When to Leverage Video as a Platform A Guide to Optimizing the Retail Environment

Transcription

1 When to Leverage Video as a Platform A Guide to Optimizing the Retail Environment

2 Contents

3 S1 An Industry in Transition Over the past few years, retail has seen seismic changes in how the customer shops. Technology has been a game changer for both retailers and consumers alike. Challenges in the retail sector also include a slow economy, tepid market growth, tighter budgets and ever-increasing customer expectations. Together, the situation has all the makings of many sleepless nights for executives in all areas of the retail community. Video surveillance has historically been and continues to be a valuable tool for security and loss prevention in the retail environment. In fact, video surveillance for loss prevention is needed today more than ever as retail theft, organized retail crime, internal theft and fraud continue to take a significant toll. A National Retail Security Survey estimates that retailers lose $35 billion annually to retail theft from employee crime, shoplifting, accounting errors and supplier fraud. 1

4 An Industry in Transition (cont.) Beyond security, new technology capabilities today are also enabling video as a platform to contribute additional value to retail environments. Increasingly, retailers are focusing on ensuring positive customer experiences and maximizing the economic value of every square foot of retail space. The customer experience can be a key differentiator as brick-and-mortar retail stores compete with e-commerce. Video as a platform enables retailers to improve customer experiences by monitoring and optimizing customer service variables such as interaction between customers and associates, wait times at checkout, the amount of time customers spend in a store and more. Video as a platform can also track and analyze the effectiveness of merchandise displays, traffic patterns in a store and provide other insights into why people buy and how they shop. Combining information gleaned from video with various business metrics can provide retailers new levels of awareness of the numerous variables in the retail environment and new ways to control them to the benefit of the bottom line. Today, video business intelligence is expanding the operational benefits of video as a platform. Retailers are now using more video in smarter ways and with greater results, expanding far beyond yesterday s narrow focus on security and loss prevention. New, intelligent tools that incorporate video are both helping retailers tackle issues of retail shrink while also optimizing operations and driving bottom-line growth. Video business intelligence is a critical new tool to help effectively manage multiple aspects of any retail business. 1

5 S2 Doing More With Less Loss prevention (LP) and asset protection professionals are asked continually to deliver better business results, stronger security and better-controlled shrink levels using lower budgets and less resources. A key technology enabler for retail professionals to achieve their mission is an IP-based, scalable video surveillance platform. The right platform will enable LP departments to generate strong metrics and also to integrate future technologies and solutions to a common platform as the retail landscape evolves over time. 2

6 S3 The Benefits of IP Video Surveillance Many retail organizations are just now migrating from analog cameras to IP video surveillance. But even if retail organizations are coming late to the IP game, the good news is that IP systems have now matured and progressed to the point of offering many more benefits beyond better camera images and network connectivity. Today s retailers can benefit from the latest IP video systems that offer multiple advantages: Beyond security and loss prevention Today s capabilities of video as a platform extend into almost every aspect of a retailer s operation. The benefits add immense value to systems that previously were seen primarily as tools of the LP department. Broader usage throughout an organization can contribute to rapid return on investment (ROI) and make it easy to cost-justify new systems. Open integration platform Shared software development and application programming interfaces enable video systems today to be easily integrated with other systems used in the retail environment, such as point-of-sale (POS) systems. Intelligence Using video today, retail organizations can capture and analyze shopper movement patterns in order to increase conversion rates, improve operational efficiency and maximize customer satisfaction. Proactive versus reactive For example, remote monitoring provides a video system health check capabilities to let operators know the status of their system and, importantly, when cameras are not functioning. Scalable New systems offer options to enable design of a video solution with an eye towards expansion and evolution of the total video ecosystem. An open, scalable platform makes it easy to add cameras when needed. Additionally, it is simple to migrate from analog to IP cameras over time. Secure Hacking is no small concern in an age when the Heartbleed bug is making headlines alongside retailer reports of data theft. Today s leading developers of IP video solutions have made investments to create IP solutions that are hacker-resistant. 3

7 S4 Future-Proof It is critical to design a video surveillance solution with an eye to the future. Today, loss prevention departments, store operations, marketing, buying and merchandising groups, and IT departments work closer together than ever before. One of the goals of this cooperation is to seek out ways to leverage existing store infrastructure, using IP surveillance systems, to provide additional insight into the customer experience. How can retailers use existing hardware to achieve new levels of intelligence and insight into their business? Let s look at how video business intelligence uses video from existing surveillance cameras to extract accurate and holistic data about customer behavior patterns beyond those provided by traditional technologies. Leveraging this information, retailers can make real and predictive decisions regarding business operations. 4

8 S5 Video Business Intelligence Video Business Intelligence (VBI) is delivered through a combination of video analytics algorithms commonly used in the security market. These offerings enable retailers to drive tangible ROI through an increased customer experience while driving revenue, increasing margins and reducing costs. Specific VBI features include: People Counting Most retailers only know how many buyers (transactions) they have per day, but they do not have visibility into what they could have sold. This insight comes from quantifying customer traffic. Contrasting traffic numbers with sales numbers provides a conversion metric that tells retailers how effectively they are converting shoppers into buyers. In the age of e-commerce, online and mobile channels know their conversion rates but most brick-and-mortar channels haven t known theirs until now. Also, by using traffic data as an input into a Workforce Management (WFM) application, a retailer can create a customer-centric schedule to maximize staffing and drive the customer experience while also increasing conversion and revenue. Measuring traffic also benefits a retailer s marketing function by providing data about how effective a campaign drives traffic into the store. LEARN MORE HERE > 5

9 Video Business Intelligence (cont.) Queue Management Queue Management is a sophisticated predictive analytic that can accurately forecast in real time the labor demands at checkout. Combining traffic counts, average customer shop times, and specific service requirements of desired queue length and wait times, store management can address staffing needs proactively before line length becomes a service issue. Queue management can also provide information when staffing is too high in relation to traffic to reduce payroll leakage while maintaining a desired service level. LEARN MORE HERE > Retail Traffic Analysis Tracking customer flow throughout a store provides useful data into specific traffic patterns and dwell times to aid a retailer with store layout and design. Making better-informed in-store merchandising decisions can optimize gross margin and revenue using product placement. Heat maps provide a visual display of the heaviest traffic areas, which can be utilized to adjust staffing to best serve the customer and drive conversion. LEARN MORE HERE > These solutions provide store management key metrics to make smarter decisions. The ability to provide this information via a mobile device enables management to be active and productive on the sales floor while still having access to valuable analytics. 5

10 S6 Trusting in a Technology Partner To build and grow a video platform effectively today and into the future, retailers should identify a trusted technology partner that shares core values and a common retail vision. As a global leader of Actionable Intelligence solutions, Verint is committed to delivering industry-specific solutions that address current and future challenges, threats and opportunities. Verint s portfolio can meet the specific needs of a variety of retailers from large big-box leaders to specialty stores. The portfolio includes IP video management software, video business intelligence applications, encoders and decoders (to accommodate legacy analog cameras), IP cameras, intelligent network video recorders (NVRs), situation management software and business system interfaces. Verint s video surveillance platform provides real-time intelligence for live detection of safety and security events, and to monitor store operations. With powerful analytics, Verint helps enable organizations to make sense of vast amounts of security video and data, generating Actionable Intelligence for better decisions and faster, more effective action. This suite of integrated analytic applications can automatically pinpoint potential security breaches and significant events and send video alerts to the appropriate people and departments. 6

11 S7 Invest Today for Tomorrow Loss prevention executives today should view any technology purchase through the lens of a broader, strategic approach encompassing every aspect of the retail business. Involving other departments and managers in the buying decision will uncover new opportunities to leverage the benefit of video investments throughout the organization. Making the right investment today will both be most cost-effective in the long run and provide the foundation for value-added solutions. Multiple aspects of the business will benefit with tangible ROI for the entire organization. It s helpful to begin with the end in mind and then to choose the best video platform to execute the vision. 7

12 Powering Actionable Intelligence. Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT) is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions for customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance. Today, more than 10,000 organizations in over 180 countries use Verint solutions to improve enterprise performance and make the world a safer place. Learn more at Unauthorized use, duplication, or modification of this document in whole or in part without the written consent of Verint Systems Inc. is strictly prohibited. By providing this document, Verint Systems Inc. is not making any representations regarding the correctness or completeness of its contents and reserves the right to alter this document at any time without notice. Features listed in this document are subject to change. Not all functionality is available in all configurations. Please contact Verint for current product features and specifications. All marks referenced herein with the or TM symbol are registered trademarks or trademarks of Verint Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. All other marks are trademarks of their respective owners Verint Systems Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide VERINT info@verint.com