Perhaps one of the most overlooked departments that can benefit most.

Marketing

Wikipedia opens its definition of marketing with a simple statement: Marketing is used to identify the customer, to keep the customer, and to satisfy the customer.  Envysion’s MVaaS virtually transports marketing representatives to the point of purchase. Want to know who is purchasing a new menu item or redeeming the latest promotion? Envysion’s Insight service with POS integration makes this possible. Run a report and review video focused on a specific coupon redemption and understand where to target your next round of advertising dollars. Also, gain insights on who is buying a la carte instead of combos. Are your drink and side options leaving a specific demographic in the cold?

Large national brands have advertising budgets in the millions and include everything from TV and radio to print and point-of-presence (POP) materials. Ever wonder if the POP materials shipped to several hundred locations were put up in time and in the right place to coincide with the TV, radio and local marketing strategy? Envysion allows for instant review of all sites from a single username and password through our SaaS web interface.

Our quest has highlighted the use of MVaaS in two areas: Human Resources and Training.  As we continue our discovery of  managed video benefits beyond security, we turn to a department common in heavily franchised enterprises that are tasked with protecting a big piece of the revenue stream.

Revenue Assurance

Large multi-location franchisors generate a significant amount of revenue through royalty fees. Representatives within revenue assurance are tasked with ensuring that royalty revenue is maximized from each franchise location. Many focus on excessive voids, discounting and low average checks to help identify and categorize under performing locations. With Envysion’s POS integration, a revenue assurance scorecard allows representatives to quickly identify the most at-risk locations based on a weighted risk average. MVaaS accomplishes this at an enterprise level, allowing drill-down into the details, video and receipt view of suspect transaction patterns. The added benefit to the franchisee is increased revenue and profitability.

Yesterday we covered how Human Resources leverages Envysion to assist in incident review, documentation and collaboration. Collaboration is a key element to the widespread adoption of MVaaS throughout an enterprise. Today we will focus on another area that leverages video collaboration to consistently deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.

Training

Sharing best practices across a large enterprise in a consistent manner is a daunting task. Using video, training organizations can identify the best, and worst, examples of workplace behavior. This can include: opening and closing procedures, employee appearance, customer interaction, safety and security, loss prevention, prep, product, packaging and more. Leveraging MVaaS, training departments can archive video into categories to be accessed at anytime by a controlled group of users. Think of it as an online content delivery system of best practices to any member of your organization.

In my last post, MVaaS – Video Convergence for the entire Enterprise, I touched on one of the great benefits of Envysion’s MVaaS technology – getting meaningful video and corresponding  data at the fingertips of thousands of users without straining the network or IT resources. Here is the first of several real-world use cases for different organizations who currently leverage Envysion on a daily basis.

Human Resources

Large multi-location enterprises employ thousands of individuals. Human resources representatives spend countless hours and dollars investigating claims that potentially carry enormous liability. Seamlessly getting incident-supporting video and data into the hands of HR representatives saves both time and money. Using Envysion, representatives can investigate specific situations with recorded video, and observe specific individuals with live video. For example, if complaints are received regarding a specific employee in the workplace, MVaaS allows for investigation of the allegations from corporate headquarters, the home office or in the field using an air card. Offsite storage of video within Envysion’s secure data center allows for online incident documentation without taxing corporate IT resources. Ever wanted to share video securely and discretely with colleagues and management? Envysion’s Groups feature makes this possible, ensuring your video is seen only by those you want.

Over the past few years, Envysion has pioneered Managed Video as a Service and changed the way large multi-location enterprises deploy and utilize video across their entire organization. One of the most powerful skills we’ve leveraged during this time is also one of the most basic – listening, We listen closely to our customers and prospects alike, inviting them to participate in our development roadmap discussions.

Not only does listening help shape our technology, but our service-oriented approach as well. Teaching our customers best practice utilization ensures that they maximize the return on investment with measurable and material results. This is a commitment we make during the sales process and one we follow through on throughout our partnership.

Over the next week, I’ll share exactly what I mean by “Video Convergence for the entire Enterprise” with real world use-case examples from several different areas within a company. Getting meaningful video into the hands of thousands of people within a single company with no strain on IT or network resources is not a trivial endeavor. MVaaS makes this possible.

It’s one thing to think you have a solid, professional sales team that is effectively representing your company.  It is much better to hear exactly that from a prospective customer!

We just wrapped up attending the Food Services Technology Conference this week (See Carlos’ post on the key takeaways)  We had our small but incredibly productive sales and marketing team at the show looking to establish and grow relationships with some of our key target customers.  One of these prospective customers, Todd Michaud, thought so highly of our sales team that he posted about us in his weekly article on the site StorefrontBacktalk.  He’s talking about our own Dawn Lampert, Director of Sales, who is one of the best sales people I have ever encountered.  Great job Dawn!

If you are reading this and are a sales professional that reads his post and thinks “that’s me!”, shoot us an email.  We’re hiring but we have a really high bar and only want people who have the “hustle” that Todd describes in their DNA.

I’ve been thinking a bit about operations science and quality assurance for a few weeks now.  I think there could be some parallels to performing loss prevention.

If no one counted the cash at the end of the day, how much would go missing?  The answer: you can’t tell if you’re not measuring it.

So one must at least collect some information.  Great, now you have an idea of how much might be missing.  If you collect that data over time, and compare it, you may also find out if you’re doing better or worse.  But one must go further to actually get to the root cause and determine accountability.  This is where video is an important complement to one’s point of sale data.

If one can consistently demonstrate the ability to detect and correct a problem, then the corrective action provided is not simply a momentary act of containment.  In operations science it’s most desirable to create an “irreversible corrective action” (ICA).  The goal of an ICA is to create a solution to a problem that eliminates the problem in such a way that it cannot reoccur.  However an “ICA” can be invalidated when change occurs.  So when dealing with change, (such as new employees, new sales promotions, new application features, new processes and so on) the corrective action may need to be modified or be re-introduced.  Quality control and loss prevention are a continuous process.

If you just install cameras and a POS monitoring system, but never look at it,  at best you won’t know if you’re reducing “shrink”.  At worst, a reduction in shrink is likely only temporary as people figure out that it’s not being used.    If you want continuous prevention, your employees need to know the system exists and see it being used.  You need a easy, quick, repeatable process you can continously apply.  One that tells you what to look for and where, so you don’t have to spend too much time searching.

In a recent post, I wrote about the economic impact of hitting and not hitting store level KPIs. It’s imperative that everyone involved in the business process have the same goals in mind – those that govern daily behaviors towards the ultimate reward of profitability. This includes, management, staff and yes, vendors (or as I like to call them, business partners).

Let’s face it, operating a profitable restaurant or retail business is a difficult task. Success lies in the ability to flawlessly execute upon well defined business processes and procedures with little to no variance, every day. The wage level employed in these environments is often ill-equipped to consistently execute due to inexperience or lack of maturity. What one gives up with inconsistency is sales and expense, and that translates directly to decreased profitability.

There are several tactics to ensure the proper beahviors are on display at all times to ensure flawless execution. I personally advocate the following: Training, followed by monitoring, measurement, correction and improvement. This cycle repeats itself indefinately in the spirit of a constantly improving business process.

So how does MVaaS help one achieve KPIs? It’s one of the five steps noted above – monitoring. Leveraging MVaaS in a routine store audit process will ensure that behaviors which compromise the ability to achieve KPIs are eradicated from the business process. I will follow up soon with several specific examples of how this works, the economic impact to the bottom line and ultimately, the Return on Investment.

Recent discussions with current clients and prospects have primarily focused on one simple question – “How do you measure success?” Nearly all companies have a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are used as a health check and management incentive. Ultimately, they are created and measured to ensure one thing – profitability.

What is the economic impact if these KPIs are not achieved? What is the economic impact if they are? I do know one thing – hitting them all at the same time in a month/quarter is a very difficult task. When it did occur, it was as if the planet and stars aligned and there was a pot of gold in the bottom line of our P&L. When it didn’t occur, we we’re lucky to break even after an entire month’s effort.

Stay tuned. I will explain how partnering with Envysion’s MVaaS helps retail operators and management achieve KPIs across the entire enterprise.

I’ll caveat this by stating the Today Show is not my top source for hard hitting news. However, they featured a news story this morning that illustrated the power of video surveillance in a residential setting. Would it be possible for these guys to plead not guilty?