NEWS ROUND-UP
Clare Birkin embraces the vendor agenda at iFacility
A seasoned risk specialist with almost 30 years’ experience in the retail, dining and hospitality space is serving up a new approach to best practice and collaborative working across the sector and helping develop the next generation of risk solutions.
Clare Birkin has flipped her role as Head of LP at Burger King for the new title of Head of Loss Prevention and Risk Solutions for iFacility, an end-to-end technology security provider specialising in remote access risk intelligence consolidation, from CCTV to fire and intruder alarm monitoring – and all in one place.
Clare’s role is pivotal in understanding and articulating the retailer or hospitality provider experience and challenge in order to help develop better solutions.
“I worked with iFacility in my previous role and was always impressed with how collaborative that relationship was – they understood the challenges I had and were able to quickly innovate to provide easy-to-implement solutions,” said Clare.
“With my background and experience they approached me to help articulate those challenges and drill down into what the customer wants and needs, because I’ve been exactly where they are and speak the same language in terms of trying to develop something from the ground up that is best-in-class.”
Under Clare’s brief at Burger King, iFacility helped develop iVerify within 6 weeks. By using CCTV strategically positioned over the ‘make tables’ to monitor, analyse and scan, it enabled the business to better understand the packing process to reduce malicious missing items and non-delivery claims in the rapidly expanding home delivery market leveraged through aggregators such as Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats.
Clare will be instrumental in the roll-out of the iSafe system of monitoring colleague safety that can dynamically risk assess a developing situation and, at the flick of a switch on a fob, automatically contact the call centre, who in turn speak into the store or call the police. The system automatically records the CCTV before and after the incident to provide a strong evidence pack for police. This is also used by a hospitality provider to report thefts of products to the police.
iFacility boasts its own NSI Gold Standard control room to remotely monitor client sites and this allows the business to zoom in on suspicious or aggressive behaviour at points of sales across its largely hospitality estate. This data is easily packaged for police forces via digital evidence management systems (DEMs) platforms for both rapid response when required or to support prosecutions post-event.
Clare is now instrumental in the intelligence development of CCTV and data mining to allow businesses to rapidly visually reference EPOS anomalies such as bogus refunds, under-ringing or loyalty card abuse, for example.
“With my experience and working with the software team they are giving me free range to help develop this game-changing technology which can quickly reveal, at your fingertips, footage of exactly what was happening at the time.
“The business is very good at rapid turnaround in technology – it has a very can-do approach where nothing seems to be off the table in terms of what can be developed. They are really hungry for new ideas which is where my background and experience come in – being able to understand the client need with a view to helping develop next generation solutions. This role gives me the opportunity to help many businesses rather than one.”
Founder of iFacility, Nathan Dervin, said: “Clare is an excellent fit for our business in terms of the development of future technologies via a better understanding of the client mindset – what they really want in terms of issues such as colleague safety and value for money.
“She is a well-respected risk professional who understands the risk nuances and broader dynamics of the industry and what the sector requires to protect people, property and profit. Clare will be invaluable in helping shape that future for iFacility.”
