Remote live video monitoring is a smart, safe alternative to traditional video surveillance and other security solutions. The strategically-positioned cameras capture video footage at your business in real-time. This footage is monitored by highly-trained, U.S.-based monitoring agents as it happens. If the monitoring agents notice suspicious behavior, they can use talk-down systems to diffuse the threat. If criminals remain undeterred, the security agents can alert you and the authorities to apprehend them in person.
Remote video monitoring can be a vital part of the security strategy for a range of businesses, including retailers, auto dealerships, construction, critical infrastructure, apartment complexes, industrial facilities, and schools. Discover why remote video monitoring should be an important part of your business’ security strategy.
Remote Video Monitoring Deters Criminals
The presence of video cameras can often be enough to encourage criminals to leave your business alone and find a softer target, according to law enforcement officers. They say the presence of cameras can reduce incidences of numerous crimes, including burglary, employee theft, vandalism, and armed robbery. Criminals know the footage cameras capture may be used to trace and convict them. For smart criminals, it’s simply not worth the risk.
Remote Video Monitoring Is Responsive
While cameras can be powerful deterrents, some criminals will still take their chances. Remote video surveillance can be acted on in the moment, as crimes occur. If the real-time talk-down systems don’t resolve the issue, authorities can be called to the scene to apprehend the perpetrators before they leave. This is clearly much more effective than trying to track down criminals after crimes are committed. In some cases, without remote video monitoring, minor crimes may even go undetected because video footage isn’t watched regularly, if at all.
When surveillance cameras are monitored remotely, they tend to be used more effectively used than surveillance managed in-house. Richard Stellacchi, an account manager for a safety software firm, told AllBusiness often commercial burglaries aren’t solved because businesses don’t regularly maintain and monitor their surveillance footage.
Remote Video Monitoring Helps Reduce Financial Losses
All businesses must be concerned with their bottom lines. This requires making every effort to reduce theft and damages.
Theft can occur when people are opportunistic, taking your goods, tools, equipment, and other business items for their own personal use or to sell for profit. In some cases, damages can occur, such as when thieves engage in metal theft from critical infrastructure operations like train stations and electrical power plants. Your business may also be damaged by vandals who are simply bored or destructive. All of these behaviors can take a substantial economic toll on your business. Remote video monitoring can be a valuable tool for reducing financial loss.
Loss from theft and damages can be significant for businesses. For example, American retailers lost $46.8 billion to external and internal theft in 2017, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2018 National Retail Security Survey. The most recent National Equipment Register report noted that job site theft and vandalism costs the U.S. construction industry up to $1 billion each year. Business across a range of other sectors also suffer under the economic burden of theft and vandalism.
Along with the immediate cost of replacing and repairing damaged goods, indirect costs must be considered. When goods are stolen, retailers lose the cost of products and the revenue they could have generated. If tools and equipment are damaged, such as on a critical infrastructure project, businesses may need to either spend money hiring replacements or miss deadlines. Missing deadlines can delay future projects or cause companies to miss new economic opportunities altogether. Critical infrastructure businesses like transit systems and electrical supply companies may need to temporarily suspend services while they recover.
While insurance can help recover some of the immediate financial losses related to theft and damages, premiums will typically rise after any claim. Businesses will typically need to weigh up whether it’s worth shouldering the costs of theft and damage or making insurance claims and facing those increased premium expenses in the future.
Remote video monitoring has been proven to reduce the incidence of theft and damage by deterring criminals, apprehending criminals in the act, and aiding in recovery efforts across a range of business sectors. Because remote video monitoring watches over a business’s operations in real time, it can be much more effective at reducing losses than unmanned surveillance systems that are only reviewed from time to time. They can also be more effective than on-the-ground security guards, especially in large businesses like shopping malls, apartment complexes, and schools.
Remote video monitoring can be an important tool for reducing theft and damages in businesses like car dealerships and construction companies. These businesses are particularly vulnerable to theft and damage after hours as they cannot always move their valuable assets indoors to protect them. When these businesses close for the day, remote video monitoring services keep a watchful eye on them until employees return the next morning.
Remote Video Monitoring Improves Safety
Remote video monitoring can help your business be a safer place for customers, employees, and even threats. Sadly, stories of violence in shopping center parking lots and schools, for example, are all too common. Remote video monitoring can catch and potentially stop these crimes in real time. If crimes are committed, the surveillance tape can be used in evidence to secure a conviction, thus making society safer in the long run.
Keeping your customers safe is crucial for maintaining your good name in the business community. A serious incident on your business premises could be a public relationships disaster that could have devastating consequences for your firm.
Remote video monitoring can also spot unsafe work practices. Should the security agents spot unsafe behavior on your factory or construction site, for example, they can report back to you so you can counsel the offenders before they hurt themselves or someone else.
Since security agents monitor businesses from a remote location, they can also be much safer than using security guards on the ground, as many auto car dealerships and critical infrastructure businesses do after hours. Remote security agents can move criminals along using talk-down systems rather than coming face-to-face with perpetrators. Only if the criminals persist in committing the crime may security guards or law enforcement officers step in.
It may seem counterintuitive to want to keep criminals safe, but should injury befall someone on your business premises, you are liable. Fences and signs often do little to keep criminals off dangerous construction and critical infrastructure sites, but the sight of cameras often can.
Remote Video Monitoring Is Affordable
Remote video monitoring’s financial benefits go beyond reducing the costs associated with theft and damage. A remote monitoring camera system is also more affordable than many security solutions. For example, remote video monitoring is more cost-effective than employing security guards.
Studies show remote video monitoring services can cost up to 80 percent less than traditional security guard services. The price difference between a remote video monitoring service and an armed security guard is even greater. Since a remote video monitoring system’s security agents assess your business remotely, you’re also never liable for additional associated expenses, like costs related to medical treatment and wellbeing if guards are attacked on the job.
Remote Video Monitoring Is Reliable
It can be difficult to know who to trust with your business. Security guards have a responsibility to protect your company, but what if they’re a threat? Even with extensive background checks, if someone has no prior convictions, it’s impossible to know whether a security guard hired to protect a school, for example, might be a predator. Since remote video monitoring occurs off-site, the internal threat from security is substantially reduced.
You can also trust remote video monitoring to be reliable. Many remote video monitoring systems have high-tech motion detectors that can recognize threats more effectively than a sleepy security guard working the night shift.
Remote Video Monitoring Footage Can Increase Convictions
Remote video monitoring systems are a powerful weapon against crime. They can deter criminals from targeting your business and discourage them from carrying out their attacks, through talk-down systems. They can also improve apprehension and recovery rates. However, sometimes crimes are still committed. This doesn’t mean the remote video monitoring system has failed. In fact, your surveillance footage may be your most important tool in convicting the criminals who targeted your business.
Security guards are only human. They may forget key details of a person’s appearance and the crime’s nature. Their descriptions may be so vague that law enforcers struggle to trace or convict the perpetrators.
Remote video monitoring systems capture clear footage that can be used to trace criminals and aid in their conviction. Many high-tech systems can pan, zoom, and tilt the camera to capture important details about the crime, including its location, the criminals’ appearance and dress, any weapons they were carrying, and much more. All of these details can be easily shared with police to help your business get justice.
Remote video monitoring can decrease crime, reduce spending, improve efficiency, and so much more. With so many vital benefits, isn’t it time your business invested in a remote video monitoring system?
