What good are your eyes without your brain? Yet, when some businesses purchase a surveillance camera system, they skip the analytics component. That means all you’re buying is a basic ability to keep an eye on your business but missing out on a valuable opportunity to recognize and understand what’s going on. Does it really matter? Consider what’s at stake and why more businesses are focusing on surveillance analytics to protect and help grow their operations.
“It’s about getting the most out of your surveillance investment,” says Mike Markham, Commenco’s Director of Technology Solutions. “Analytics give businesses more control and allows them to be proactive. Most strongly prefer camera systems with analytics capabilities because it’s just a better solution. The analytics are just about as important now as the cameras themselves.”
Bringing Changing Times into Focus.
A simple camera system that gives you visibility into key areas of your business is better than nothing, but probably not as helpful as you think. It puts almost all of the responsibility on the humans tasked with watching the cameras. The problem is humans make mistakes and there’s no getting around that. They miss things, get distracted and take time off. Analytics software can take your surveillance game to a whole new level.
Surveillance analytics are far more accurate at detecting, identifying and generally making sense of what cameras see. Analytics put your cameras to work full-time 24/7, monitoring their activity, analyzing imagery and immediately making that information useful to your business. Reliability becomes standard while human error and the risk of costly distractions become a thing of the past.
Now is the time to wake up to the possibilities once considered too expensive or too experimental to be worth it. Powerful surveillance analytics are now mainstream and much more affordable than they used to be. The days of needing to configure extra tech processing power are over.
Analytical functions and outputs are also much easier to understand and put to use. Complicated data is now packaged into clear insights in the form of dashboards and other interfaces that are as user-friendly as ever. Put it all together and it’s easy to see why the surveillance analytics market is exploding and quickly becoming a standard of American business. Ignore it and risk putting your business at a distinct disadvantage.
Recognize What’s Happening As It Happens.
While a well-trained security pro may have an eagle eye when it comes to recognizing trouble on a surveillance camera, nothing compares to recognition and detection analytics. Software can quickly establish identities of individuals and detect even subtle patterns of activity that may indicate a cause for concern.
Analytics also filter out noise to focus only on what you’re interested in. Irrelevant movements of people, vehicles and machines are effectively ignored while software zeroes-in on unusual or particular conditions as they happen. Facial recognition alone is a valuable capability that’s remarkably accurate. In certain circumstances, a person’s facial characteristics can even be compared with private and public databases to establish key identification insights in an instant, such as violent criminal history.
Why just ‘keep an eye’ on the parking lot at your business when you can read and record license plates? You might be surprised at how much detail cameras can deliver, even at a distance. License plate information is far more useful in an investigation than just a make, model or color. Surveillance analytics can even detect the unusual motion of vehicles in your parking lot, like a vehicle entering after hours or at a time when employees are typically leaving.
Stay Aware of What’s Happening.
Detection and identification are critical and become even more valuable when they trigger real-time alerts. Who wouldn’t want to know about a problem as it happens rather than after the fact? Surveillance analytics notify you in an instant when priorities you pre-determine are detected.
What if you had to fire a problem employee who suddenly shows up again? Analytics can detect their face, establish their identity and immediately alert you. You can even flag clothing and objects like backpacks or weapons for detection and instant notification. At the other extreme, maybe you want to know when a VIP arrives at your property. Surveillance analytics can detect important business associates and put you on your toes before they even walk in the door.
Motion alerts are just as valuable. Surveillance analytics can detect unusual movement in different areas of your operation or during off-hours and notify you as it happens. Cameras can be used as tripwires along a property’s perimeter or in sensitive areas, detecting even small and slow movements, and alerting you immediately. Think of what motion detection and notification can mean for compliance situations too. In other words, surveillance analytics can also be used to confirm key operational movements in addition to detecting the unusual.
Who receives notifications? Surveillance analytics don’t just trigger alerts, they can also be configured to customize delivery of alerts. Maybe you want to personally receive all notifications, send them to specific managers or notify your entire team. Through surveillance analytics, you can even have alerts delivered according to proximity. Problem in the parking lot? Alert your security staff on patrol nearby.
Understand the Past for a Smarter Future.
What do you do with surveillance camera video recordings? Many businesses see their archive as a reference resource following a security incident. But what they don’t realize is looking through hours of recorded video can be extremely time consuming and frustrating.
Analytics capabilities allow you to quickly search through a video archive for detailed specifics ranging from dates and times to specific people and behaviors. It streamlines the whole process and makes finding a needle in a digital haystack much easier. And it’s not just a convenience. Consider that in a security breach scenario, investigations move quickly and information needs to be readily available.
Did you know? Archived surveillance footage has much more to offer than just evidence in liability situations. Unfortunately, some businesses don’t realize that and ultimately wind up just deleting their recordings and missing the opportunity. Surveillance analytics can put your recordings under a microscope to reveal valuable insights about your business.
For example, analytics can highlight areas of your property or times of day that are especially busy. Knowing this information can help you plan accordingly and use your resources more efficiently. You can adjust staffing or even business hours based on what analytics reveal. Analyzing activity can be a game-changer for warehouses where adjustments can be made to create better flow and smarter inventory locations.
And a great thing just keeps getting better. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are working to raise the bar for analyzing recordings. Imagine a surveillance system that becomes predictive. What if it could tell you about threats or opportunities before they even materialize? The future is coming to surveillance analytics quicker than you might think.
“Surveillance analytics will continue to evolve rapidly and improve their ability to teach you about your business,” says Markham. “Analytics tell you what’s really going on and give you a chance to make smarter decisions that directly impact the way you operate.”
The Right Partner Makes the Whole Solution Well Worth It.
When you power up analytics to go along with your surveillance camera system, you’re making the most of your investment. You’re optimizing your system’s capabilities and setting it up to perform in a way that can easily pay for itself by protecting your business and giving you insights that prevent theft, waste and missed opportunities.
Don’t go it alone. You’ll risk wasting your time and money, and winding up in a confusing mess that’s hard to straighten out. Buy your system and have it installed and configured properly by Commenco. We’ll carefully shape your surveillance analytics capabilities to match your business’ purposes. We’ll also help you understand what exactly to expect and how to make the most of it to benefit your bottom line.
