Challenge: theft prevention for retail grocery stores
Wakefern Food Corporation, the merchandising and distribution arm for ShopRite, is the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States, with locations throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast region. Saker ShopRites, Inc., owns and operates 27 supermarkets in New Jersey.
Retail grocery stores are challenged to maintain security surveillance over large spaces to reduce the risk of theft, and to capture video content with a high degree of detail. A typical store may have 50 cameras and some as many as 100 to adequately monitor activity. Recording and storing data can be costly. However, capturing high-quality video is essential in providing evidence for legal purposes.
Saker ShopRites is dedicated to implementing leading edge technologies and methodologies for ensuring loss prevention. Saker Loss Prevention worked with Axxon integration partner, Proactive Technology Solutions, to develop a sophisticated and cost-effective approach for monitoring security at their stores.
Proactive technology solutions provides domain expertise in retail security
For 20 years, Proactive Technology Solutions has delivered network integration solutions for retail stores, restaurants, schools and other high-traffic, consumer locations. Proactive has been exclusively focused on providing integrated video surveillance systems for over a decade. Beyond the capabilities of alarm companies that react to fire and burglary, Proactive specialises in creating systems that help to prevent or solve crimes.
Proactive’s customised solutions for the retail food industry integrate the best of industry loss prevention standards and leading-edge video platforms. Recognizing the expanded capabilities of IP video technology, Proactive has led the migration of its clients from analogue to IP video systems. In considering an IP video platform, Proactive selected Axxon Intellect for its specific benefits to retail installations:
- Axxon’s IP platform enables storage of more data at higher resolutions than similarly-priced analog equipment. Higher resolution is required to capture details of in-store activities to identify theft and other issues for later playback.
- Using Axxon’s development environment, Proactive can easily configure customised solutions for their clients, regardless of the size or number of retail locations.
- Axxon’s intelligence features enable Proactive to create additional solutions and services for retail clients such as syncing cameras at cash registers with Point-of-Sale (POS) systems to verify sales activity, and monitoring and controlling secure employee access points.
"We chose Axxon Intellect for its extensive capabilities and flexibility to work with many types of cameras," said Proactive Technology Solutions president, Gene Parisi. "Axxon’s customer support from concept through to implementation is second to none. Axxon is a reliable business partner and extension of our team."
Solution: Axxon Intellect enables centralised surveillance and video storage
Saker Loss Prevention has been a customer of Proactive Technology Solutions for five years. During this time, the company transitioned from buying and maintaining its own video surveillance equipment to leasing a complete system from Proactive. Leasing has been an effective operating solution for Saker Loss Prevention that allows the company to expense costs to each store and more easily upgrade technology, while lowering overall maintenance and support costs.
When Saker Loss Prevention wanted to create a video surveillance system with the most current technological capabilities available, they called on Proactive to upgrade to IP video using Axxon Intellect. Saker Loss Prevention sought a system that could serve their key needs of security and loss prevention, while minimizing costs to collect, aggregate and store video content.
Using Axxon Intellect, Proactive integrated cameras in each store through IP-networked servers providing centralised access to cameras in all stores from a single location. The goal of the new system was to improve the quality of video capture and archiving, and to build a more scalable platform than the existing analog systems.
The solution enabled Saker Loss Prevention to:
- Capture video data at sufficient quality to ensure and improve conviction rates when introduced as evidence in legal proceedings. The IP cameras record at a high resolution and frame rate that is closer to the quality of live footage.
- From a centralised, remote location, use the historical video data from multiple stores to build screen views and dashboards that could compare behaviors between stores.
Results: cost-effective loss prevention and employee safety at the holidays
Prior to implementing video surveillance, a Saker ShopRite store suffered a robbery on Christmas Eve resulting in significant losses due to theft and damage. The following year, the company deployed two store personnel for each store on a 24-hour rotating shift. However, the costs associated with security were almost as expensive as the theft itself.
After implementing the Proactive video surveillance solution, two security staff members could remotely monitor video feeds from multiple stores. This ensured the safety of Saker Loss Prevention’s staff and significantly reduced the cost of store security.
