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Back in 2011, the buzz surrounding the launch of Redbox\u2019s Blu-ray disc rental business was getting increasingly dour.

For Taryn Aronson, who had been hired to help to execute the firm\u2019s digital content strategy, the performance woes of physical discs were not anything to lose sleep over.

However, the negative notions surrounding Blu-ray\u2019s lackluster performance drew Aronson\u2019s curiosity.

According to the buzz, the root cause of Blu-ray\u2019s performance blues at Redbox was that Blu-ray was \u201ca low-margin business.\u201d

\u201cThis just didn\u2019t make sense to me because as a rental business, the driver of your profit is inventory turns,\u201d explains Aronson, who notes that data showing robust turns of Blu-ray discs by Redbox competitors had exposed that demand was not the issue.     

Meanwhile, a senior content leader at Redbox had recently broadened Aronson\u2019s role, allowing her to troubleshoot for both digital and physical content. Having started her career as a financial analyst at Blackstone Group, Aronson first jumped into the media world at NBCUniversal, where she had become involved with the launch of streaming service Hulu. She would subsequently join Redbox\u2019s strategy team after having completed an MBA degree.

In the ensuing months at Redbox, Aronson dug into the numbers and began to educate others on the true economics of Blu-ray versus SD and the practices that optimized the buying and allocation of Blu-ray discs at Redbox.

Reports Aronson: \u201cI got people on board, and we were able to drive a ton of incremental profit for Redbox.\u201d

Aronson\u2019s key takeaway from the Blu-ray experience was the importance of understanding the role of finance and leveraging data to make better decisions across the business. As finance leaders, Aronson tells us, it\u2019s crucial for us to work in partnership with colleagues and to make smart trade-offs to increase value for the company. \u2013Jack Sweeney