industry focus
Focussing upon the bigger picture for 2023
Retail businesses are increasingly required to understand the bigger picture when looking at the exposure to high levels of risk impacting their business.
This is a key reason why global integrated CCTV provider March Networks wants to make 2023 a year to remember in terms of nurturing a wider more collaborative approach to the challenges facing the sector through a combination of global expertise and reach with targeted local delivery.
The surveillance equipment manufacturer, which specialises in helping organisations transform video into business intelligence, already works with 300 leading retail brands and is looking to build further on that reputation across the UK and Europe.
From operational analytics looking at occupancy levels, to dwell times and queue lengths, March Networks’ video-based business intelligence also plays a key role in driving sales as well as helping customers uncover theft and fraud, reduce shrink, accelerate loss prevention investigations and improve efficiencies.
It is this ‘asset optimisation' capability that presents one of March Networks’ big themes for 2023, according to Simon Jones, regional sales manager for UK and Ireland.
“Organisations are now having to justify the cost of all capital expenditure at a time when all businesses are feeling the pinch – that’s why they are looking to their VMS providers to do more.
“They want to see more in terms of technological integration and the ability to drill down into bigger data sets, whether it's occupancy rates or video evidence of refund fraud that marries up to the POS data,” he said.
“Video has become a powerful verification support tool rather than a simple one-dimensional recording device - it is not about selling boxes. It is now more about being collaborative and consultative, understanding what the customers' problems are and how video can add value.”
To this end, the business is setting its sights on offering ‘try before you buy’ proof of concept pilots to retailers wanting to harness and harvest video-based business intelligence.
“We have a strong reputation of delivering in the banking sector and it was one of these proof-of-concept trials that recently resulted in a major investment,” added Simon.
From fully-purchased to software as a service subscription approaches, its robust recoding systems and application software is informing critical decision-making at a time of great economic uncertainty as the cost of living crisis continues to impact businesses.
“The need for greater insights has resulted in more customer engagement and collaborative conversations as to what the technology can and should be doing. This means easy to deploy, sustainable and scalable CCTV technology that provides high-quality business intelligence that can positively impact sales performance in 2023,” he added.
For more information, contact Simon Jones.
