Watchful eyes
Getting drunk and trashing a hotel lobby is never a good idea. Doing it at a hotel with the latest digital video surveillance cameras makes it an even worse idea.
That’s a lesson one guest at the Clive Hotel & Suites learned after the hotel’s owner, Philip Schneider, supplied the police with images recorded by four cameras positioned in the lobby.
Schneider, who has been in the hotel business for 25 years, said the system has already allowed him to recover costs for damages he normally would have had to absorb. After using the system for six months at the new extended-stay hotel, he now plans to put similar systems at his Westown Parkway Residences and in the common areas of apartment buildings he owns.
“I’m just absolutely thrilled with it,” said Schneider. “It’s the best thing I ever did.”
Once a tool used primarily by large corporations, video surveillance systems are beginning to be considered by more Central Iowa businesses as the cost of digital video recorders and the bandwidth necessary to transmit video images continues to drop. Additionally, the systems are increasingly being used by companies not just for security purposes but also to measure customer traffic, monitor employees’ performance and provide training.
With the digital technology, companies now have the ability to quickly find video footage from a specific date and time with a few clicks of a mouse, rather than having to review hours of videotape. They also have the ability to monitor, in real time, key areas such as entry doorways or parking lots for security purposes.
“With the advent of digital recording, it’s really taken off,” said Jeff Gross, an account executive with Control Installations of Iowa Inc., which installed Schneider’s system. “And unfortunately, due to 9/11, we’ve seen a lot of corporations tighten down on their security with the use of these systems.”
Convenience stores, which typically have four to eight cameras installed, are a major user of the systems, but more small businesses are also installing them for security purposes, Gross said. “They’ll put them on the main entrance and maybe on a critical space in the office,” he said.
Debra Johnson Jones, president of Vodaci Technologies, anticipates that video surveillance systems, which make up about 5 percent of the company’s business currently, will grow to 20 percent within the next few years.
“One of the things I think companies are missing the boat on about (closed-circuit TV) is that it’s beneficial for monitoring for other things besides just break-ins,” she said. “There are areas that companies can get payback on, whether it’s video that you view live or that you review after the fact.”
A grocery store chain, for instance, could find multiple uses for the technology, from reviewing incidents such as alleged damage to customers’ cars from shopping carts to being able to see how well late-night employees use their time. It can also be used to monitor delivery doors to reduce inventory theft.
Companies, particularly manufacturers, can use the video systems to spot needed improvements in procedures or to highlight a best practice for training purposes, Jones said.
Some Central Iowa child-care centers are using the technology to allow parents to view their children in real time through a password-protected Web site accessible from any computer.
Koalaty Time Child Development and Preschool began offering video monitoring in 1993, said owner Jan Castagnoli.
“We felt that if we could let the parents see how well their children were functioning in the classroom, then they could go to work and have peace of mind,” she said. Castagnoli said she also uses the system at her three centers to monitor the quality of the curriculum daily.
“It’s good to see it in progress, and it’s easier for us to watch it via video,” she said. “That way we can pick up the things we like or dislike. … I’m only as good as my staff, and I want to work with them to provide safety for the children. That was one way I felt that I could do that. And it was totally, totally a great investment. It helps me to provide a great learning environment for the children.”
Castagnoli said she hasn’t increased her rates to try to cover the cost of the system, which she recently upgraded, but does charge a $25 monthly fee to parents who want to use the Web cam feature.
For businesses that want the advantages of video surveillance but don’t want to monitor it themselves, companies such as Westec InterActive provide monitoring services. Westec, a California-based company that’s in the process of staffing a “command center” in West Des Moines, currently has about 2,000 client companies across the country, among them major jewelry retailers such as Zales and fast-food franchises, including McDonald’s.
“We are really the eyes and ears of the (client company), keying in on what they want us to look for,” said Reagan Afflick, vice president of command center operations for Westec’s office on Jordan Creek Parkway. “That’s what’s great about this; we really have the ability to customize the service.”
Inside the dimly lit command center, employees monitors bank of computer screens, each showing a separate retail location. Every few minutes, the command center employees call in to the clerks via two-way audio that’s audible to customers throughout the store. In some instances, the call is initiated by the clerk, who alerts Westec by pushing a hidden “panic button,” to request closer monitoring of a suspicious customer and to put the customer on alert that the store is being actively monitored.
Westec, which now has about 50 employees at its West Des Moines center, is in the process of hiring between 30 and 40 additional employees to work in the command center. Those positions begin at $13 an hour.
Though much of its business relates to security, Westec anticipates the largest part of its growth will be in business intelligence — generating information for management to use to more effectively sell their products or control costs, Afflick said.
For instance, the company markets public-display systems that companies can use to both make customers aware that the premises are being monitored, and also display ads on another portion of the screen. The system can also trigger a recorded greeting when a customer approaches a merchandise display such as a jewelry case, or to confront a burglar who approaches the same display after hours.
The system also can also enable companies to gather traffic counts or even demographic profiles of their customers at each store, the latter using a program that analyzes facial features to estimate the person’s probable age and race. Tiffany & Co. is among the companies currently working with Westec to develop this capability for its retail jewelry stores.
Westec’s rates range from $129 per month for its rapid-response alarm system, up to $1,200 per month for custom monitoring and management services. The cost of the camera systems range from $8,000 for an entry-level system, to as much as $300,000 for the type of system it installed for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a low-income housing project in New York City.
Though a handful of its largest clients have chosen to establish their own command centers, most of them use Westec’s monitoring services, Afflick said.
For those businesses looking into setting up their own systems, figure on spending between $3,000 and $4,000 for each pan-tilt-zoom camera installed, said John Collins, Vodaci’s security sales manager. The number of cameras needed can vary anywhere from four to eight to 16, depending on a business’s needs. A digital recorder with a hard drive large enough to record video from 16 cameras and store up to a week of images will cost between $8,000 and $10,000, he said.
“The amazing thing about the pan-tilt-zoom camera is that you can program it to take a tour to look at particular things at particular times of the day, such as an entry gate as workers come in,” he said. “Later, the camera could focus on the loading dock areas to monitor merchandise leaving a plant. So you get a lot of bang for your buck with a pan-tilt if you use all the features.”