Dan Caruso has an interesting blog series on Unintended Consequences (“UC”) (I, II, III, IV, V).  With Star Trek as the backdrop, he challenges the recent governmental interventions designed to help the current economic situation.  Great posts and also great comments.

This got me thinking about UC in other contexts.  Take MVaaS, for example.  By merely introducing video, certain things change.  Employees may work harder.  Customer may feel safer.  Would-be bad guys may target other stores.  Operators may utilize the system to improve profitability.  These, of course, are the intended benefits.

But are there UC to consider?  Any suggestions?

Sandi Mays has a funny post on her blog Businesstoolsblog.com.  For anyone who lacks patience, there are some useful tips.  Which got me thinking…

I am one of those people who lacks patience.  I can actually feel my body temperature rise when the person two spots ahead of me whips out a checkbook, after all transaction items have been rung up, and starts to fill out the check.  Some still even ask for cash back.  It’s all a flashback to decades gone by that I would rather avoid.

In many cases I just wait it out, with some relative minor side-effects (comment 3).  But there are times that I leave.  As an off-site owner/operator, I would be very interested in understanding the impact of this lost revenue.

Video, trained on the queue and tied to POS data (including wait time data), would allow someone to watch, and quantify, this lost revenue.  It would also provide insight into the mood of the customers waiting.  While some people are polite, others show visible signs of disgust (guilty).  This may be a customer that won’t be back.

01-14-2009, Louisville CO.

At approximately 3pm this afternoon, Envysion Office Manager, Bridget Hamilton, was notified by a fellow building tenant that a suspicious vehicle was parked in a spot normally reserved for this tenant’s moving truck. After dispelling the implication that the suspect vehicle belonged to anyone at Envysion, Bridget quickly reviewed our parking lot video leveraging Envysion’s Motion Mask technology.

With a few clicks of the mouse, Bridget was able to retrieve two-days of recorded video. Within seconds, Envysion’s Motion Mask technology jumped right to the video showing the suspect car entering the lot at 10:08am Tuesday morning. Using a different camera view and the same Motion Mask technology, Bridget witnessed the tenant’s moving truck pulling away at around the same time. Hmmmm…..

At 3:40pm on 1-14-09, Bridget noticed that the moving truck was back in the parking lot and the suspect vehicle had vanished. Again using MVaaS, the perp was witnessed walking from the moving truck back to the suspect vehicle and driving away.

No further attempts were made to contact the suspect and nobody was harmed during the process, just a good lesson learned.

If you have a network (and who doesn’t these days?) IP cameras sure are a lot easier to access than analog cameras.  But this ease of access also makes it easier for un-authorized users to access IP cameras .  Imagine if someone in the back alley could stream video of your back office using your wireless network.

Most IP cameras I’ve worked with lack a number of enterprise grade security features.  They need to implement SSL for encryption and they need to integrate into a central authentication system such as RADIUS or LDAP.   However, even without those technologies, there are a couple of basic things one can do to secure your cameras.

The first thing to do is to change the factory default passwords.  The latest firmware revisions for some cameras force one to configure a password the first time a camera is accessed after being powered up.  That’s good.

The next level of security that might be worthwhile is to configure a VLAN just for video surveillance network.  Done correctly, this will help mitigate several risks when IP cameras don’t have good security features built-in.  This will add to administrative overhead and possibly additional equipment costs, but it’s not as high overhead as some of the next additional steps.

To additional key elements of security that are often missed are to:

- Perform logging on your network by having all devices log important events, scanning and alerting on these events.  (Especially logins, configuration changes, etc)

- Regularly audit your network infrastructure to make sure it’s configured correctly

Both of the above tasks can be large undertakings given the large number of IP networkable devices in an IP video network.

Additional layers of security that are possible, but have signficant overheard are MAC based access control takes you even further.  802.1X technology offers a strong way to control who can plug into your network.  802.1X offers perhaps the strongest layer of security for getting access to a network, it is also difficult to manage and operate.  So difficult that it’s not seen much deployment in networks. There are some companies like Cloudpath networks who offer a management tools for wireless networks.  Few cameras support this (Axis with firmware v4.4+ does however).

Today begins the post-Christmas retailing season.  While sales have been sluggish (understatement?), retailers will no doubt be inundated this weekend by those looking to scoop up bargains or return/exchange merchandise.

I’ve had the displeasure of being part of this annual tradition in the past.  The returns desk takes on the look of a busy dry-cleaning store, with unfolded clothing draped over empty shopping carts.  A truly horrifying scene for those of us hoping for only a quick visit.

While waiting in line, I’ve often wondered how retailers maintain order.  How much is lost in the hustle?  Perhaps a better question:  How much could be saved by recording video of these transactions, linked to the return receipts, for discreet loss prevention auditing after the events?

This is one of the compelling value propositions available for MVaaS customers.  It may not shorten the lines, but it would help to protect the bottom line.

Fall is my favorite time of year; the leaves are changing, it’s cooling down and most importantly it’s football season.  For the past few years I’ve anticipated the start of the season with much more enthusiasm.  The reason for this new found enthusiasm has been my involvement in a fantasy football league.  Fantasy football, takes something that I already have a passion for and makes it even more exciting by giving me a reason to be involved in several games in order to track my team’s performance.  It also gives me the opportunity to put on my GM hat and make decisions that can help or hinder my team’s performance. 

Effectively managing a team requires time, effort and an understanding of information (e.g. trades, injuries, trends) that is crucial to a successful season.   A GM has a lot of information to dissect each week in order to give their team the best chance to win.   The first couple of seasons I found it difficult to keep up with all of the trades, added/dropped players, injuries and the progress of free agents, which one can add to their team if someone on their team has a bye week or isn’t performing.  Finally, I activated a feature on the Fantasy Football web site that I had never used before, “Alerts”.  The second that I enabled this setting I became a much better GM and could make decisions that would affect the outcome of the game days in advance.  The alerting function of this website takes information that is being gathered about each NFL player and proactively alerts (sends and email) each GM based upon criteria they have designated as important.  A GM can be alerted to set their line up, player updates, league trades, and scores.  This information can be vital to the planning of your starting lineup each week and if acted upon can give your team a competitive advantage.

MVaaS acts in much the same way as the Fantasy Football website.  Through the integration of software based business applications e.g. POS systems, access control, temperature sensors etc. an owner or manager can set up reports with specific business rules, that if broken, can generate an alert that proactively prompts a user to log in and review video from a specific location.  For example if I have an MVaaS solution integrated with my POS system I can define a rule that if a site has more than ten voids in a day I want to be alerted.  This type of capability can come in very handy when making tough decision about your Fantasy Football team, and more importantly your business.  I find it to be a great asset to be able to make decisions based upon up to date information.

What does “customer-focused” really mean? To me, it is a foundational pillar of a successful business strategy. The challenge is carrying the intention to be customer-focused throughout every aspect of the business. Every member of the organization must have the customer at the center of his or her priorities. Even those who may not see themselves as having an impact on the customer experience must have a line of sight to the customer experience and a clear understanding of how their role ultimately impacts customers.

Easier said than done. The most customer-focused companies are easy to spot when it comes to consumer products and services. The top performers are familiar brands, such as Nordstrom and Apple. Can we apply best practices from these top consumer brands to business-to-business marketing? I think so. I believe it comes down to clarity of focus on the customer experience:

1. Make it easy to understand your product or service, and be clear about what problem it will solve for the customer.
2. Set expectations up front – how long will it take to deliver/install/build? What are the system requirements to ensure seamless integration?
3. Deliver on what you commit to, within the time frame you commit.
4. Reinforce the good decision your customer made to buy from you by providing outstanding follow up during the post-purchase window (within ~30 days of purchase/install/delivery).
5. Monitor ongoing customer satisfaction through client care, follow up communication, and surveys.
6. Act on customer feedback. If you’re not going to do anything about feedback, then don’t ask for it.

To deliver consistently on all 6 facets, everyone from Product Development, to Service Delivery, to Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Accounts Payable is involved. Organizations that successfully focus their entire team on the customer not only have satisfied customers, but they also give their employees a sense of making a difference and doing a job that matters to the customer – and to the company’s bottom line.

Do you remember reading George Orwell’s “1984″? It’s the story of an anti-utopia, with one of the central characters being ”Big Brother,” a creepy omniscient force that ensures all citizens follow the oppressive rules of the regime.

On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

In conversations about MVaaS, the notion of “Big Brother” often arises. In presenting the concept of watching what’s going on in several locations without being detected, we indicate that it’s unlike “big brother,” in that virtually visiting your locations does not necessarily have negative intent. Applied strategically, MVaaS is not meant to strike fear into those being watched; rather it’s a powerful tool for managers to view their operations and to make improvements based on what they see and analyze.

MVaaS is not a form of Big Brother; it’s smart business.

MVaaS, as has been discussed in numerous previous blog posts, provides many valuable loss prevention benefits.  Most recently, one of our channel managers relayed a recent success story of a client who recently installed Envysion’s managed video.  The hamburger franchisee was looking at point of sale reporting from the previous night and saw a three hour drop in sales at the drive-thru.  Actually, during those three hours there were no reported sales at the drive-thru, to be more accurate.

Prior to installing video, a grand inquisition would have taken place, with the manager questioning employees and having little leverage in the situation.  Instead, the manager saved the clips of of the employees taking the order to the hosted Envysion “my clips” video library, saw them not ringing up the sale or voiding the sale and delivering the food to friends and family members.  Leverage was reversed and the employees were terminated.   The manager will move forward with integrating the POS with video which will allow him to receive alerts when thresholds that he sets are exceeded, such as voids, no sales, etc…  This will speed reaction time and ROI as he will be able to act faster next time.

In a previous post, I stressed the importance that leaders act decisively, often with imperfect or incomplete information.  This is an imperative, and is not going away.

Still, smart business people desire the best information available at the time, so as to help them formulate the optimal course of action.  Operating on “hunches” or “gut” alone is not a recipe for success.  It may work from time to time, but long-term success is usually reserved for those who are able to quickly synthesize information (knowing what’s important, what’s not, and what it means) before acting decisively.

An organization’s video holds a wealth of information.  Some important, some not.  Tapping this raw data and quickly turning it into useful information is obviously the key.

The following questions come to mind, and I am hopeful that this sparks some interesting dialogue in our comments section:  Is it reasonable to assume that most operators have the time (or know-how) to turn their video into actionable information?  Is this a job better suited for third party specialists (e.g., MVaaS providers, LP consultants)?