As a Sales and Marketing Executive, I am constantly bombarded by email and offers from companies who want to “make my world better.”  To be honest, it is nice to be the customer once and awhile.  Recently, I received a pricing strategy document that, while a solicitation to consult with our company, was a great reminder that for many companies “pricing strategy” is often a point in time exercise and not generally positioned as a competitive weapon.  I have attached the link for your perusal .

http://managedvideoblog.com/AtengaTenPricingMistakes.pdf

The document offers a series of questions, processes and common mistakes companies make and explores how pricing, when done well, can protect firms from commoditization and help them extract additional value based on market perception of their products, not their own.  A good quick read and some great nuggets in there.

As a continuation of my prior posts (Part 1 and Part 2), I’ll begin with a personal experience.  I live within 5 miles of several Starbucks outlets.  On a pleasant Saturday morning, I decided to stop by one of them.  To my surprise, I was the only customer in the store – at 9:00AM.  This should have been prime time on a Saturday.  The store was staffed with four Starbucks employees, so the store managers were not expecting traffic to be slow.  Is this an example of an underperforming store that will be targeted to close?

Perhaps, but not based on my example.  I say this because while I was the only customer in the store, there were other customers.  They were just not physically in the store.  Rather they were in line at the drive-thru.

I bet that this is not the customer experience that Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz had envisioned for me, or those customers in their cars.

In prior posts, Matt Steinfort has discussed the evolution of video, and Darren Loher has discussed the importance of turning data into useful information.  Certainly video is a valuable tool to assist an enterprise with security.  However, if you view this as its only use, you are severely underestimating its value to your company.

Armed with managed video, Starbucks managers would increase their understanding of what is happening everyday/all the time in locations they are unable to visit.  Utilizing motion-detection and POS search capabilities, they would have access to pertinent activities, turning data to information.  And using clip save and share technology, they would have the capability of sharing their learnings organization-wide.  

Most importantly, their efforts would be directed squarely on improving the experiences of their customers.

This sounds like something from which Starbucks, and other large dispersed organizations, could benefit!

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 3^rd 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.

Previously I described the recent transformation process underway at Starbucks. 

You may have been asking “is this really necessary?”  As evidenced by references in pop culture, the ubiquitous Starbucks outlet is stuff of legend, and comedy.  Why would a company with so many locations need to remake itself?

Answer – a really depressed stock valuation.  SBUX was trading at nearly $38 per share in June 2006.  It is currently trading at around $18 per share.  This type of drop tends to get the attention of top brass.

Newton’s first law applies to physics, but Sir Isaac could just have well been theorizing about high finance.  When a stock has fallen so dramtically, something needs to be addressed.  If you fail to identify and correct the issue, and the stock price will continue in its current path.

Mr. Schultz recognized this, and his re-focus on the “customer experience” is central to his change agenda.  Let me suggest an ideal “external unbalanced force”…

Telecom Ramblings, a blog written by Rob Powell and a must read, has an excellent post about the evolving online video space.  This subject matter is certainly near and dear to us at MVaaS.

Perhaps one of our astute readers could appropriately add to the discussion…

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…

Howard Schultz, the charismatic Chairman of Starbucks (NasdaqGS: SBUX), returned to the role of CEO in January 2008 (Starbucks Press Release January 7, 2008).

In subsequent communications, Mr. Schultz speaks of his “transformation agenda”.  What were their perceived problems?  The following five items are addressed in the press release, copied here verbatim:

·          Improving the current state of the U.S. business by refocusing on the customer experience in the stores, new products and store design elements, and new training and tools for the Company’s store partners to help them give customers a superior experience;

·          slowing the Company’s pace of U.S. store openings and closing a number of underperforming U.S. store locations, enabling Starbucks to renew its focus on its store-level unit economics;

·          re-igniting the emotional attachment with customers and restoring the connections customers have with Starbucks® coffee, brand, people and stores;

·          re-aligning Starbucks organization and streamlining the management to better support customer-focused initiatives and reallocating resources to key value drivers; and

·          accelerating expansion and increasing the profitability of Starbucks outside the U.S., including by redeploying a portion of the capital originally earmarked for U.S. store growth to the international business.

What stands out?  Namely Starbucks intention to refocus on improving the “customer experience”.

Could MVaaS be utilized to help drive the transformation?  You bet!  I’ll explain how in a subsequent post.

In the meantime, enjoy this comedic reference to Starbucks in the film Best in Show (2000).

Drew Mize, vice president of product management and marketing at The Pinnacle Corporation wrote a very interesting short piece on PCI Myths that is worth reading. Unfortunately, its only available via the print copy of the magazine for the Association for Convenience and Petroleum Retailing.

Two of the most salient points are first, that it’s the end-user owner/operator who is responsible for the fines and ongoing penalties if there is a PCI-related issue. This is the case even if your equipment vendor claims they are PCI compliant.

Second, here is a sure-fire way to determine if your equipment or service provider is really PCI aware. Ask them to recommend at least one certified PCI auditor. They should always be able to reference the auditor that performed their PCI audit. If not, “start asking the hard questions!”

Caveat Emptor

Have you given yesterday’s post some thought?  What possible connection am I making between this film and managed video?

Should parents have cameras installed in their children’s bedrooms, made viewable from their favorite restaurant?  Should a public view monitor be made available to all babysitters so they can monitor the well-being of children in real-time?

This is not what I had in mind…although perhaps there is a niche here to fill for some video provider…

The connection I was suggesting has to do with the essence of the babysitter’s situation.  The caller exploited the babysitter’s vulnerability – namely the fear of the unknown.  This is not an indictment of the babysitter, but rather a reality of the situation.  She did not know how the children were at that moment because she hadn’t recently checked.  The children were sleeping upstairs.  She assumed that they were safe.  Only when the caller called did she realize that she and the children were not safe. 

An interesting question arises – Had the caller not phoned to taunt her, how long would she have gone before realizing the danger?

Customers of traditional DVR and VHS video systems must deal with a similar reality.  As long as nothing happens, why worry about whether all of their video systems are operational?  Assume everything is fine, right?  It is only when something happens that they find themselves hoping that their systems were operational. 

Traditional CCTV customers have reported that as many as 50% of their traditional video systems were not fully functional when they did an audit – rendering their investment useless.

A key element of Managed Video as a Service is the ability to monitor the status of all cameras and recorders in real-time, with proactive system notifications alerting the customers of any issues.  When the proverbial caller calls, customers of MVaaS know in advance that their systems are working.  This is something that Jill Johnson could have used.