CNX ANIXTER

By Jackie Andersen

Selling video surveillance to retailers is no longer just about the camera or the recording solution. There are a lot of moving parts beyond physical security functionality. Nowadays, it's about turning a watchful eye to a broader spectrum of retail activity beyond loss prevention — we call this a video context.
To close the deal, you need to shift the discussion from pure technology to the infinite ways you can apply technology to other store functions. Image quality, color fidelity, frames per second, and other aspects of camera operation will still come into play. But your sales pitch is also an opportunity to teach retailers how to harness the technology to create cross-department value.
Retail associates now have multichannel touch points, like accessing mobile and back office applications to aug ment their POS systems and video analytics programs.
By showing retailers how to increase their ROI from network video, you’re also introducing ways they can improve their bottom line and foster other champions of IP video within their organization. Let’s focus on four key areas where adding video context can have significant impact:
- Merchandising
- Loss Prevention
- Operations
- Marketing

Merchandising: Improving Store Layout
Retailers understand that there’s a direct correlation between store layout and conversion rates. With video analytics they can monitor how shoppers move through the aisles, measure dwell times at end caps and in-store advertising, and observe how specific customer interactions impact sales. Providing a video context for traffic patterns helps retailers validate the optimum layout for moving merchandise and ensure chain-wide consistency when executing promotional programs.

Operations: Adhering To Store Policies, Procedures
Retailers must rely on a host of policies and procedures to ensure that stores run smoothly. Providing a video context for employee activity can help retailers identify procedural mistakes at the checkout, analyze employee/customer interactions to help shape future staff training. In the stockroom, surveillance cameras can help operations managers confirm the accuracy of deliveries as well as compliance with safety measures for processing incoming and outgoing inventory.
From an operational standpoint, getting all these pieces to work in concert can improve staffing decisions and procedural consistency. Because surveillance is a network-based application, headquarters can use video to conduct operational audits remotely, a more cost-effective option than sending staff or hired vendors to each individual store.

Loss Prevention and Risks
Surveillance video can be a retailer’s frontline defense against loss prevention when integrated with a store’s POS system exception reporting. Providing a video context helps retailers identify the parties involved in such things as deliberate sweethearting, credit card or returns fraud, gift card theft, as well as honest mistakes at the check-out. Video analytics can help retailers thwart organized retail crime by triggering alarms. Surveillance systems also provide forensic evidence for prosecuting shoplifters without endangering employees.
While operations can use the video system to avert potential harm to customers and employees, loss prevention/risk and safety can use the video as evidence to counter false injury claims.

Marketing: Analyzing Long-Term Behavior Patterns
Given that the competitive arena is in a constant state of flux, retailers need to be agile enough to capitalize on narrow windows of promotional opportunity. At the same time, being able to analyze trends over time positions the store for long-term success. Having a video context to support their observations about seasonal traffic patterns, checkout queue lengths, plan-o-gram mapping, stock turns, and other key marketing metrics can help retailers fine-tune their marketing strategies to match the natural ebb and flow of their business.
In the past, security dealers sold video surveillance only. Today, forward-thinking integrators and VARs need to take a more global view of retailing. You need to show retailers how adding a video context to merchandising, operations, and marketing will give them the critical business intelligence they need for every aspect of their operation. Positioning network video in this new light will not only improve your chances of closing the deal but also increase your customer’s bottom line.