When it comes to video surveillance, customers face a dizzying array of options and performance claims. From traditional hardware suppliers (cameras and DVR’s) and security integrators to resellers and consultant and of course managed and hosted video providers – each has a value prop and a performance claim. The challenge for a customer as it considers alternatives is how to test these claims, make sure the service works for them, and quantify results so that a rationale business decision can be made.

Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of these claims solution providers were willing to work with the customer to determine what to measure, how to quantify improvement, and educate on how to use the solution effectively? What if this solution provider also took the extra step to actually work with your finance team to quantify and align on the return on investment? Sound like just what the doctor ordered? At Envysion we do just that.

Envysion’s managed video value proposition is to deliver rapid and significant profitability improvement (10-15%) for multi-unit operators. We do this by making video easy to use, putting it in the hands of more people across departments, and focusing operators on actionable business insight. The other half of the value equation is what we don’t do – we don’t strain your IT organization and network so there isn’t the support and overhead cost that can come with technology solutions. The install and set up is plug and play, upgrades happen by just logging in, management or administration resource requirements are non-existent.

For a customer looking at our solution the return on investment equation is pretty straight forward. It is the net change in profit driven by our application less any incremental IT support required (zero in this case) divided by the investment. While the calculation is pretty straightforward we’ve seen tremendous value from rolling out a prescribed pilot process and ROI methodology that both trains customers how to use our solution and then analyzes profit improvement and calculates ROI.

Most innovative solutions face a similar scenario –demos, decks and traditional selling are good, but customers want quantified proof of savings and proof that it works for them. So Envysion decided the best thing was to develop and author an eight week pilot process that literally walks a customer through how to implement our managed video solution and how to use it in day-to-day operations to drive profit improvement. While many companies provide training in the mechanics of a solution (functional how to), our pilot focuses on operational usage. Specifically how an operator would use the service on a day-to-day basis to improve operations and profitability. Along the way we identify any specific customization that would benefit a customer for a full roll-out.

The last bit is the quantification of ROI. While every vendor talks about ROI measurement we’ve learned that few actually calculate it. While the math is not rocket science it helps to have experience collecting and analyzing data and of course in packaging results so they make sense and are digestible. At Envysion we leverage the fact that we’ve got some management consulting experience on our roster and we burn the midnight oil to crank these out.

Its probably not a surprise that customers have responded very favorably to our prescribed pilot and quantified ROI approach. In fact, we have heard nothing but positive feedback from customers. More than a few have said that they have been waiting for years for suppliers to put in the extra effort to do this. Of course what our customers are most excited about are the results that our Envysion managed video service delivers. Typically it’s between 150 – 250 basis points of profit improvement and 300-500% ROI. With those results, we are more than happy to do the  work to make this black and white and show the incredible value we deliver.

The one last area I wanted to report back on from FS-TEC was the Video Surveillance breakout session from Day 1. I wanted to highlight Greg May’s presentation Let Me Show You the $ – The why, what, and how to a successful surveillance system.  Greg is the CTO of Paradigm Investment Group.  Greg’s presentation was a great playbook for multi-unit operators from a customer/operator perspective.  It hit on need, selection, installation, tips and most importantly value delivery.  Full disclosure here, he is an Envysion customer. 

I thought I’d share a couple quotes from his presentation that would be valuable for anyone considering a managed video solution:

Why do I need a surveillance system?
1. To monitor external influences:
• Hold ups; Robberies; Slip and Falls
2. To monitor Staff:
• Employee theft , harassment, worker’s comp issues
• Verify that employees follow operational guidelines
3. To provide assistance for remote technicians
4. Source of training video for best and worst case examples

How you see the $
When video surveillance systems are combined with business intelligence and a consistent monitoring solution, these systems can and will pay for themselves through loss prevention, staff performance and overall operational efficiency.

Great insight Greg, thanks for sharing!

In a recent post I suggested that managed video as a service would see some major customer wins in 2010 that would further validate the appeal and impact of this model.  Clearly I have an inside track on that type of prediction so wasn’t going too far out on a limb as is evidenced by our announcement today of Einstein Noah Restaurant Group’s selection of Envysion for an immediate enterprise rollout to all of their 425 corporate locations.

This is significant for a number of reasons:

First, a leading national restaurant brand decided to invest in our service during the worst economic climate that any of us have ever experienced, one that has hit restaurants and retailers particularly hard.  Without violating any NDAs, I can tell you that they made this decision because they think it will be very good for them financially.  This would not have happened if we were just pitching the traditional video surveillance value proposition with a different architecture and business model – it happened because we were able to demonstrate to them the value that they could bring to their business by utilizing our service.  If it were just a matter of putting in cameras you would see more customers doing just that, regardless of the recent recession.

Second, it is significant as it is another strong endorsement of the impact that businesses can have when they put video in the hands of more than just their security or loss prevention teams.  Einstein’s, like many multi-unit operators, has a very good central LP/Audit team but it is the 100s of people in the rest of the organization that become the force multiplier when armed with the additional insights that we are able to provide.  Many traditional video providers will claim that they CAN be used by other people in the organization – we are demonstrating that 100s and 1000s of other people ARE using the service to drive value, which is a big difference.

Finally, and this is a topic being kicked about on the blogs these days, this win is significant in that it involved absolutely zero contribution from anyone in the traditional video security or systems integrator worlds.  We are an innovative internet startup that is leading the charge in the development of the managed video as a service market – we don’t come from video or security we come from telecom.  We worked directly with a forward thinking customer to understand their requirements and help them implement a service that drives material value for them that happens to use video cameras.  We are managing the entire implementation working with a good partner of ours that does traditional telecom installation services.  Hundreds of recorders and thousands of cameras implemented in a single project and nobody but us and the customer.

Not a bad start to the year I’d say.

Security Systems News had an insightful editorial on the Integrator of the Future on Friday. Coming from observations on the front line of integrators and customers looking at large scale implementations it points out some challenges for today’s Integrators and looks to how they might change for the better. The points that stood out to me were the need to take a more solution/consulting approach as well as the need to build a relationship with customers that evolves over time. Also called on integrators to be more aware of a customer’s network and be mindful of value (you can’t charge for something when you don’t deliver and prove the value to the customer).

You are probably not surprised to hear an ‘Amen’ from the managed video as a service community on these points. At the core of what we do at Envysion is a focus on our customer’s challenge and a focus on delivering breakthrough value in an ‘easy’ package. Of course we strongly believe a managed video service delivered via the ‘as a service’ model allows us to do more for customers and partners.  We also see it differentiating us from other players.

So will the current set of integrators adjust? Will next generation of solution providers fill the void? What we likely all can agree on is that over time the winner will focus on the customer and value delivery.  Customers get to vote with each new installation.

Envysion regularly visits our customers, providing training and receiving feedback about how to improve Envysion video.

A new customer of Envysion Insight last week had a great story to share.  An area manager had just explained to his employees the full system capabilities and how they will be used.  One of his stores saw immediate 20% increase in sales next three days and had only 1/3 of the inventory discrepancy vs normal for the week.  This made a store profitable that was never profitable before.

When a customer tells you are bringing them value, it makes you feel good!

The Envysion team recently hosted a Texas Hold’em tournament.  All employees were invited, along with a couple of special guests.

Congraulations are in order for Dan Caruso, who took first.  Dan got to the final two with a commanding lead, and he never let up.  Perhaps his blogging on the Telecom Texas Hold’em paid off. 

Second place went to Steve Wilson (no relation), who recovered from some early disappointments to dominate the rest of the field.  I specifically remember this early moment from the tournament.  “Ok Steve, what do you have?”  Steve – “Just the six-seven-eight.”

As for me, I placed 11th.  Out of how many?  That’s not really important.  What is important is that the event was enjoyed by all, and my early exit provided me with ample time to catch up on my pizza consumption.

Early in 2008, our company was in the process of re-casting our marketing efforts.  New logo, new tag-line, updated website, etc.

While discussing our tag-line, I recall mentioning to a colleague that every company I could think of had a tag-line, except Starbucks.  In fact, I also noted that they rarely, if ever, advertise.  I certainly don’t recall ever seeing a Starbucks commercial, in print, on the radio, or elsewhere.  Yet still, look at the business that they have built.

Reflecting back on my comments, I would add that they also rarely engage in special promotions and/or discounting.  Sure they have an occasional event, but they have been limited.  Even during these events, I recall hearing of them word of mouth or through free news coverage.  Still, no commercials.

So I was surprised to read about the company’s announcement that they are going to offer “value pairings”.  To me this makes sense.  Move more product, target value conscience new customers, turn the perishable food inventory.  This makes sense to me.  But remember, I’m a finance guy.  As a Starbucks customer, I wonder if this move slightly tarnishes the brand – one that has been built on premium priced beverages.

Have you ever heard a requirement or a request from a customer and been tempted to debate with them as to the merits of said request?  I’ve seen a lot of people and companies that do exactly that and try to convince someone that what they are asking for doesn’t make any sense.  This is clearly not a winning strategy.  Best case, the idea is actually not a good one, but in debating with your customer and convincing them they are wrong you end up alienating the customer b/c you’ve made them feel stupid for asking for something.  Worst case, you alienate the customer AND you miss the nugget of value that was in the request that you clearly didn’t understand.  In both cases you probably risk losing the customer.

I find it best to implement a rule that the Chicago Bain office had as one one of their office codes of conduct.  It was a rule called “The 2% Rule”.  It’s premise was simple – consider the 2% chance that you are wrong.  For a company that prides itself on being data driven, very analytic and being full of highly educated type A self-confident folks, this was an important rule to have.  To consider the 2% chance you are wrong means that even when you are 98% sure you are right, you should consider the merits of the other argument and attempt to think about things from the other perspective.  It’s not that you need to give in or change your mind, rather you should be open to the possibility that you are wrong and listen to the other perspective, giving someone else a chance to make the case for why they might be right.  By listening and giving someone a chance to explain their rationale, you may uncover misconceptions on their part or you may learn something you did not know about the situation that may change your perspective.  Even if you end up being right (and you were 98% sure you were right to begin with!) you are more likely to end up in a good place with whoever held the other position as you took the time to understand their perspective.

Why I am I writing about this today?  I had to catch myself from jumping to a 98% certain conclusion without considering the 2% chance I don’t get it.  The customer request was this: they wanted to be able to see live POS data alongside the video when they stream live video of their location.  Our service is capable of doing this, but we haven’t rolled out this capability b/c we haven’t had a lot of customers ask for it.  My personal view is that it is a feature that sounds good, but really adds very little value.  What are the odds that you see something interesting on the POS when you are watching live video?  How long did you have to sit there and stare at the video to find something valuable happen live?  Why was it important to see it live when it seems so much more efficient to search for whatever you are looking for in a specific transaction or type of event (even if you are searching as recent as the last 5 minutes) and then pull up only relevant video so you don’t have to sit through irrelevant transactions.

I clearly have a personal view of whether this feature should be high or low on our development priorities.  Problem is, a few of our customers (mostly smaller ones) think this is very important.  My personal view is that this is b/c some of the traditional video providers that don’t do robust POS integration and instead do simple text overlay have made this a selling point in their sales pitch to customers.  Set aside for a second the fact that text overlay is a crude way of integrating with the POS and is incredibly limited in terms of the searching and cross-store exception reporting you can do, the one thing it does do is show the transactions live as they are printed to the receipt printer.

When one of my sales people came to me with this request today, my first was reaction was not very open-minded (or polite).  After I remembered the 2% Rule, I asked the salesperson to go back to the customer and dig deeper into the value proposition that they get from viewing live POS transactions so we could understand what they are trying to accomplish.  Not sure we’ll build that into our service or not in the near future (you could say I’m 98% sure we won’t) but I can guarantee you we’ll understand why they want it.

This just in from the North Pole – Santa Claus has chosen Envysion Video to deploy its state of the art MVaaS solution to all of the toy making facilities at the North Pole. 

The North Pole Toy Facility is a complex of over 25 separate toy making locations spread out over 100 square miles.   The facility has over 5,000 elves all working to supply toys to the children of the world. Needless to say it is quite a complex job to manage all of the seasonal worker elves spread throughout the multiple locations.   

As the demand for toys has grown so have the toy making facilities and it has become increasingly difficult for Santa to manage the vast number of elves.  In an effort to improve operations and become more efficient Santa has chosen to install Envysion Video at every location.  Santa can now simply log-in with a user name and password and instantly see live video at any location or do a quick search and pull up video from the last 30 days.

Mrs. Claus has been on Santa for some time now to start spending more time with her, but with the toy demand increasing time has been very limited for Santa.  Santa will now be able to stay home with Mrs. Claus and log-in remotely and be able to make decisions without having to gear up the sleigh and reindeer to travel to the toy facilities in person.   In the words of Santa Claus himself ” Envysion video is so easy to use that I can log-in in a blink of an eye and see how the toys are coming along”.  In the words of Mrs. Claus herself ” Thank you Envysion for giving such a great operational tool to Mr. Claus, it has really freed up his time and we have been spending some great quality time together”.

By utilizing Envysion Video, Santa has more time which makes Mrs. Claus very happy.  All of the reindeer including Rudolf are happy because they also have more time to play reindeer games by not having to drive Santa to the toy facilities as often. The children of the world are especially happy because Santa is so much more efficient that he can easily keep up with the increasing demand for toys.

I’m always glad to see business owners fully leveraging the power of video surveillance. This happened about a month ago in a Denver suburb and highlights a successful theft recovery effort made possible through the use of recorded video.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/nov/14/deputies-seize-85-bottles-suspected-stolen-wine/

Retail shrink is expected to increase over the coming year. Envysion’s MVaaS technology is a great tool for business owners who want enterprise-class video technology without the cost our support needs of today’s traditional systems.