Making 4K video surveillance worth the investment

In the business world, video surveillance has often been considered

a necessary cost of doing business.

Initial investment in any new system comes out of a company’s capital expenditure,

and “returns” can be difficult to calculate mainly if it simply works to deter crime,

or for cost avoidance. With the advent of 4K, which offers four times higher

the resolution and pixels on target than HD, users can expect to increase the value of

their system’s investment more easily.

More pixels on target, combined with content analytics,

offers the potential for the genuine calculation of ROI.

Loss prevention and cost reduction benefits
Traditional loss prevention applications, such as point of sale and cash till monitoring,

remain strong applications for high resolution systems such as 4K,

with camera count reduction being an obvious win in terms of

cost of acquisition and system maintenance.

For one major UK retailer, clever deployment of high resolution cameras,

video management software and analytics nearly halved its shrinkage

from 0.8 percent

to just 0.4 percent within the first two years

which translated into hundreds of thousands of pounds of savings.

In doing so, the number of employees caught in the act increased five-fold.

Beyond traditional loss prevention efforts,

4K resolution-based installations can unlock cost reductions

in direct security operations,

supporting ROI. For example, one US Fortune 500 company was able to

deliver a 33 percent reduction in its video systems’ running costs.

It calculated cost of use in terms of man-hours required to retrieve

and review event footage.

With a higher resolution video system, not only were they able to reduce

the man-hours required for this activity,

but they also cut the cost per hour of running the system.

Business intelligence
Finally, by bringing together 4K, analytics, cloud storage and “big data”,

it becomes possible to deliver concrete and accelerated ROI

in a more consistent manner. 4K video data, combined with these technologies,

will enable data from various sources to form a powerful source of

business intelligence.

A 4K video system can be used to monitor shop aisles for loss prevention,

and the same video data can be mined to help understand consumer behavior

via “heat mapping” analysis of traffic patterns, people counting, etc.

The resulting intelligence can then be used to develop tools to increase sales

such as targeted sales promotions, queue management, improved store layouts, etc.

Building the case for 4K systems
Justifying an investment in 4K video becomes easier

when you include traditional loss prevention,

operational cost reductions and efficiencies,

and now potential top-line revenue increases from better merchandising

and store management.

To make the strongest business case for 4K systems,

managers may still want to funnel investment toward the areas

where they see the highest risk of losses.

To this end, securing areas where there is significant risk to human life

or high value assets are two clear areas where we anticipate early adoption of 4K:

power plants, chemical plants, airports, stadiums, casinos and banks, for example.

In addition, managers across any large organization can share the system to

realize benefits in multiple departments and build an ROI story much quicker

as a result.