Envysion puts money where mouth is

LOUISVILLE, Colo.—While many make claims about the return on investment end users can expect with a modern video surveillance system, managed services provider Envysion is letting end users test drive its service and helping them calculate the ROI with real numbers. For six weeks, potential end user clients at quick-serve restaurants, retail outlets, and other transaction-based chain locations employ Envysion's video services, based on an on-site NVR and cloud-based software that ties POS exceptions to video clips, and then calculate the difference in top-line sales between those sites testing the service and a control group of locations not employing the service.

If they like the results, they sign up for what is usually a 36-month contract for Envysion's services. If they don't like the results, Envysion takes its boxes and goes elsewhere.

But, said Jeff Gannon, Envysion's director of business development, the results have been very positive so far. In one case study involving a 900-location national retail brand, the company realized at least 1.5 percent greater net sales and realized a 10 percent increase in profitability, equating to a six-month return on investment.

In another trial period involving a quick-serve restaurant, the trial group of locations realized an average check increase of 24 cents over the control group, which equaled a 2.9 percent increase in net sales. Of all trial periods, Envysion said its minimum impact is a .8 percent increase in sales, with the average coming in at 1.9 percent.

Because Envysion's service is based on collating video evidence with exceptions generated by the POS system, loss prevention executives can quickly identify those employees who have, say, 10 percent higher void events when they're working, or larger than normal discounts being applied to purchases when they're working.

“We show them how to manage their operations by exception,” Gannon said. “The last thing we want is people sitting in front of video monitors.” Sometimes employees are being devious and need to be fired or prosecuted; other times they simply need more training. Regardless, shrink declines and sales go up.

Currently, Envysion is largely making sales directly to the end user, but is beginning to employ channel partners, those integrators looking to increase their recurring revenue base, in the sales process as well. “Right now,” Gannon said, the sales process with most integrators “requires a decent amount of hand-holding. It's a different kind of approach and service and results set than a lot of security integrators are used to seeing. It's a bit of a culture shift for a lot of them; several of them are really starting to get it, others just aren't.”

Envysion is also just beginning monitoring operations, as well, for those customers who don't have time to analyze the data being generated by the service. The company currently has “a handful” of operators who collate the data being generated and present the results on a weekly basis, sometimes with suggestions for improvement.

However, even though Gannon doesn't mind the revenue generated by this service, he advises security executives against this service: “No one really knows their operations like they do.”