One dynamic of the evolving managed video as a service market is the impact we have broadly on the traditonal video buying process and specifically on the individuals that are used to owning that decision.

Historically, enterprise video purchase decisions are owned and made within a specific department: typically loss prevention, security, asset protection, or sometimes IT.  Budgets for video are typically set as part of the overall corporate budget process.   These departments get whatever budget dollars allocated that they can and then have relative independence to pick solutions that meet their needs within those budgets.  It is not uncommon to see manager or director level employees making multi-million dollar commitments for large companies.

With MVaaS, video becomes a cross-departmental management tool that is used by 10-100x as many people and that touches a wide range of locations, employees and departments.  It is no longer the sole purview of that department that used to own it.  While loss prevention or asset protection may spearhead the deployment and the utilization, there are lot more interested parties involved.   Given the service has to share the company’s network and is likely interfacing with key business systems, IT has to be involved and bless the service.  Given the vast majority of potential end users are outside the LP or asset protection departments, in groups like operations, finance and marketing, there are a lot more people driving requirements and utilizing the service on a daily basis.  Given the huge financial impact, the finance organization needs to understand and believe in the effort.  All of these leads to a C-level, cross departmental decision and a project that extends deep into and across the organization.

While the impact at the corporate level is tremendously positive, what does this change mean for the project champion, the team member that used to own the decision all by themselves?  Are they better off for having given up or at least shared a bit of their domain?  It certainly takes an open-minded, company results driven person to embrace this new role, but those that do have proven to become even more meaningful contributors to their companies that are recognized and rewarded for the value that they’ve helped deliver.

I’ll offer two examples to make my point:

• Our champion at one of our largest customers was one of only 5 people out of over 25,000 to receive the company’s highest possible individual annual performance review score, in part for his work deploying and managing our service, driving meaningful profits to their bottom line.
• Another champion at one of our biggest customers just received their President’s Award (out of over 7,000 employees) specifically for her work deploying Envysion services and driving profitability improvements across the organization.

MVaaS can have a profound impact both on a company’s profits and on the success and achievement of the individuals that help bring it into the organization.