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!

Distributed franchised organizations have unique challenges when it comes to IT support.  Generally overburdened and understaffed IT help support staff manage the network, Point of Sale and other mission critical systems/appliances.   Video adds another layer of complexity.

With a distrubuted buying community purchasing video solutions, IT Help Desk organizations will continue to be the victim without a cohesive strategy.  Increasingly, IT organziations are weighing in and setting standards for video.  They know by doing so, they can manage the installation, configuration and ongoing support (passwords, hierarchy, etc.) with limited allocated resources and time.   MVaaS makes this even easier.

Teriyaki Experience http://www.teriyakiexperience.us/default.htm has deployed a standard set of appliances and systems that each franchise gets when they open their stores.  They ship standard POS, video, standard broadband configuration and other mission critical infrastructure items to maintain consistency, allowing their IT Help Deslk personnel to become experts on these systems, and maintain control of their enterprise.  This strategy has reduced their IT support staffing costs by more than 25% which is vital as they expect to grow their presence in the US from single digits to more than 300 locations in the next three years.

Their proactive, take control methodology is a great roadmap for growing franchise organizations…

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).

Providing further evidence of the growing recognition of MVaaS, Envysion just won the Colorado Technology Association’s (CSIA) Apex Award for Most Innovative New Technology Product.

Most Innovative Technology Product  - This award is presented to the company whose technology-based product consistently delivers verifiable business value. The product must demonstrate a high level of technical innovation and a sustained ability to survive in the marketplace. The winning product of the year will give its customers an exceptional return on investment, cost savings or migration path for future enhancements. The product may be software or hardware and come from any number of industries such as, but not limited to, Internet applications, telecommunications, aerospace, biotechnology, enterprise software, information technology, sports and the arts.

Congrats to the whole Envysion team! For more info on the award, here’s a link to the press release.

Can you change your DNA?  This isn’t a riddle with some clever twist to it – the answer to this question will vary from company to company.  Some companies will be able to and others won’t.

If you look back at my prior post on this topic, I suggested that a company’s DNA was comprised of a number of things: people, process, language, values.  All of these can be changed – you can bring in new people, you can change your processes, you can use different language, you can even change your values (although this one probably requires changing people too)  So if you can change all of these things, clearly you must be able to change your DNA.

While it is definitely possible, actually pulling it off is a bit more complicated.  As an analogy, take the life-long smoker that wants to stop smoking.  It should be easy, right?  All you have to do is stop.  There is a great new TV ad campaign from www.BecomeanEx.org (I can’t find a clip – let me know if you can and I’ll add it here)  that highlights several of the challenges of changing your DNA.  If you haven’t seen any of the ads, the basic premise is that to quit smoking you have to relearn how you do even the most basic of things without having a cigarette.  The ads show a man struggling to get ready in the morning – he can’t figure out how to brush his teeth or put his pants on, he cracks an egg on the stove with no pan.  There is another one of a woman who can’t figure out how to get in her car – she ends up climbing through the back window and crawling over the seats rather than simply opening up the front door.

So how is changing your DNA like quitting smoking?

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…

By now you’ve had ample time to find the market capitalization for both General Motors and Salesforce.com.  Where you surprised?

As of this morning, GM’s market capitalization is approximately $9.8 billion (GM analytics).  Salesforce.com, by comparison, is $8.6 billion (Salesforce.com analytics).  Note that since market cap. is based on the current share price, the values may fluctuate second to second.

GM has a slightly higher market capitalization.  The reason that I asked if you were surprised is the manner in which I presented the information.  I was seemingly leading you to the “surprising” conclusion that Salesforce.com is larger.  But this is not the case – at least not yet.

What is most interesting to me is not that the two company’s have very similar values.  I developed the concept for the series of posts after researching Salesforce.com for the MVaaS business for which I work (Envysion).  Why not understand how the best are doing it?  And it is here that I learned of their impressive valuation.

Rather, I am most taken by the fact that few are shocked by this comparison in the first place.  Is anyone really startled by the parity?  The market places a high premium on technical solutions that they perceive are positioned to drive long-term growth.  SaaS companies, like Salesforce.com, are benefitting from this positoning.  MVaaS companies should benefit as well.