive check-in or a voice-based questionnaire, or virtual receptionist, now you’ve got the ELO or whatever display that you can repurpose with our software and you have this CMS to edit your layout, your UI/UX and I think that’s another really powerful value add with us versus anyone else in the marketplace. 

Yeah, I think future-proofing is really important right now because there’s not a whole bunch of drunk sailors spending out there. You really have to think through what you’re going to cut a PO for.

Tomer Mann: Yeah, I think the drunk sailor buying was already done, worked with a few different distributors and stuff like that, and they had a huge influx, like millions of units right away sold, and all of those people are annoyed, some are pissed and now the savvier, more future thinkers are coming to us because they need those extras. Those controls, those badge integrations, the virtual receptionist component is really huge for us. So we’re getting more of that tech-savvy, big picture people coming to us now for those differentiators. 

What’s protection as a service?

Tomer Mann: So TempDefend was where we started and then we realized there was more to the story, there’s more to what we can do and like the virtual receptionist, the voice command, so we decided let’s separate that from TempDefend and make those their own features and their own components.

And so virtual receptionists, where we had team and teams integration, WebEx integration, now we have our own system. The voice command, I think just makes sense for every interactive video wall, so we have that as an extra feature and a plugin or a widget now in our software, that anyone can leverage and then we decided we wanted to do something more so we created what’s called secure mobile control, which is a way to operate a touchscreen or a video wall without having to touch anymore. So we created this remote app for your phone. So you’ve got a touchpad on an on-screen keyboard, and it basically operates as a mouse cursor on any screen, and it’s called secure mobile control and we decided to just give that away for free so this is a feature we developed to just benefit everyone, and it’s just a free software application. So again, all of these things are protective feature sets to avoid or COVID proof or virus-proof your digital signage experience. 

From there we decided our wayfinding with hoteling and one way or scheduled or controlled pathways made perfect sense for social distancing, where you can have data analytics for maintenance or sanitation to know what to sanitize. So now you’re protecting people from cubicles or an office perspective. So with all of this digital technology, we figured out a way to leverage what we had, pivoted with some new features and create this suite of applications moving forward and that’s where protection as a service came from. 

And the “as a service” suggest that it’s something that you basically subscribe to, right? 

Tomer Mann: Yes, a lot of them are going into our SAS model option, or you can add as a service some of these extra features other than secure mobile control, which is free.

Okay. All right. thank you, Tomer. That was great and very interesting. 

Tomer Mann: No, thank you, David. Really appreciate it and always great to connect.