Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer of Data Diversity. We would like to thank you for joining the latest installment of the monthly Data Diversity Webinar Series, Advanced Analytics with William McKnight. Today, William will be discussing showing ROI for your analytic project. Just a couple of points to get us started. Due to the large number of people that attend these sessions, you will be muted during the webinars. For questions, we'll be collecting them by the Q&A section. If you'd like to chat with us or with each other, we certainly encourage you to do so. And just to note, the Zoom chat defaults to send to just the panelists. You may absolutely change that to network with everyone. To find and open both the Q&A and the chat sections, you can find those icons in the bottom middle of your screen for those features. And we encourage you to share highlights by your favorite social media platform using hashtag ADV analytics. And as always, we will send a follow-up email within two business days containing links to the slides, the recording of the session, and any additional information requested throughout the webinar. Now, let me introduce to our speaker for the series, William McKnight. William has advised many of the world's best known organizations his strategies form at the information management plan for leading companies in numerous industries. He is a prolific author and a popular keynote speaker and trainer. He has performed dozens of benchmarks on leading database, data lake, streaming, and data integration products. William is a leading global influencer in data warehousing and master data management. And he leads McKnight Consulting Group, which has twice placed on the Incorporated 5000 list. And with that, I will give the floor to William to get today's webinar started. Hello and welcome. Hello, Shannon and hello, everybody. I'm so glad you're here. This is a very important topic and I'm going to bring my slide on up here. There we go. And I'm excited to present it as always. I have been, this is an evergreen topic, meaning it just has been important for a long time. And it's been a topic of mine for decades now. And it is my most requested topic. Despite all the architecture things I talk about, this is the most requested topic because it's hard to find good information on this topic yet, no matter what else we do, we have to do it for the benefit of the organization. And so ROI is a great way of cutting through all the stuff and getting to the point where we're on the same page with different people that have to weigh in on whether we should do a project or not, whether we should continue a project or not, etc. Most of you have probably been in some permutation of that conversation. And I want to empower you today to do better at that conversation next time you have it, to actually bring that conversation to the table because you know it's going to have to happen. And to know how to navigate it once it's there for you. And it's not just a conversation obviously, but I want you to understand the bigger picture and that's what I'll give you here today. It's actually a pretty elongated process in most organizations. And it involves a lot of people skills and getting people to communicate and agree and things like this. It's not usually the most exciting topic that a technical professional such as myself I might add really wants to get engaged in. But nonetheless, it's important for the success of the project. And for that reason, I get involved and do what I can and built some methodology around it. Over the course of decades, once again, not only from speaking, but more importantly from practice. And so my practice, my field work has really influenced this program that I'm sharing with you. At the end of this hour, I want you to be able to navigate an analytic project justification. And we're going to hammer home the difference between project and program. And this will cut through 50% or more of the misunderstandings out there about this topic. Distinguish between tangible and intangible benefits. What's tangible to you may be intangible to somebody else. And what's intangible to you may be tangible to somebody else. It's all in where you decide to draw that line. So I'll help you with that. Presenting an itemized ROI is pretty important. None of us here can predict the future. I'll speak for myself. I can't predict the future, but I can put some stakes in the ground and say it might be this, it might be that, or it might be this other thing, you know, based upon some good information. And that's what we call an itemized ROI. I want you to be able to articulate the value of an analytics program of doing analytics for your organization. I'll have some examples to share with you. And I am sure you probably wouldn't be here today if you didn't agree that analytics were important. That analytics is important to the bottom line success of your organization and is definitely a competitive advantage. Gone are the days when we can just run our business, transact the transactions and get our products in the door and not even really put a lot of thought into that or a lot of data into that. We have to put data into just about everything these days. And that's analytics. So we'll go into that. And adapt the methodology in your program that includes ROI attainment and measurement because it's not a one off thing. It's not a one and done. It's something that it needs to be exercised on an ongoing basis because it does keep coming back around. I have encountered many situations where the information professionals have accomplished the ROI and it was such a painful process that they shut it all down hoping to never have to do that again. But it does come back around and you get more comfortable with it. These are some of the projects that I've justified over the course, help justify over the course of time. And of course, we don't really see budgets at this level one at a time. It's doled out over the course of time. And that's what I'm talking about here. These are multi-year projects, most of them anyway. Although it's definitely possible that this much can be spent in one year on one project for one company. It does happen. So these are some of the higher end projects that I've been a part of justifying. It is something that I get drawn into quite a bit just because people find out I can do it. And it's not for everybody. So it is something that I have been a part of quite a bit over the course of time. And I always am acutely aware that I'm wearing two hats when I do this. I'm wearing the architecture hat as an architect. I want it done right. I want it done scalably. I want it done with modern technology. And I want it done in an integrated fashion. And on the business side, I want it to deliver to the bottom line of the business early and often over the course of every year that it exists. What's the average lifespan of projects? Depending upon where you look for that information, it's anywhere from 10 to 20 years. And even more, if you're talking about airline reservation systems and healthcare claims processing systems and so on, there are definitely a lot of systems out there that go on well beyond 20 years, those systems that people do not want to touch and probably for a good reason. But anyway, we're looking at justifying something over the course of that kind of timeframe. Before we jump into the technical aspects of ROI and analytic programs, I want to acknowledge the strategic. And this is where people get confused, I must say. And they come back at me with, well, that's nice that ROI stuff, but I'm doing these things. I get that. I get that. There definitely are projects out there that do this. But I would say that not everything is strictly ROI or strategic. I think some things are both. I think most things are both as a matter of fact. But there's definitely projects that lean, more projects that lean heavily towards ROI. There are these strategic projects. So these are the primary mission of your project. You may or may not have to do ROI. I would encourage you to do it anyway. You never know when it might be needed. And it's a good mobilizing force for the build team and the business community at large. If you want to gain a competitive advantage, great. If you want to increase market share, develop new products or services, enter new markets, et cetera, the things that you see on here, although I would argue efficiency is more of an ROI TCO factor. But if you just kind of generally want to do these things, if these things are what's coming down from the boardroom that you need to work on, great. This may not be the end of the justification. However, there may be this plus the ROI aspects. As a matter of fact, largely it depends on who you're talking to in terms of why you're doing a given project. And there's usually a strong contingent in a company, even for projects that are doing these things primarily that want to see the ROI for it. So let's learn about that. Let's talk about workloads. First of all, and I like to use this graphic, we have to put ring fences around things. We can't say the entire organization. What's the ROI of the entire organization? Well, I suppose somebody is some roll up levels doing that. But on a project basis, it's one of many projects that the organization is doing. And how you carve up a project may or may not be how the company down the road carves up their projects. So implementing SAP, for example, that might be a project to you, but to some other party, it may be just too overwhelming to think about. And so it may be component by component or the real projects. And they'll get to the bigger project of implementing SAP globally in a longer term fashion by the accumulation of projects. The reason this is important to ROI is projects are the basis for the returns and the investments. And that's what we're going to measure. You can't measure everything. And you don't want to measure just something really teeny tiny either. On the other hand, you got to find that balance. And so a lot of us know what a project is when we see it in our organization. You know what I mean? But just keep in mind that when you are talking to some people, they may see that word as meaning something entirely different. I hope my SAP example was enough for this. But we have to put our arms around data. What data is part of it? What user groups are part of it? What kind of timelines are part of it? What kind of scope is part of it? And that will comprise an application. I'm not talking about a scrum. I'm talking about the accumulation of many of them that end up with something of meaningful value to the organization. So you might think of it as something that takes a good six months to a year to deliver, but not five years and not one week, okay? So prioritizing efforts within the organization. I'm not spending a long time on that here today, since we are going to get into efforts that we have already prioritized and decided we want to do, or at least we want to explore some more about. But these are going to be my parameters for you in terms of prioritizing efforts within your organization. Because you always have 100 things that you could be doing. And you've got to boil it down somehow. And hopefully you have a sensible way through governance. And so on the whole budgetary process that you go through, I'm sure every year, hopefully that process is great. And it considers things like this. I'm sure it does either overtly or not. But it's things like ease to do. How easy is it to do it? Can we use our current technology set? Because some organizations are really are really gun shy about adding technology, especially when it comes to things like, oh, let's add master data management, let's add streaming data, let's add a graph database, let's add a data lake, let's add data science. And a big one for today is let's add artificial intelligence. So broaching that is something that a lot of executives are wary about. So can we do it with our current technology set? Pre-requisites done first. So as you're ordering things, is there anything on that list that maybe builds to something bigger for the organization? And you want to do those first. You want to put things in the right order. So sequencing your projects is as important as determining what projects you're going to do over the course of time. And finally, the ROI, and I don't mean last, last, last but least, it's last but not least, the ROI of doing it. What does it do for the bottom line of the organization that definitely is a factor in prioritizing your efforts? It may not be the only one, but it's a factor. Okay, let's understand a few more things. Ordered benefits. This is what makes ROI difficult. And this is where I have to part ways with a lot of people out there who say it's impossible. It's not impossible. It's hard, but it's not impossible because you have these ordered benefits. First order benefits have a direct relationship to the bottom line. And that's where I think we could all agree. Yes, if I were providing first order benefits, we could all do it. And it's easy and it can be done. Right? If you were just, let's say you're building a data warehouse and you're selling subscriptions to the data warehouse externally. All right. I know that really doesn't happen that way, but let's say you were doing that. That's easy. How many subscriptions are we going to get? What are we charging for them and how much does it cost to build the data warehouse? And you have the basis for some ROI there, but none of us are doing that. We're doing more second order, third order, God forbid, fourth order benefits. We're into that. Where the second order benefits have an indirect relationship and a third order benefit has what we call a transitive relationship. It does something, it enables something that enables something else that finally produces some sales for the organization or reduction in expenses. And those are the two things that if you're going to use ROI, you have to get to one or more of those two things. Same again, more revenue or decreased expenses. Now, we're good at tasks and activities. We're good at breaking things down into scrums and building backlogs for our analytics programs. Good at that. Not so good at coming up with realistic returns. As a matter of fact, just coming up with returns of any kind is something that can be kind of difficult for most organizations. We have an overconfidence about what things are going to do and sometimes we have an underconfidence. It all depends. Sometimes both are present in the same organization. I do a lot of this, I'll call it surveying the organization in anticipation of a project to determine what the ROI is going to be to help prioritize the projects for that organization. And I find out that it returns, just returns period is hard. Realistic returns is really difficult as well. I said at the outset, I can't tell the future. I'm pretty sure you can't tell the future. So yeah, I get that. It can't be this or you're fired, right? But let's get in the ballpark of reality. And that's where maybe multiple people can help and outside influence and so on. We're not so good at the risk of things. We build our lists. We think we'll execute them. We don't consider a lot of the risks that are involved. And maybe this is good because we are optimists. And if we didn't have that optimism, it may be hard to get any project off the ground. We're sometimes not so good at costs. I'd say we're better at costs than returns by far, but we're still not so good at costs. We generally do underestimate the costs of these projects. And timelines, same story, right? How many timelines have been followed to the T that we've come up with over the years? I would say that's difficult. So let's talk about types of justification, program and project. Very important part of an analytics program. What are we doing? Are we justifying an analytics project? So somebody comes to you and says, what's the ROI of this? This thing here, this nebulous thing here that I call a project, but maybe it's not. Well, is it a standalone project? Are you building the analytics for one application? Is it the analytics for SAP? Is it the analytics for Salesforce, for Google, for our website, for our supply chain? Is it something like that that can be seen as a standalone project? And if that's the case, and it's probably a 50-50 thing where 50% of the time it's a project, 50% of the time it's a program that I'm justifying, at least I'll say. The analytics project's going to be a little bit easier because we're just looking at, I say just, we're looking at what the project is going to do for the bottom line of the organization. But a program is where we are building analytics for multiple projects. And we are storing those analytics. We're making them available. Data is a service internally. Their inclusion is hopefully based upon some sort of business governance. The goal of the program is to enable the component of the applications it supports. There's no ROI inherent in building application, excuse me, in building analytics. Well, applications too, but we're talking about analytics. There's no ROI there. There's only investment. Okay. The R comes from the use of the analytics. I think we know this, but I'm not sure that we're always on point with the counterparty when we're talking about these things. So that's why I bring it out. So what are we justifying here? An information management that's going to collect analytics, that kind of a program which will provide analytics for several projects. So you might think of this as a data lake, some sort of data science hub, a data warehouse, something where you're actually holding the analytics for multiple applications. And maybe you're doing more than just build it and they will come. Maybe you're building it and you're integrating that into multiple applications. So not talking so much here about who will do it, we're looking at the project itself and saying, what is this going to do? And is it a program that's providing analytics? So you're kind of removed from the return aspect when you are building a program or is it a project which will use analytics? And by the way, analytics is one of those terms that we haven't defined very well as an industry. And you could definitely be on different pages as you have these conversations about analytics out there. So please get on the same page as you go forward. Is it the inclusion of new projects into an existing analytics program? So you already have a, I don't know, a data warehouse up and running. It's doing a lot of analytics and you want to do more. And you want to, you're adding a new project. Let's say you're moving the supply chain to artificial intelligence. And so in doing that, you want to consider analytics inside of that project. So are you adding that to your existing data warehouse or wherever it is that you're collecting the data for that program? So these are just three bullets to help you break out. Is it a program or a project? Because it's different justification for each. So think about what it is that brought you here today or what it is that you're working on today for your organization. Is that a project or is it a program? Do you know where the returns are coming from? Or does your work and your mindset stop when you build the analytics? I built customer lifetime value. Great. I'm sure they're going to use it to benefit. And I have some vague ideas about how that will work and how it could work, but I don't go there. I'm on to the next analytic here. I'm building this for the company. Again, about a 50-50 proposition. And if you're in analytics for a long time in your career, you'll do both. Okay.  This is simple math, but you have to have some in order to understand how to do the ROI. ROI is simply return minus investment over investment. It's a concept we're all familiar with. Think about the interest or lack thereof that we get on our money in the bank. If it's what would it be today? 2% interest, and you put $100 in a year from now, it's going to be $102. So we kind of get it. So we're just trying to apply that concept on a grander scale here to these probably million-dollar-plus projects that we're working with. ROI should always be supported with a time period. So if you're saying you're giving me a 132% return, I'm going to say great if you're talking about a week or a month or even a year. But if you're talking about 10 years, not so great. Not so great. I don't want to put my money in that. ROI should be presented with assumptions and risks and be itemized by all the various components, however you want to break down your analytics. And these are just some ideas by source system, subject area, users, history data, the technology used, and whether this is the one that's flipping you over to the use of AIML. Add up the possibilities, but don't oversell it. And this is where a lot of professionals waste a lot of time because they think that when you're doing an ROI, what you want to do is you want to list 100 things that this thing is going to do for the organization. Not really develop any of them, but just have a big old list. And in my experience, that doesn't work. I'd rather have a quality list of one or two or three things that the project's going to do for the company. And by quality, I mean having some ROI associated with it than to have a list of 100. I'm not saying don't list the 100 things. I've never listed 100 things. Let me say 20 things. I'm not saying never list the 20 things, but don't waste your time developing ROI for 20 things. That's just too much. It should sell itself based upon one or two things. This is an ROI, by the way, it's used for predicting and measuring. Some of you came to this webinar because you are looking to present a project to the company that you want them to do, or you've been chartered with, hey, let's do this. What's the ROI? Something like that. But some of you already have something in motion, and either you're worried about ROI is going to be asked for, or you've already been asked for ROI, or it's been kind of implied, well, that's the ROI of that project that you're working on there, and you want a framework for doing that. So ROI is good for both. Frankly, in my experience, it's way more used for predicting than it is for measuring. Most of us don't go backwards and say, was that project successful or not? We just kind of know once it's been up and running for a year or more inside an organization, whether it's a keeper or not. But sometimes we do measure the ROI on it. And keep in mind, at that point, you're talking about there's some sunk cost involved. ROI is only about moving forward. You can't undo the past. You can't go back and say, well, we shouldn't have invested $3 million in that data science platform a year ago, because we don't have any returns from it. That is not the question. The question is, what do we do now? And we already have it up and running. It's barely working, but it's there. It's salvageable. And can where we are today, can we go forward and get some ROI out? That's really more the question. Now, from a program perspective, there's different ways you can justify analysis of the impact of operational systems on business processes, a single approach to achieving desired outcomes. Are these the things that you're looking for in your analytics program? Demonstrated proficiency in the use of relevant tools and technologies. In other words, in other words, and this is important, it's an architecture question. Our analytics program is about architecture. Are you using a single architecture? Perhaps the architecture you already have in place, and are you adding on to that, or are you going to do a one-off? If you're going to do a one-off, that's more a project. If you're going to add to what you have, that's part of the program. You're adding to the program. You're adding to, hopefully, demonstrated proficiency in the use of those tools. There's obviously some benefit to that. You're adding to the consolidation of expense streams in order to maximize efficiency, so you're getting good at this architecture. A lot of you are sitting on the question right now of, I'm doing something analytically. Should I double down on it in the next year? Should I continue to do it the way we've been doing it? Keep in mind that we're in a very dynamic era of analytics, and it's changing rapidly. Architectures I've put in place five years ago, they don't need to be blown up, but they need to be added on to with the new AI and ML capabilities in particular, but other things too. AI and ML need to be added to the architecture. Do you even have an architecture that you can, well, I'll stop there. Do you even have an architecture? Okay, going on. Do you even have an architecture that's ready for any AI or ML? Your architecture may need to be blown up in order to get to that goal. Okay, I kind of sidebarred that a little bit there, but back to the math just quickly here. Variations on the ROI theme, you might hear about payback period, which is how long it takes to get your investment back, your initial investment, and there's some art form to what's initial and what's ongoing, and I'll come back to it. Return on investment just like we're looking at R minus I over I, net present value and internal rate of return. This is all just math. This is all just easy math in Excel, but what do you think you need in order to do any of this? The hard part, that is, it's the cash flow. What's the cash flow from the project? Assuming we're doing a project now back with that hat on, we're doing a project. What is the cash flow from the project? We're okay at the investment part of it. The returns is hard. Investment can be hard too for all the reasons I've previously mentioned, but you got to have both. How much is it going to cost? What are we going to get out of it? And you don't get out of it things like, oh, we're going to improve the data quality of the organization. Oh, we're going to do this. We're going to do that. Now it has to come back to numbers, and this is where a lot of people have a hard time, but we'll hopefully empower you a little bit more as we go along here. And for each, excuse me, for each suggested business project, present multiple possible scenarios along with the odds of that scenario happening, forming a probability distribution. I like to do it this way. It's going to be the plan case. Again, we can't predict the future 100% accurately. This is going to be the worst case. Most everything goes wrong, and this is going to be the best case where little goes wrong, and everything goes right. And the project goes gangbusters, and we sell not 10% more than what we're selling today. We sell 25%, 30% more. Wouldn't that be great? It could happen. If it could happen, maybe that's your best case scenario. So sometimes I'm very much directed by the CFO office of an enterprise in terms of how to do this, how they like to see it, and that is fine. We'll roll with it. But when they don't have this, which is more than half the time, this is what I'm going to suggest. Three cases, and the possibilities of all of them will add up to you got it 100. So we can only put tangible things in here.  And these are all key words here.  You can measure a lot of things. You can get your ruler out and measure quite a bit. But is it worth your time? And I tried to give you some guidelines on this earlier. And that's the second bullet here. Usually, one to two returns are reasonable to measure for each phase or each project.  And please don't tell me it's all intangible. It's not all intangible. Let's give you some examples here. These are tangible returns. And these are returns that I've worked with. You've probably worked with some of them as well. Increases in sales. That's great. I love that. That's a lot of fun. We want to increase coffee sales in this nationwide concept by 2%. And if we do that, it would weigh, weigh, weigh more than pay for this analytics program. And this is what I find, by the way, by the way, when you can increase things by a good point, percentage point that is, I just said 2%. That's going to, for a mid to large size organization, that's going to more than pay for your project. But of course, the trick is in making that happen, right? Efficiencies in processes. Reduction in inventory. You can measure all this. Automated processing, reducing returns and fraud. Those are fun. Saving procurement dollars and operational savings, squeezing out some savings that way, maybe from warehousing goods and so on and so forth. Every industry is going to be a little bit different in terms of what the tangible returns are in that industry. But everybody's selling something. So let's hone in on that first bullet for all of you. Increase in sales. What does that mean to you? Think about the company that you're in. What does that mean to you? Selling more pharmaceuticals, selling more telecommunications, selling more retail, selling more of your manufactured goods. What does it mean? And you could probably break it down more than than I just did. But intangible returns are different. These are fun. These are great. These are to be listed, but not to hang your hat on for the project most of the time. And definitely not a part of return on investment analysis. For return on investment, again, you need the cash flow and you need the returns and the investment. And then it's all math from there. But intangible returns. And these are things I hear. I hear these things from great analytics and data management professionals. But there's a gap there between this and what's going to work in the enterprise. And this is what I try to tell people that we can have this conversation because I enjoy improving customer loyalty. The customer success manager enjoys that. But at some level, somebody's going to look at it a scant and say, well, what does that mean to the bottom line? Let's say I have 2% more customer loyalty. How does that translate? Given all these things we're going to have to do to take care of those customers and keep them aboard, is it smart to do it? I mean, all of us have changed phone plans, right? And we've received offers maybe for a free month here or there. Or I'm going to move you to this level of service or better customer service or a free ball hat or what have you. But there are limits to where those communication companies will go in order to keep you. And that's what I'm talking about here. And that's what somebody is looking at. Somebody's looking at, let's do everything we possibly can to improve customer loyalty. But somebody else is going, well, within reason, within reason. And let's look at the bottom line. So these things are great, but somebody has to translate them to ROI. If you want to use them in the ROI. And I would say most of these things, you can, but a better list was the one on the prior slide. Enhanced decision making capabilities. Yeah, that's all great. But which decisions, what decisions are we going to make better? And what's that going to mean? Improved operational efficiency, by how much? What's the bottom line on that? Increased revenue and profitability. Now, that I would argue is mostly a tangible return. But if you just say it like that, and you don't say buy how much, then it's intangible. And you got to focus on something else. So that's not a great intangible return to me. Improved marketing effectiveness. Okay, great. How effective? And how many more customers are they going to translate into? And what's their customer lifetime values predicted to be, by the way? So I can understand what that revenue is going to look like. Improved marketing effectiveness include improved risk management, customer segmentation, the ability to do that. Yeah, that has a knock on effect on a lot of things, customer retention, and the grand old competitive advantage. Okay. But I would say gone are the days, especially 2023, it's not a good year to wave your hand around and say things like that, versus breaking it down into some examples. So let's do that together. Here's what you need to know. You need to know the company's discount rate. This is what they're getting on their money. This is kind of a hurdle rate for where the project needs to exceed in order to be justified, because why should I put money into analytics? When I can put it into inventory and I get a solid, you name it, 18% return, says so right here. It's been saying so for 20 years. And you want to do something else with my money. So what's that going to look like? So that's your discount rate. Usually you have to get almost to the CFO office before you can really understand what that discount rate is. Yet many times we're challenged with doing ROI and not knowing that. So that makes it difficult. You might have to do it a few ways if you don't know what it is. Duration, I say two to four years is a good duration for what I've seen work for ROI calculations. And it's not good enough usually to say, well, at the end of four years, the ROI is going to be X. You've got to break it down. You've got to show quarter by quarter what it's going to be. And you want to do this, because the first quarter is going to look pretty bad probably compared to the second compared to the third and so on. Usually these projections make the project look better and better as time goes on within limits, right? Because you get to a point maybe 10 years down the line where the project shows its age and we have to do something else, right? I've already mentioned that. We're not going 10 years out. I'm saying two to four years. And in that timeframe, things should continually get better ROI for the project. You've already recoup the initial investment. Now you're printing cash, right? You're printing cash every quarter or every half year, however you're measuring it. And that's what you're showing back to the business. In a spreadsheet, they look something like this. This is a very basic one. And again, I'm not going to hammer the math at you here today. This is really simple stuff. Let's say you're doing cost savings. You're not doing more revenue. And by the way, revenue is not good enough, is it? Because there's a cost of that revenue. And most of the time it's fairly substantial. So we want to have the profitable revenue if we're doing that. But that's, I'm getting aside. On this spreadsheet we are looking at, you have cost savings. In year one, you're not saving anything. Why are you not saving anything? Why are you not doing anything in that first year? Are you waiting? No, you're investing. You're building. And a year is a long time, by the way, but this is simplified for spreadsheet purposes here. So your hardware investment's going to be, let's just look at the year one column, $100,000, yay. So your total investment is $100,000. Now that's not realistic. You have hardware. You have other things, but I'm trying to keep it really simple. So the first year your investment looks like negative 100%. That's terrible. Doesn't get any worse than that. But things get better. They better get better, right? You better not show year one and say, can you fund this, please? You go to year two and you actually have $60,000 of cost savings. And since you already built it, you're just maintaining it at 10%, it costs you $10,000. You do the ROI on that. It's a negative 45% now cumulative speaking. Within that year is pretty good within that year. Now you get to year three. But again, okay, let me back up. Again, we're sitting at year zero as we're doing this. We're not sitting at year two saying, oh, what do we do now? Because if you're sitting at year two, you've already invested year one and year two. Now let's say you've already invested year one. So if you're going to, year two is going to look great. Go ahead and do that. For sure do that, right? But you invest $10,000, you're going to get $60,000 back. For sure do that. But if you're looking back from year zero, you haven't invested that $100,000 yet to make it possible to get the financial return in year two and year three for that matter where it gets even better, $80,000 for again, the $10,000 maintenance level of investment. Maintenance levels are pretty good, aren't they? Once you get there, probably going from $100,000 to $10,000, not really realistic. It's probably more than that. But this is an example and this yields 16.67%. And that's my cover page to this business justification ROI document, right? 16.67%. Is that good or is that bad? Well, it depends on the company. For most companies, that would be bad. That would not be good enough. But at least it's positive. And unless you have nothing else to do, you would still want to, if you had nothing else to do, you'd still want to go ahead and do this. But if you have better things, or let me put it a little bit differently, if you have executives buying into better things, then this might get kind of pushed aside, this 16.67%. And yes, a lot of it is in presentation. And this is why I get people that want to just gin up the numbers and show massive returns on investment. I say you got to keep it realistic and you got to talk about the great methodology that we're using to come up with this. And you got to let that win the day over somebody in some other department that brought a project that shows $500,000 return on investment here in year one. $5,000, excuse me, 5,000% ROI. Yes, but their methods were shaky. And you got to hope that that gets kind of shaken out of the process. Anyway, yeah, there's all that to it as well. So the ROI coming over from the prior slide, negative 100% year one, negative 45%, and then there's that 16.67%. I'm not going to get into all the math here, but the cash flow, you can see what the cash flow is just on the face of it. And then the cumulative cash flow, which is pretty important, is it starts with negative 100,000. It goes to negative 50. That's the cumulative. And it's positive 20,000 in year three. Yay, great. Finally. That's where we have broken even year three. That's too long, in my opinion, for a project to break even. But nonetheless, that's when this one broke even. The internal rate of return, again, I'll let you do the math on it. But that's 12% after year three. The net present value, the present value at a 4% discount rate, there's that discount rate. And by the way, I've kind of eroded the discount rate from the calculations that you've seen here today just for simplicity, but you might want to have to use it, might have to use it, might want to use it throughout. And anyway, that shows a positive $12,303 after year three. So it's the equivalent of somebody walking in the door in year zero and dropping $12,303 on the CEO's desk and saying, there you go, free. That's what this project is. And so again, extending that analogy a little bit, it's kind of like the CEO has a line of people outside his or her door with wads of cash in their pocket. And he only has time for a few of them to come in because he's got a lunch appointment, right? He or she's got a lunch appointment. So anyway, he's only going to let the ones in that have the most cash in the pocket. I don't know if that analogy went over great, but anyway. Worksheet probability distribution. So we're going to say the probability of ROI one, and that's your first set here, which I just showed you, that's 40%. That's your main line that you're kind of normal. That's what you really expect. In the back of your mind, that's what you really expect. However, could be worse than that. Look at ROI two. I've got that netting out to a negative 33% at the end of year three. Not good. Not good. If you have some very conservative CFO types in the organization, they might hone in on that and say, whoa, we can't do this. Look, it might happen at 30%. We might lose a third of our investment at 30%. That's kind of bad. But if you've got some more optimists in the room, they might zone in on ROI number three, which is also 30%, and that looks like 116% ROI. So depends on what the makeup of the people are, what they're going to believe, all the great stuff that went into these calculations. And I've shown you the easy part. So the harder part is really coming up, getting some people to fess up to what the returns might be. And that's not a great way of putting it. By the way, I should say you're helping them with that process. And if you're the ROI champion of this analytics effort, you might say, well, I'm sitting here, I'm just doing the analytics. And I may not be on the project team, but nonetheless, you know how to do it. You want the project done, you might have to do the ROI on it. And by the way, if you weigh out those ROIs using the probabilities at the top of the slide comes out to a 31.67%. After year three, you know, once we add those probabilities in, the thing looks a little bit better actually double as good. And 31% in my book, yeah, probably good enough for most organizations to want to do that project. So to do what we just did, you did get the discount rate, you know the revenue and the cost reduction. Yeah, that's the hard part. Know the cost to implement it. Estimate the cost for multiple scenarios that your probability distribution estimate the probabilities of each scenario and plot the results. So these are some examples that I found of companies out there using analytics and they are somewhat analogous to some of the projects that I've worked on. So Walmart used analytics to identify customer buying patterns and optimize product placement, resulting in an increase in sales. See how these all, well, most of them end up with increase in sales. The third one, increase in viewership for Netflix. Well, Netflix increases their viewership, we all know, and they know very tangibly what that means to their bottom line. So you've done something there if you can increase viewership. And the last one is a reduction in delivery times by UPS. And they know and we know that that means great stuff for the bottom line. So again, we're close to or sitting right on the bottom line in these examples. So I want you to think about your company, your industry, and how this all might work for you. By the way, if you have any questions, I'm going to have about five minutes at the end here in a few minutes for your questions. So go ahead and put them in the Q&A. And I look forward to those in a few minutes. So abstracting ROI, impossibly measurable at the detail level. So you have to measure this at the large group impact level. So something like customer lifetime value, translating that to what that means for which customers, which customers are going to have an increase in customer lifetime value?  What does that decile do for the bottom line of the organization? And that is a barometer that you can use to drive a number to the bottom line for this calculation. I hope that hope I just made sense there. But if you're targeting something that's more, I would say abstract, okay, abstracted from the bottom line, not an increase in sales, but an increase in something like on the prior slide, the example of Netflix. Okay, that's a good one. They increase their viewership. What does that mean? Well, if you increase every 1% viewership increase that you do, however you define the 1%, that means the bottom line of, and I'm just pulling a number out of the air here, a million dollars a month. So there you go. You're almost there, but you're not quite. You have to add on to that. And that's what abstracted ROI means. That's what I mean by that. So if you're doing something like customer satisfaction index, you're trying to improve customer satisfaction, you know, that's okay. That's good. As long as you can translate, improve customer satisfaction to the bottom line. And some companies use something called a customer satisfaction index. Now, TCO is just, you can do it this way or you can do it that way. And if you do it this way, it'll cost this much. And if you do it that way, it'll cost that much. I have done innumerable TCO studies for clients in enterprise clients, as well as vendor clients. And I've published a number of those as benchmarks, by the way, out there. So if you want to see some more of this calculation in action, although you're probably not a vendor, so you can apply it to your situation. But nonetheless, you can see the calculation. They're out there. So TCO, and a lot of you are charted with things this way. You are charted to build a data warehouse or a data lake, or master data management that's on here as well, some sort of hub of data. Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to do that? These are architecture questions. There are great reasons why you'd want to do that. A lot of it comes back to it's lower TCO. It's lower TCO to the organization to do a data warehouse than to build, I don't know, 10 data marks, what have you. What you're going to have to do if you don't think about things like a data warehouse. And yet at the same time, none of us seem to be able to build one data warehouse for the entire company. I get that. But the fewer the better, I think we can all agree on that. It's just really hard. But the fewer the better, as long as they're not locked away by IT and 10 other things I could go into, which I won't today. The storage medium that you choose, the cloud that you want to use, the cloud instance that you want to use, that might be a TCO, that very well might be a TCO, master data management, whether you're upgrading or replacing something, whether you should outsource something. A lot of these are TCO questions. Total cost of ownership. What is cheaper to do ultimately. And nothing is total TCO, by the way. If you do, for example, if you do a going back, if you do a replacement instead of an upgrade, that comes with enhanced capabilities. All you're saying here is, I'm just going to measure the cost. And as far as the new capabilities, they'll come, but I'm not going to bother to measure them right now. Okay, so that makes that a total TCO example, but I'm saying that the ROI is inherent in something like that as well. You're just deciding not to measure it right now. Hope that made sense. So a summary of the methodology, you do your cost analysis, you do your tangible benefits analysis, not the intangible, that breaks it down to cash flow, where you can do, and then you add the probability distribution, the ROI calculation, list your intangible benefits, have fun, prioritize and plan things based upon ROI and other factors, and do continuous learning. It's not a one in done. Continuously get this thing better. The first time you do this, the first time is going to be hard, really hard, but it gets better. You get more practiced at it, and you get more comfortable with it. In summary, target the business deliverable of the project. Use a repeatable consistent process using governance. And I haven't hammered that home here, but definitely you want to get the business involved and you want to get the governance programs involved in what you're doing here for project justification. Use lower TCO for program justification. Let me just say that again to make sure that it comes across. Use lower TCO for program justification, justifying doing architecture A, the data mesh versus nothing. Why should you do a data mesh versus nothing? Well, it's going to save the organization cost in the long run. We could all sit here and argue, yes, it's going to increase capabilities, blah, blah, blah, but it's going to lower TCO. I'm suggesting it possibly will, okay? This isn't the data mesh talk, but anyway, look at it that way. Isolate project benefits and costs. If it's important, you can measure it and you can improve it. The project will almost always pay for itself. And a lot of projects die on the vine because nobody did the ROI for it because they found it too hard. Judgment remains essential. I'm not taking away any of your judgment today. You got to keep that in the game. Isolate project benefits and costs. If it's important, you can measure it, you can prove it. I think I just said that, sorry. And judgment is essential. That's a redundant slide. Anyway, this has been showing ROI for your analytic project. I will now turn it back to Shannon to see if you have any questions. Thank you so much for another great presentation as always. And thanks everyone for submitting your questions. If you have questions for William, feel free to submit them in the Q&A. Dan is the most commonly asked question. Just a reminder, I will send a follow-up email by end of day Monday for this webinar with links to the slides and links to the recording. So diving in here, William, sometimes a return might be the result of some other program project running in tandem with yours. So it can't be easily asserted that your project program alone moved the needle. How do you handle those types of situations? Yes, that's a great question, by the way. And this is true for so many of us. But I just say we've got to reach out to that organization, make them a partner in this, and try to get, let's say they're doing the returns, we're doing the investment, right? This is common, right? We got to get the returns out of them. We got to work together with them. And we're the ones chartered to do it, but we don't have full control. I get that. But we still got to reach out and get that. And by the way, this brings up a point I failed to mention, but a lot of times technology vendors would love to take credit for the whole project. Oh, this project that delivered X percent ROI to the bottom line, this was built on blah, blah, blah database. So look at the ROI that blah, blah, blah database provided to that company when that's not true at all. You could have used five other databases for that, you know, let's just say. So be very wary of studies like that that credit the technology so heavily with the ROI. So a project can deliver the benefit of quote unquote, save time. If so, if you save 1000 people's time at the total value of a million dollar estimated hours time labor costs per hour, but none of these people are moved out of their job and there are no tangible differences in their output. Is there any tangible benefit other than perhaps people experience? Well, I tend not to do ROI that that has a lot of that in it because of the reason that the questioner stated, it usually doesn't work out and we kind of all know this. And so why go into it with that as your as your guide? However, it's true that the that a lot of times, especially with today's projects is as they're moving into AI and ML, a lot of them are going to replace people functions. So they're going to replace people. That's a different question. But the people's functions, you know, we all have to continue to improve our skills. So we can we stay relevant to our company. We don't become redundant with the things that are going on. I think that is still a doable goal in the next few years that we all need to step up to for ourselves for our careers. Are there other things? I mean, if that's your thing, if that's the thing for this project, and of course, there's a million projects, right? So I don't know which one that we're thinking about here. But if the thing is, we're going to, you know, take people cycles out. I think that's still fair to do. Say, yeah, we're going to take people cycles out. So, you know, we're going to reapply X number of salary X percent of salary somewhere else. And here's the plan for that. And here's how that will benefit the organization, maybe more from an ROI perspective and so on. So you got to have a holistic plan. And you are right to be skeptical of that as your only benefit to an ROI. Well, William, such a great topic and so many questions. I'll get these questions over to you just so you can see the ones we didn't have a chance to get to. But that is all the time. I'm afraid that we have for this webinar. Thanks to all of our attendees for being so engaged in everything we do. Again, just a reminder, I will send a follow-up email by end of day Monday with links to the slides and links to the recording. William, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.


Welcome back to my channel and welcome if you're new here My name is Jen and I am a certified nutrition coach and currently on the my WW a blue plan. I have a super fun video for you today We are going to be taste testing popular energy drinks and energy slash protein bars that you can pick up at GNC a lot of you reach out and say that you don't always want to buy your product online even though you enjoy the Flexibility of ordering online. Sometimes you just want to go to your local health food store aka GNC and pick up some popular well-known brands of protein and energy bars and energy drinks so before you go spend your money I am going to taste test them here for you today and give you my honest opinion on all of them This is not a sponsored video. I purchased everything with my own money, and I was just thinking I don't know what I'm gonna do with all these open energy drinks Well figure it out But I am here today to taste test and give you my honest opinion on popular snacks and energy drinks that you can pick up at Your local GNC So if you are new to my channel, make sure that you are subscribed and your bell is turned on So you don't miss a single video thumbs this one up if you love these kind of taste tests Let me know down in the comments if I should do more of these and if so What products should I buy and taste test live and give you my honest opinion? And lastly make sure you are checking out that description box down below where you're going to find my nutrition coaching website So that you can see what would work for you when it comes to nutrition coaching Macros calorie calculation, or maybe you want to take part in one-on-one coaching or join my private Facebook group All those options are on my nutrition website down below Also our deep links and discount codes to all of my favorite things and the link to head over and join my Facebook group So come on over and join us. So let's jump in. I'm hungry I need some energy. I've got water to sip in between. Let's test out these popular snacks I'm going to take a sip of water between each energy drink and each bar. I even have some bad snacks like some chips So I'll take a sip in between to cleanse my palate so that I can give you that full honest review So I'm gonna go ahead and start today off with energy drinks We are going to sample several energy drinks that I picked up at my local GNC The first one is Celsius now. This is a very popular energy drink in the WW community So this can has 200 milligrams of caffeine 10 calories the ingredients are carbonated filtered water citric acid sucralose Aka Splenda natural flavor and beta-carotene for color So I don't love the sucralose and I don't love the natural flavor But we have a pretty short ingredient list overall. So this is the sparkling orange Healthy energy accelerates metabolism burns body fat But with 200 milligrams of caffeine it probably gives you a little bit of energy So let's give it a try. I have heard all about these Celsius drinks That's pretty good. You guys this is really delicious. It is sweet, but not overly sweet I definitely get the fizzy orange vibe and actually reminds me a lot of orange pop like orange phanta That's pretty good really really good. So this would be used as maybe a pre-workout or even during workout Don't take the claims that it accelerates your metabolism or burns fat because it doesn't but it would be a great way to get a little extra caffeine In energy. So I would rate the Celsius a 9 out of 10 Next is going to be coios and I don't even know honestly if I'm pronouncing that right So this is coios Titan of intelligence. So it has new tropics electrolytes coconut mct oil and brain support And this is in the flavor apricot vanilla So this has 60 milligrams of caffeine from the green tea naturally sourced caffeine From the green tea that is in this can So this does have mct oil, which is great and it is made with coconut oil Let's take a look at the ingredients. So we have carbonated water citric acid green tea leaf extract Stevia leaf extract and natural flavor. So I'm already happy or that it has stevia in it I wish it wasn't stevia leaf extract by which it was just stevia But that's better than sucralose. And again, I don't love that it has natural flavor So with the minima matta caffeine in this I don't know that this be So much a pre workout or a during your workout This might just be a good supplemental beverage to get in some mct oil And some green tea and get that little boost from the caffeine. So apricot vanilla.  I taste the apricot I definitely taste coconut. It's milky and creamy. You guys this is incredible. It is 20 calories zero smart points Yeah, this is really really delicious 10 out of 10 Next up is optimum nutrition Amino energy So this is in the flavor juicy strawberry This says it has 100 milligrams of caffeine from natural sources Five grams of amino acids electrolytes and zero sugar. So this is actually an electrolyte beverage So again, this would even be really good. You guys post workout because it's important to rebuild and reintroduce electrolytes Once you've sweated all of them out during your workout. So this would actually be really good for that It only has five calories. So again is zero points So this says to drink one can 15 to 30 minutes prior to your workout So I guess you could use this as a pre-workout as well Also in my opinion as a post workout due to the electrolytes It says it supports everyday performance and goals. It gives you electrolytes and supports endurance That's why you would take it pre-workout to get that little bit of extra endurance It has a huge list of ingredients So i'm not going to read them all to you But it does have sucralose and it does say that the caffeine is tea leaf and or coffee bean Interesting coffee. Okay, let's try this juicy strawberry Optima nutrition. Cheers This is good. This is really good. Remember how I said coffee interesting. I definitely Get that coffee vibe. It's kind of a mix between tasting like coffee and chocolate I know that that sounds weird, but I get the strawberry It's kind of a tart strawberry, but it's really good. But on the back of my tongue I definitely feel that coffee chocolate vibe. It's actually really really delicious But I would say if you are not a coffee or chocolate lover, you're not going to like it I know that that seems weird, but just trust me at least for me. That is completely the vibe that i'm getting I don't love that. It has sucralose in it. I don't love that. It has eight million ingredients, but It tastes really good. So everything in consideration when i'm rating these ingredients and everything Endpoints, of course. This also being zero points. I would say Eight out of ten. Next is the iso peer Zero-carb protein drink. So this isn't an energy drink But when I was at g&c the guy that helped me was so nice He said if you're gonna taste test all these energy drinks try this one This has 40 grams of protein you guys 40 This is a zero-carb blue raspberry drinks. It has 40 grams of whey isolate protein It does have 160 calories So I'll pop the points here on the screen because it's definitely going to have points, but this is a big bottle It's 20 ounces. I'm literally you guys Breaking out the flashlight on my phone to read the ingredient label because it's black. I can't even read it I can see that there is sucralose in here natural and artificial flavors and blue dye So obviously i'm not a big fan of it having blue dye first of all But again 40 grams of protein 10,240 milligrams of bcaa's now I take bcaa's after my workout So again, I think this would be a good post workout It's a great way to get in 40 grams of protein for only 100 and 60 calories It says asparatime tame lactose and gluten free We're all more muscle 100 pure and zero carbs. So if you are someone that watches your carbs This is a good option for that. I don't love the ingredients, but let's taste it Cheers. This is horrible uh no It tastes like milk, but then it has the sour of the blue raspberry. Mm-hmm. No No, sis. This is not good at all.  Let me know in the comments if you guys have tried this or other flavors. Maybe that or better Uh, zero out of 10 Next up is the beyond raw Lit energy drink. So I am honestly pretty darn excited about this You guys know that I use the beyond raw bcaa powder post workout. I mix it up with water I've shown it several times here on my channel. I'll actually insert a picture here and link the powder that I use down below I love it. It has really clean ingredients for bcaas. It works really well. It tastes really good So I have high hopes for this. So this is the zero sugar snow cone And it has 250 milligrams of caffeine. So that's the most caffeine so far L citro line three grams of that 3.2 grams of beta Alenine and 100 grams of nero factor. I don't know any of that means But this can has a total of 20 calories. So not bad at all and looking at the ingredients it does have natural and artificial flavors and sucralose and blue dye number one Not a fan of those ingredients, but I'm excited to try this. So again This would be a good pre or post workout the extra bit of caffeine that 250 milligrams would be great pre workout So, yeah, let's give it a shot I'm excited because like I said, I do like a lot of the beyond raw bcaas In fact, every single flavor I've tried has been really good. So Cheers Now it doesn't give me snow cone vibes. I don't really know what snow cone is supposed to taste like but it doesn't give me that it's more sweet and I would say like Sweet tardy tasting if that makes sense kind of that sweet and tart mixed into one it tastes really good But it's not snow cone. So I haven't tried any of the other flavors. Maybe they're a little bit more What they say that they are on the can I don't know that I would buy this again and to be honest with you because it has So many questionable ingredients I probably would just stick with my bcaa powder not to mention It's a lot less expensive these energy drinks you guys were anywhere from like two to five dollars a can So that's a little bit pricey and for it not to taste the greatest Yeah, I would say based on ingredients and taste. I would probably give this Six out of ten. Next up is the alani new energy in rainbow candy This is definitely all the rage not only in the ww community, but just overall everyone is All about alani new in fact the gentleman at g&c said people come in and buy this by the case I've honestly never tried it. He said the rainbow candy is a really popular flavor. That's why I got it But let's take a look at this and by the way, these are expensive too Uh 10 calories for the entire can so 200 milligrams of caffeine And it's 10 calories for the can so zero points again It has a laundry list of ingredients But what I'm noticing off hand is natural and artificial flavors and it's actually sweetened with both sucralose and urethritol So I'm not sure why they just didn't go with urethritol, which is honestly a better sweetener Not even great, but better than sucralose But I will say that I'm happy that it the coloring of this is from vegetables instead of from dye So that's a big win. I'm excited for this rainbow candy. I heard it's like skittles vibes So I'm actually pretty excited about this. I've been looking for a better option for an energy drink none of these in my opinion have great ingredients, but I like that this doesn't have any color dye So I'll give alani a thumbs up for that. So let's try it. Cheers Delicious. Oh my gosh. This is really good. I completely get rainbow candy I completely get the skittles vibes from this. Oh, this is really really delicious Okay, okay, I see the hype I wish that it didn't have natural and artificial flavors and I wish that it didn't have sucralose But it tastes really good and considering All of these drinks so far have had not so great ingredients Flavor wise, this is a 10 out of 10. Absolutely. This is probably the best tasting one that I've had so far besides the Besides this one, which isn't even an energy drink. This is by far the best tasting that I've tried so far Mmm Good job on the taste alani new 10 out of 10 And last but not least isn't an energy drink, but it's a shake So you guys know I am not a fan of premier protein because number one it has carrageenan And I don't eat or drink anything with carrageenan because it's extremely inflammatory Plus it has literally like 30 million ingredients. I'm not a fan I actually would never in my opinion for me drink premier protein I love iconic protein, which you guys know it is linked down below with the discount if you're interested But I've heard all about this lean shake 25. This is actually gnc's brand So he told me to try it. He said he likes it Best of all the protein shakes that he's tried. He also was a fan of iconic Ingredient wise and taste wise, but he said this one is right up there with his favorite So this is coconut and caramel. So it's the girl scouts flavor, which sounds really good 170 calories points will be here on the screen 25 grams of protein, which I like two grams of sugar. It is gluten and lactose free Let's look at these ingredients. All right. I'm breaking out the flashlight again So right away. I see sunflower safflower and or canola oil No bueno, those are not good oils. They're heavily processed with hexane No, and then I see maltodextrin. No, that's another ingredient. I really honestly try to avoid Let's see. I think that's about it that I see in green. Oh natural and okay It gets worse natural and artificial flavors and caramel coloring I do not consume caramel coloring that is an artificial dye that is used to color things brown Such as diet drinks or cola drinks in general not just diet, but diet or regular cola drinks Do not love that at all And that's it. Oh Dun dun dun the last ingredient is carrageenan So with all of that being said, I absolutely positively would never buy this.  All right. Here we go. Cheers It's okay I will say the taste is better than premier. I find premier not to taste very good In my opinion, it doesn't have a lot of taste to begin with this one definitely has more flavor So I do get the coconut caramel girl scout cookie vibe from it It's not great. It kind of has a weird aftertaste It leaves a bit of a film on your tongue similar to premier even iconic any type of protein shake is going to do that I don't know. I would say if I had to choose between the two Equally ingredients, they're about the same Flavor wise I would pick this over premier. I think this is less expensive as well. I honestly can't remember I want to say like three dollars for this shake But just for me, I would not repurchase but I think if you are a shake person And you like to have your protein coffee in the morning definitely try this I find it to have a lot more flavor and be sweeter So if you want a little more flavor and a little sweeter in your protein coffee, this would definitely be a good option All right, so that's it for drinks. Whoo. I have had a lot of energy drinks So it's probably gonna get a little bit crazy in this video But maybe to fill my stomach with food instead of energy drinks. Let's try some popular snacks So we're going to start with like the chip options that I found now. I grabbed two I will say that the g and c I visited was pretty low in stock. He said that they were having a hard time I'm assuming just because of coven getting a lot of their snacks and drinks So he did recommend these so I'm excited to try these. These are the I won organics Protein sticks in the flavor sweet or I'm sorry spicy sweet pepper I asked him how spicy these were because I'm a wimp and he said these are not bad There was another flavor a jalapeno. I believe this has 10 grams of protein and five grams of fiber The entire bag is 180 calories I love that these are organic So I'll give you them a high five for that kosher and vegan soy free non-gmo and gluten free Again 180 calories. I'll pop points right here for you guys for the bag But when I'm taking a look at the ingredients, I'm seeing the oils. I don't love the sunflower sacklauer oils I see cane sugar, which I don't eliminate anything from my diet including cane sugar But it doesn't look like there's very much total sugars are two grams less than one gram of added sugar So we're just gonna not worry about that. That's not even enough to matter And lastly, I do see some natural flavors. So the oil and the natural flavors. I don't love I will also say that most flavored things drink snap Are gonna have natural flavors. So if that was the only ingredient I wouldn't be as like meh about it, but I don't love the oils that are in here either So this is what they look like. So to me they look like the like cheetos the curls And again, these are the spicy sweet pepper. So let's give them a shot. Those are spicy Okay That guy a g and c lied to me or I'm literally more wimpy when it comes to spice. Whoo mama These are spicy.  I will tell you they taste Really really good. I don't taste any protein, which is huge on protein snacks. Sometimes My mouth is still on fire. Sometimes they have that like weird proteiny taste. I'm not a fan of that So overall taste is really good. I think the points are decent because you get quite a few in the back But girl, these are spicy. So if you are a spicy fan, you're gonna love these He also said that the jalapeno ones are even spicier Yeah, 10 grams of protein five grams of fiber I would say ingredient wise taste wise. They do taste good. They're just spicy I would give these like a seven out of 10 Next up are quest chips. So these are new and improved. I have heard Really good things about these new and improved quest chips. Now, I have not had quest chips And I don't know how long the last ones I had were the taco ones, which I think are really really good But let's take a look 140 calories for the bag with 19 grams of protein So they are using hyaluric sunflower oil, which is definitely several steps up from regular sunflower oil So way to go quest still not the best oil but better than just regular sunflower oil This says have natural flavors, which is to be expected Just because it is a flavored item The one ingredient here that I absolutely do not love is that it has yeast extract So yeast extract is another name for msg msg is another ingredient I choose not to eat so because this has yeast extract in it I would not repurchase and I will tell you one more thing about yeast extract msg is that it's put into foods because it makes us crave them So it's an ingredient that makes us want more. So that's why foods will put those in there So keep an eye out for yeast extract because it's the exact same thing as msg So I would say ingredients on here aren't terrible. There is a ton of them like there is literally a ton There's a ton of ingredients on this label, but Let's still dig in let's try them Let's see if they're better than the ones I remember because I don't think I like the old version So here is what they look like This bag you guys is only this full so There's a lot of air, but let's try them. This is the sour cream and onion. I don't like them No, they're cardboardy. They taste like cardboard with sour cream and onion flavoring Sorry quest I dislike these as much as the old version of these chips no Great that there's 19 grams of protein in them, but There are no for me I would give them based on ingredients and these are pricey too And the taste the cardboardy taste of these I would give these four out of 10 All right, moving on to bars. I have five bars. I believe first is the lean bar. So this is g and c's protein bar So this is their brand of protein bar. This is in chocolate chip flavor This is 170 calories 15 grams of protein not bad seven grams of fiber and gluten free I'm breaking out my Flashlights again. There is a ton of ingredients in these bars a ton So right away. I see palm oil Which is the worst of the worst when it comes to oils It is the most heavily processed oil with hexane So I don't eat palm oil at all The only palm oil you ever want to see slash eat if you are concerned about the oils You're putting in your body is red palm oil And you're not going to find that in very many foods because it's extremely expensive This one just has regular palm oil Let's see it has dextrin Dextrose which is another term for sugar I also see natural flavor, of course, and it is sweetened with sucralose So for the laundry list of ingredients, I guess that's not too bad for that many of them This is interesting. So this gives me granola bar vibes So you can see that it's more of a granola bar with a chocolate base and some chocolate chips on top Interesting. Let's try it. Cheers Negative yuck. It's hard as a rock for one. It is not sweet at all No, it just tastes weird It tastes like I ate a big scoop of all-purpose flour. That's what it reminds me of it has zero taste The texture is fine. I don't get any chocolate from the base on the bottom or the chocolate chips. It's literally hard No, no go for me. No go. I would rate this like one out of 10 Next up is a bar. I'm actually kind of excited about this is the vital proteins collagen bar in chocolate almond and sea salt Now, you know that I put the vital proteins collagen peptides in my coffee every morning. It's my go-to. I love it But I've never tried their bar. So this has 10 grams of collagen, which is great 14 grams of protein, which is amazing because you're getting the protein and the collagen Two grams of sugar and five grams of fiber. It also says made with himalayan pink sea salt mcts and chocolate chips One hundred and seventy calories for the bar. So for ingredients right away I love that it is sweetened with allulose. So allulose is a naturally occurring sugar that comes from figs and raisins So it's a great sugar alternative. It does not affect your blood sugar Like a lot of the other even sugar alternatives do so I love that that's in here I also love that this is organic coconut sugar is the other Sweetener organic coconut sugar is the best option for sugar. It also has mct oil powder Almond butter himalayan pink sea salt and rosemary extract. Okay So far ingredient wise 10 out of 10 This is one bar that I would purchase and consume on a regular basis based on the ingredients alone So again, this is the chocolate almond and sea salt. Let's take a look at this. Oh, it looks good So there's your bar. So to me it gives me like A chewy vibe. It's got some chocolate chips in there. You can see all the chocolate Let's give it a try. Cheers Immediately I get the feel of the og power bars that same texture of the power bars It's good. It's chewy. It's definitely chewy kind of like caramel like the chewiness that you would get in caramel I definitely taste the chocolate. I love the kind of crunchy of the chocolate chips It is not very sweet Which is kind of to be expected when you're using coconut sugar and allulose because they're not Sickning sweet like a lot of the other sugars and sugar alternatives like sucralose or splenbeck So it's not overly sweet. I get that little hint of salt. It's good I would say that the ingredients are 10 out of 10 But I would say that the taste is like 7 out of 10 But if you're going to choose a protein bar You're going to get the benefit of collagen and good ingredients. I would definitely buy this again I would be very interested in trying some of the other flavors. So I would say taste 7 out of 10 ingredients 10 out of 10 I have heard a ton of good things about the power crunch bar In fact, my best friend used to eat these which i'm assuming she still does all the time So i'm pretty excited to try this. I've never tried these bars. I know who am I? So this is the peanut butter cream. It has 13 grams of protein 5 grams of sugar now I know that these are a little hefty in points or I have been told it is 200 calories for the bar What I know about these bars is that the texture is like a cream filled cookie So those really good like strawberry chocolate and vanilla cookies with the cream in the middle That's what I've been told that this is like. So I'm pretty excited about that So immediately when I look at the ingredients, I see palm oil actually listed twice Once in the peanuts in the bar and then in the bar itself. So not a fan of that I see fructose, which is another term for sugar Multodextrin not a fan of that natural flavors And I also see stevia leaf extract. So quite a few ingredients that I'm not a huge fan of This better be really good for the points because the ingredients alone I probably wouldn't purchase this bar just based on those ingredients. So here's what it looks like It's definitely that layered cookies with the cream in the middle But it's fully covered in like a white chocolatey type of coating Maybe it's a peanut butter coating peanut butter cream But that's where a lot of the palm oil is I bet but still let's try it smells really good and peanutty cheers It's okay. I don't think it's great. Again. It's not very sweet Which is interesting because the multodextrin and the fructose you would think that this would be sweet Plus it has five grams of sugar. It's not very sweet. I definitely taste the peanut butter That comes front foremost number one thing I taste is the peanut butter. I do enjoy that crunchy of the cookie I think that that's really good. Here's kind of what the inside of it Looks like it's definitely that whole cookie and cream wafer vibe But based on the ingredients and the taste, I don't think it's that great I'm sorry for those of you that love the power crunch bar. Feel free to eat it We all have different tastes, of course, but I would rate this six out of 10 Next is another bar that I have heard tons of good things about and that is the no cow protein bar So this is a non dairy bar. Hence the name. No cow. This is the blueberry cobbler flavor It has 22 grams of protein, which is amazing in only one gram of sugar 190 calories and a pretty short ingredient list. So let's see if there's anything on this ingredient list that I'm not a fan of flashlight in hand Let's see. It's pea protein. So that's great. So again, because it is non dairy, there's no whey protein So pea protein is a good option. I do see palm oil with two stars next to it, which says That it's sustainably sourced. It doesn't matter. It's still palm oil So not a big fan of that. I see natural flavors And it is the sweetener in this is a blend of urethra tall monk fruit and stevia extract So I like that it is those and sweeteners versus sucralose So here's what the bar looks like pretty blasé for a bar. It's pretty thick, but there's no Prettiness there's nothing to this bar. So smells Fruity but hence blueberry cobbler. So let's try it. Cheers No, no Oh, it's like sand Uh, okay. First of all, it is the fakest most artificial blueberry flavor ever But the worst part is is it turns literally to like sand in your mouth. So this bar See how it's like grainy Uh, it literally turns to sand in your mouth. No, that's A no for me 100 no zero out of 10. I think the flavor's horrible. I think the ingredients aren't great I hate that it turns to sand in my mouth No, I would definitely not buy this again. I'm drinking some water Get that sandiness out of my mouth No cow bar because we are going to try the alani new fit snacks in the munchies flavor Now even my best friend reached out to me and she said I know you aren't going to like the ingredients So we'll preface it with that but she says that these bars are amazing I know these are all the rage in w w and again These were not in stock at gnc. So I actually ordered an entire box from the alani new website So they better be good because I have a whole box in my pantry. So this again is the munchies bar It's 170 calories. I know for a fact. It's five smart points. There is 16 18 18 grams of protein. So that's great But she already preface that the ingredients aren't good. So Let's take a look So I see So right away. I see palm kernel oil, which is the worst of the worst as the oil use Dextrose syrup, which is basically sugar syrup and then there's malatol So malatol if you eat too much of it you spend a lot of time in the bathroom So I probably wouldn't consume more than one of these in a day or maybe not even every single day if you're sensitive to malatol Let's see. I see canola oil. So there's palm oil and canola oil natural flavor And sucralose it does they colored with paprika. So I do like that if the coloring isn't artificial, but holy moly There's a lot a lot of ingredients in this bar that I am not a fan of But I always say everything in moderation and if it's delicious, I could see myself having this every once in a while So let's break into it. Uh, I this is the only flavor I've ever purchased. This is my first time trying it Oh, it's pretty. So here is what the bar looks like It's good size. So that's it in relation to my hand. It is fully covered in chocolate It's got these little like nubs on top. They look like cookie pieces and then that drizzle. So Let's try the famous alani new munchies bar. Cheers Okay, I see what all the rage is about This is So good So good. This is a candy bar. This literally tastes like I'm eating a candy bar. I taste caramel I taste chocolate. I taste salty. I taste pretzels Wow This is really good Sadly, it doesn't have the best ingredients which bums me out. I wish it was a cleaner bar, but Okay, you know my 90 10 90 percent clean food 10 percent foods. I love This falls in the 10 percent foods. I love I would absolutely buy these again I would eat these not every day, but I would eat these sparingly because it's truly Really really delicious 10 out of 10 10 out of 10 for taste Not the best ingredients like five out of 10 for the ingredients But I would probably buy these again Like I said, and I would eat them every so often If you want something sweet if you're craving something sweet, this would be great and you're gonna get 18 grams of protein so Way to go alani new I am impressed not only with your energy drink, but also with your bars So I see what the hype is about so now that I'm completely hyped up on energy drinks and full From protein bars. That was a super fun video I would totally be down to doing another one of these Definitely leave down in the comments some suggestions if you want some more taste test videos What I should taste test give me all the ideas because this was really really fun And it was nice to try these things and really give you my honest opinion on what I would buy what I wouldn't buy What I would repurchase so there were some fails There were definitely some fails, but there were some big wins too today So I'm excited that I was able to try all these things and now I know what to pick up the next time I'm at gnc. So again, if you are new make sure you're subscribed I'd love for you to stick around join my youtube friends and family hit the little bell next to it So you're notified when new videos are uploaded Give this video a thumbs up if you loved this taste test that way I know if we should do more of these in the future Again, don't forget to check out the description box for all of my nutrition Coaching options as well as discount codes and links to my tried and true favorite things and the link to head over and join My facebook group. We'd love to have you over there as well. Thank you guys again so much for hanging out with me Let's have a little fun with this video because it's probably a really long one If you made it all the way through and you are seeing this right now doubt in the comments leave the muscle Emoji if you are on a computer or do not have emojis type the word muscle And I'll know that you made it to the end of this video. Thank you guys again so much This was so fun. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye