IP Video Surveillance - The Retailer's Path To More

By Rich Mellott, president, DIGIOP

Retailers continue to hear about the advancements of IP technology. What benefits can be expected when considering IP video surveillance?

Loss prevention will always be an area of concern for retailers. Return on investment for loss prevention relies on the ability to stop theft from happening, or to successfully investigate the crime after the fact. Advances delivered by IP video surveillance technology provide more powerful real-time alerts, higher resolution images, and zoom capabilities, which increase the likelihood of catching the criminal. IP video can also lower cabling costs, while providing fast, secure video transmission, and the ability to share the information across the network – for both real-time alerts and remote access of the security system. Additionally, two commonly overlooked benefits of IP video, from a loss prevention standpoint, are the ability to integrate other sources of data and to push resource-consuming analytics to the edge of the network.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to manage and analyze video and data at the core of the network, within the recording device?

Actually, no. Intelligent IP cameras and devices are able to perform a wide range of valuable retail analytics, including people counting, service metrics, and traffic patterns, giving retailers access to important business intelligence. Pushing these demands to the edge of network, and not relying on the video and data management system to crunch the analytics, frees up valuable processing power, and avoids overtaxing your system. The net result is that it allows your loss prevention system to be smarter.