Turning Technologies Lets Audiences Speak Their Minds

Company:

Headquarters: Youngstown, Ohio

Technology Sector: Hardware

Key Product: TurningPoint

Year Founded: 2002

Number of Channel Partners: About 20 in the U.S.

Ideal Channel Partner: Education- or government-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: Turn any presentation into an interactive session with Turning Technologies, which offers products that gather audience data.

The Lowdown: Turning Technologies specializes in audience response technology, and you'll find its products everywhere from K-12 classrooms to corporate boardrooms to "America's Funniest Home Videos."

Audience polling, distance learning and virtual meetings all are sweet spots for the company, which targets its products at education, government and corporate environments.

Turning Technologies' product suite includes both audience response devices and software, which are available as bundled hardware-plus-software kits. Its TurningPoint software is an add-on to Microsoft PowerPoint that enables presenters to poll and request responses from an audience from within PowerPoint presentations.

Another version, TurningPoint AnyWhere (with its companion ResponseCard AnyWhere), allows for similar interactive presentation capabilities in any PC or Mac application. The company also offers TestingPoint (Microsoft Word integrated software), VantagePoint (offering student data assessment management for K-12 teachers and administrators) and QuestionPoint (a curriculum development tool specific to K-12). ResponseWare solutions also are available for mobile devices such as Apple's iPhone.

Turning Technologies has had a VAR program since its founding in 2002, but over seven years has shifted its sales emphasis. Initially, Broderick said, its products moved mostly through resellers, then largely through a direct model, and then, as the company furthered its reach into education niches, government accounts and other specialized areas needing bundled solutions, determined a blended approach would be its strongest.

"I think what we've learned is to take the best of both worlds," said Mike Broderick, CEO of Turning Technologies. "In a lot of higher education, we find direct sales to be our best approach. But in the government arena -- in military in particular where they're used to buying through specific subcontractors -- we like to leverage our resellers."

Broderick said Turning Technologies is actively recruiting resellers, especially internationally and for the government sector.