Ian Crosby

1. With several years of experience, you are currently sales and marketing director at Zytronic. Can you tell us about this position and about your journey and professional experience?

I’m fortunate to have helped develop and now lead a skilled, global team of sales and marketing specialists. Although we are a small/medium sized developer of specialised touchscreens, I believe there will always be a place for similar, flexible manufacturers that can offer a more personalised service.

My personal journey has taken me from my origin in Yorkshire UK (home of the world famous ‘pudding’), to living/working in Johannesburg, London, Milan and New York.

2. How does Zytronic distinguish itself from other companies in the same area?

Like many smaller companies operating globally, we have to identify our unique selling points (USP’s) and then continually try to highlight how this can help our customers.

In the case of Zytronic, this is the proven reliability, unrivalled durability and ease of product customisation that our touchscreens can offer compared to our peers.

3. What project would you highlight from your vast portfolio?

I guess one well known Zytronic touchscreen that many people may have used in recent years in different countries is https://zytronic.co.uk/case-studies/detail/coca-cola-company/.

4. Do you think there are still many unexplored foreign markets?

Yes, we constantly check the market potential of other countries – especially in less industrialised regions of the world. Some of these areas are still overly price focussed (and suffer the cost of failed installation, unreliability and regular replacement at the expense of customer dissatisfaction).

However, this gradually changes as the true ‘value’ of a product, especially in essential/critical applications becomes apparent. For example, a cheap pair of socks can be bought and replaced easily, but if you can’t withdraw cash late at night to catch a train or taxi home because the ATM or ticketing kiosk touchscreen isn’t working (and Uber is busy/not operating), then touchscreen reliability is very important.

5. How does Zytronic contribute to environmental sustainability?

Zytronic has been ISO14001 accredited for several years and we are proud that we take ownership of as many of the touchscreen manufacturing processes internally as we can, rather than conveniently ‘outsourcing’ them to invisible 3rd party suppliers. This means we can confidentially assure our customers, partners and shareholders of the integrity of the product we supply.

6. What projects are you currently working on? Can we say that the future is technological?

COVID-19 has created a huge change in many parts of the global economy. Zytronic are not immune from these changes – contact to contactless, cash to cashless, and more.

We have, and will continue to try to foresee and respond to these trends, where possible, for example our latest ZyBrid® hover touchscreen technology for self-service and public use applications that eliminates the need to touch the screen (and will work with gloved hands in either case).

7. Knowing that PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS is a worldwide recognized portuguese IT company, manufacturer of indoor and outdoor multimedia kiosks, self-service equipment, digital billboards, interactive tables and other digital solutions for all kinds of sectors and industries, how do you think interactivity can be a factor of differentiation and innovation these days?

The merits of self-service vs. face-to-face interaction has been a hotly discussed topic this year. PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS and similar companies delivering interactive solutions are trying to deal with this rapidly changing situation, literally – the headline grabbing brands and their activities capture our attention on the mainstream newsfeeds, but it’s the smaller, long proven companies that put in the ‘hard yards’ in many of these consumer facing markets.

Incremental Innovations in interactivity will continue to move these applications forward and benefit us all in our day-to-day lives.