Back when I was a consultant – feels like a hundred years ago now – there was a movement towards what Jack Stark called Open Book Management. This was popularized in a book of the same name by John Case back in the mid 90’s. Below is a picture from today’s all-hands meeting in which our CEO Matt Steinfort is demonstrating our weekly version of open book management. The purpose of this weekly all-hands meeting is to keep everyone informed about the goings on at Envysion. Specifically we all learn where the company is at from a sales funnel, installation, development and operations perspective.
Matt Steinfort addresses Envysion
I think this type of exchange is critical in any company but especially a start-up. I admit to a bit of bias here since I do daily scrums with my development group but I can tell you from much past experience that frequent, open and consistent messaging to employees goes a long way towards building a cohesive organization. Additionally, when everyone has all the information it’s much more likely that they’ll make the right decision.
You can’t see it in this picture but there’s a video camera on the table there by Matt. We use it along with a conference bridge to make remote folks feel like they are in the room with us as well. In this way we’re eating our own dog food so to speak.
I’m curious to know if there are other opinions about open book or the use of MVaaS for meetings like this.
As our discussion continued, my friend let me know about another employee who was terminated for behavior that would never have happened had he been on site. He informed me that he and his wife just found out they’re having a boy. With his wife 5 1/2 months pregnant, he’s trying to spend a bit more time at home. The ease of access, ease of use and bandwidth friendly aspect of Managed Video allows him to view all locations at the same time without worry of bogging down the network.
While cooking dinner at home and casually watching two of his three locations, he noticed the cashier missing, leaving the entire storefront unattended. He placed a call to the store and instead of the cashier answering, a cook did. As it turns out, the cashier was taking a mid-evening nap in the back out of camera view. The cashier was terminated the very next day.
Managed Video allowed the owner to easily perform multiple, unannounced store visits to quickly access the health of his operations. As it turned out, a house cleaning was in order and expectations were reset with the existing crew at all locations. Many employees expressed their gratitude but at the same time confessed they didn’t want to risk “getting someone in trouble” by bringing these issues to the attention of management.
Staffing will always be a challenge at this level. Owners can’t be everywhere at once but they can gain visibility into nearly every aspect of their operations with a properly executed Managed Video strategy.
I sat across the table from my friend as he stated “I had to let go of three people this past month based on what I’m seeing with your video. It’s heartbreaking to see what goes on on despite the generosity and training I put towards my staff”. He used the video to watch employee behavior quickly deteriorate within minutes of stepping foot out the door.
In this specific case, he quickly logged on and pulled up multiple-site views of live video from his single managed login. On a single screen, he was able to watch an employee from location1 leave and show up 10 minutes later at the back door of location 2. Following a quick exchange, the employee was back at location 1, all the while on the clock. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
Through subsequent reviews, the same employee mysteriously disappeared for twenty minutes following the departure of the owner. This time, the owner stayed on-site and witnessed the employee leave, use a narcotic and then re-enter the building. Upon confrontation, it was confessed where it came from (see “exchange” above). Tough to refute the video.
Most disturbing was the fact that this was not a line cook or delivery driver but the shift manager responsible for employee safety and overall customer experience. Both employees were immediately terminated. Isolated incident in the retail/restaurant industry? Unlikely.
Some owners choose to turn a blind-eye to this activity. Others want to weed out the problems, reduce their liability and create a safe environment for employees and customers. If you’re in the latter camp, Managed Video allows for viewing of live and recorded video across multiple sites from a single interface – on demand.
That’s two of the three. My next post will focus on the other example of how this owner used managed video to clean house.
I recently had lunch with a multi-unit operator. While he’s no stranger to the restaurant business, he is fairly new to multi-unit ownership and confessed it’s much more stressful than he imagined. I asked him what specifically, wondering if it was increased food costs or perhaps a downturn in sales. He stated it was labor - not necessarily the cost of labor but the quality of labor.
I asked if it helps to use the managed video application to understand the trouble spots and share best practices. His response was immediate and it carried well through our entire meal. I wasn’t shocked by anything he told me but the subject matter is certainly that which no restaurant owner likes to talk about. In a follow up post, I’ll dive into the details behind the sleepless nights and how managed video is a weapon against labor apathy and liability.
If you sample lists of numbers from many real-life sources of data, what is the probability that the leading non-zero digit from any of the numbers is 1?
Logic would suggest that the answer to be 1 divided by 9, or 11.1%. But it’s not.
Rather it is an astonishing 30.1%!
This doesn’t sound right, but it is. Based on the work of mathematicians, most notably Dr. Frank Benford, it has been proven that the distributions for many sets of numbers are not uniform. In fact, this theorem is so prevalent that it is the basis for many fraud detection programs, including some used by taxing authorities coast to coast.
If you are now expecting the mathematical proof, I’m sorry to disappoint. I’m not smart enough to try to explain this further. Just ponder this. There are teams of PhD’s at the ready to tackle fraud issues by applying complex mathematical formulae and supercomputers. Alternatively, we could install a smartly devised MVaaS solution to add 18% to our profits. Now that’s a proof that we all can understand.
In my last post I highlighted how quickly a business can benefit from viewing video. I gave a couple real life examples of how some of our customers have been able to obtain insights almost instantaneously by having the right people view video at the right time.
If you are new to the video space, this may seem like a pretty impressive capability. However, if you have even a little bit of experience with traditional video surveillance solutions (and because you are reading this blog I’m guessing you do) you are likely saying, “yeah sure I get the point, but this is a blog about MVaaS and even the most limited DVR with remote access can give you that same benefit – does MVaaS do anything differently to enable this?”
I’ll use the same two examples to make my argument that yes, MVaaS does enable a higher level of value than a traditional DVR solution in even this basic capability.
Let’s start with the first example. In that example, the CEO looked briefly at video of a specific site and pointed out a violation of their standard store layout. Had that CEO looked at that same video from any system, whether it was an old traditional DVR or an IP camera that was streaming directly to his browser, he would have gotten that same insight. In this regard, an MVaaS solution is no different. What IS different with an MVaaS based solution is the likelihood that that same CEO will look at video from additional sites in the future. MVaaS solutions eliminate the complexity and manual activity surrounding the set up of users and access. When we showed the CEO one of his sites, all we did was log in as the CEO (who had been set up to have access to all sites in the company’s domain) and he immediately had access to all of his locations, without having to add individual sites, without having to know a single recorders’ username or password or IP address. If the company was expanding and adding sites, no one had to do anything – as soon as the new site came up and the CEO logged in again – he would see the new site. With many traditional DVR solutions, a user gets access to a new site by adding that site to the software that they have downloaded onto their computer and configuring the username, password and sometimes IP address of the new location. It is highly unlikely in that scenario that a CEO will have access to all of their locations at any given time unless someone is hijacking his laptop every time they build a new location and every time the company needs to change the log in information for an existing site. By simplifying the adminstration of access rights and eliminating any manual configuration required, MVaaS ensures that the right people (in this case the CEO) have access to all of the right locations when they want it.
In the second example, I discussed having shown two LP professionals a video clip of the cash handling in one of their locations. Again – this is not rocket science, had the same LP professionals seen the same video from a traditional DVR, they certainly would have made note of the same issue. What I didn’t talk about was where we were when I showed them the video and what we did with the video to ensure that they could save it and share it with their operations group. We happened to be at NFSSC (a major loss prevention conference) in Dallas and I was showing them the video on a computer that was part of our trade show booth in the middle of the hotel conference center. Before you get all riled up, yes I understand that many DVRs can be accessed via the web from pretty much anywhere and that this is not unique to MVaaS. The differentiation I am speaking about came after we saw the video. We had logged in as one of the LP folks and were looking at one of her sites. We found the incident and then wanted to save the clip so that she could review it with management the next day when she returned from the show. She didn’t want to leave the clip on the recorder at the store location and the file would have been to big for me to download to the trade show PC (I didn’t have a thumb drive and their email server wouldn’t let a file that big through) So instead, we saved the video clip into the network (into her secure MyClips library) with a description and some comments so that she could access it when she returned and share it via a link with others that she wanted to see it. The file upload happens in the background, so she logged out and left before it was even finished. MVaaS, as opposed to most traditional DVRs, not only enables users to access their video from anywhere, but also enables them to share video by saving it off of the recorder into a secure and private library of clips that the user can share and distribute as they see fit.
I absolutely love speaking with restaurant owners about the benefits of video surveillance. It helps that as a past owner myself, I understand exactly how video helps an operation. But help trim food costs?
Restaurant menus are thoughtfully constructed with food cost, gross profit and gross revenue in mind. The menu layout is designed to psychologically draw the eye to the most profitable items. Understanding the exact portion sizes of each menu item and exercising portion consistency in the kitchen are paramount to success.
What happens when portion consistency breaks down? Through the use of video I quickly realized that the Path of Least Resistency rules supreme. I saw an employee, I’ll call him “Skip”, top a pizza with cheese by hand as opposed to weighing the cheese on a scale first. Let’s do some quick math on the impact of just 1 extra ounce of cheese per pizza:
1 pound whole milk mozzarella – $2.35
1 ounce – $.147
3,000 pizzas per month @ $.147 = $441.00
What happens to your operation when exact portion controls are not adhered to? The entire cost structure of the menu breaks down, brand consistency suffers and ultimately profitability tanks.
How many “Skips” do you have in your operation? For about $5 per day, you can quickly find out.
I gave you all a short justification yesterday about why I am not in the hardware business. A very important aspect of software, especially software as a service is to provide for others to use your software in ways that you never intended.
One of the best, recent API success stories is the API at twitter. It provides a very easy paradigm for 3rd parties to access twitter’s functionality. It is so good, that according to Biz Stone the Co-Founder of Twitter, the API generates 10 times the traffic to the site as the actual UI that they provide.
The most important aspect of this API is that is provides a way for anyone on the Internet to embed management of tweets in their app. This allows developers to use twitter in ways never imagined.
Another view point on the importance of APIs is provided by Brad Feld in his simply put: No API? You Suck.
So, Sony, if you had provided a little bit more flexibility in your firmware, my son wouldn’t be trying to hack a PSP with a soldering iron.
What would an API to a MVaaS – service provider look like? I’ll explore that in an upcoming series.
That’s a comment that is sure to get your attention, especially when it comes from your 12 year old son on a Sunday afternoon. This question, I needed to investigate. It turns out my son Ted was intent on hacking his PSP to give it new functionality that its creators (Sony) had not provided.
He showed me a YouTube video that explains how to crack open the standard PSP battery and then using a soldering iron, remove a pin from one of the chips on the attached circuit board. This apparently creates a “Pandora” battery which then lets you, eventually, be able to put custom firmware on the PSP (which lets you do new and cool things with your PSP).
After explaining to Ted that yes, I do have a soldering iron, but unfortunately, no, I have never “fixed” anything with it – I have only further destroyed any object I attempted to repair – I consented to some exploratory work.
The first step is to crack open the battery case. We did this in our garage together. I was holding a chisel and suggested to Ted (after 2 blows with a rubber hammer) to try “hitting it harder”. The following immediately ensued: a “zap” sound, a spark, and smoke. The battery got very warm and we decided to stop exploration.
What does this have with software or MVaaS? You know the drill…
Check out this link to a news story about some thugs who use ‘thong’ underwear as their disguise in a robbery. Their actions were filmed on video and have been shared with law enforcement.
Thong bandits
If this was filmed using MVaaS, which provides you the ability to save clips, what do you name the saved file? Thong? Darwin Award Contenders?
In any event, I can think of quite a few clever but inappropriate comments. I will only add that this is truly a sad day for pantyhose manufacturers…
