10 methods raise income using the covert video surveillance

Many owners of different commercial firms answered it with acceptance of necessary measures to change this ratio in own favor. According to the last overview of the American National federation of retail (NRF), now 87% of retailers use the equipment for video surveillance. However a considerable part of businessmen ignores this opportunity and therefore many crimes remain unsolved.

The report of NRF reports that the losses caused by theft rose in the USA to 35 billion dollars a year. This amount is divided among themselves by workers, buyers and suppliers. This growth coincides with sharp expansion of use of video surveillance. Means, more smart part of thieves consider traditional video surveillance as an insignificant obstacle in the way to big production.

My solution? Add traditional video surveillance hidden. These are only tool which gives to VAM advantage over swindlers and an opportunity at last to reduce your losses.

Ten vulnerable areas of your business which are great places for equipment installation for the covert video surveillance and also councils, what equipment are included below to use and as.

1. Cash register

As well as the game table in casino, the cash register causes temptation. Unfortunately, for benefit of swindlers - the fact that often the transactions executed on the cash register assume a set of fast actions which obscure even the stare.

Experienced shoplifters will look for the most loaded cash desks - in hope that the cashier will not notice the things thrust under the cart, under a heavy bag with a dog forage or under other goods and also things without tags.

Moreover, the workers dealing with a drawer often fill the pocket with a part of money and even coordinate efforts with the friends representing buyers because of what the purchased thing can be underpaid or is not paid at all.

An eye which never grows dim is the tiny hidden camera placed about the cash register. Because of the diminutiveness it can be placed close to the scene of action - disguised under parts of the device or hided under texts, and often requiring only insignificant masking or absolutely its not requiring.

Whatever camera was used in cash desk, I always recommend to integrate it to data from the cash register. It connects cash transactions with the video image and provides an easy method to mark suspicious activity.

2. Back input and trash can

Back doors and trash cans - favourite places for the stealing workers. It is easy for them to hide valuable goods in the basket leaving the building even if preventive measures, such as check of this basket by the manager are taken.

The hidden camera disguised under certain adaptation or the loudspeaker perfectly fits into such situation. If these cameras are connected with digital video recorders, they not only will record thieves who return to withdraw production, but also will inform you when they do it.

3. Warehouses and places for storage of the paid goods

Warehouse rooms, as a rule, are not under supervision. It is easy for the one who came there not to come into the view of traditional surveillance cameras or just to neutralize them. Owners of warehouses are usually sure that this place "is impregnated with vulnerability" - they find the opened packaging and the torn-off RFID tags here - but through a wide interval of time after crime came true.

And though dishonest workers feel in these rooms comfortably, it is easier to mount the hidden camera, perhaps, here, than somewhere. One suitable place for the hidden cameras - a box for goods or a container. The camera "ultra-pinkhol", for example, is easily put in a cardboard box, and for a complete overview of all room and receiving enough hole with a diameter less than 1/16 inch is crystal the sharp image.

4. Vending machines

Vending machines often are considered by managers as a serious source of vulnerability. Those who suspect that in vending machines they have losses quite often refuse to themselves the right to understand a situation because calculation of money and a remaining balance of goods requires too much time. Even when trial allows to detect losses, the relative size of one incident often does not justify confrontation with the worker. But such managers lose sight of an overall picture.

As well as the majority of types of the losses connected with theft of personnel losses via vending machines can reach a large sum in a year, but are small in each separate case. Moreover, often the speech at the same time goes about the same workers who take for themselves advantages and on other your vulnerable areas. The hidden video system using video recorders with search in date and time and with the large volume of archive will gather days, weeks and months of activity, will accelerate investigation, will provide free and reliable dismissal and punishment of guilty persons.

5. Self-service zones

Seasonal garden centers and other sales exhibitions in parking spaces at shops - favourite places and for dishonest employees, and for the coming thieves. The traditional cameras fixed in an upper part of a facade of shop usually give the excellent material documenting actions of thieves, it is worth guiding them at the most expensive goods... but here it is only impossible to provide to law enforcement bodies identification of the photographed people at the same time.

The hidden cameras placed about the most valuable things can provide pictures at a short distance which are necessary for accurate identification, i.e. to make what traditional cameras cannot. Masking which well works in self-service zones are artificial stones, plants and roadside "columns of security".

6. Office accessories

Of course, the losses connected with office accessories are usually much less significant, than those losses which arise when losing goods or the equipment belonging to the company. It is necessary to notice however that the same workers who feel for themselves privilege to gather handles and pencils pocket also more expensive objects or will switch to them then. Having placed the hidden camera where office accessories are stored, you not only will see the today's losses, but also prevent anticipatory damages, having got rid of such employees.

7. Theft of time

According to Websense company, the losses in labor productivity connected with sitting of workers on the Internet cost to business of the USA 178 billion dollars a year. Overall assessment of similar losses considerably will grow if you look, what is the time your employees spend for communication by mobile phones and sending of SMS, for a long talk and even for a dream at work.

Because this type of theft - mostly "in a gray zone", managers usually consider that they are powerless to stop such "activity". The hidden cameras can accurately document all this and inspire great feeling of confidence that employees productively work even then when there is no administration nearby.

8. Service areas

Many employers with whom I spoke never considered the possibility of use of video surveillance in the service areas, but these are those sections which for a part of the companies are connected with risk - not only because of theft, but also because of small experience of clients.

The clients trusting to those firms which service their machines often show the same trust when leave values in the car, - and dishonest workers fast steal them. When clients detect loss, the firm not only pays compensation, but also loses this trust.

Dishonest workers take inflated price from clients, naive and unaware of the rights, or render them less services, than it is necessary. It they endanger future relations of firm with the client.

Fortunately, both it is easy to catch the dishonest, and badly executing the duties employees using the covert video surveillance. For example, now I work with the leading American network on supply of lubricating oils which recognized importance of this method and made large sums in the covert video surveillance.

Some managers go further and put cameras in a part of the automobile engine to check quality of the made work and also use the hidden devices, wearable on a body, revealing with their help cases of bad service and fishing from clients of spare cash.

9. Intellectual theft

The intellectual property is as valuable as goods and tools. The classified information on subtleties of work of your business, given about sales, the information about suppliers and clients, questions of property and the production technology - from the point of view of the dishonest worker, all this has good market value, especially during our information era.

I will be those who will tell that to catch the employees stealing commercial secrets in the forefront - the most difficult task. Thieves of this type are usually very paranoid. Before beginning the dirty deed, they check the surrounding territory for existence of the hidden cameras.

To facilitate installation of the hidden cameras, we offer containers in the form of hours radio, the caskets upholstered with fabric, IR sensors, electric sockets, etc. They fit into any working environment and are installed for read seconds, and it is difficult to detect in them the camera.

10. Robbery

According to Department of justice of the USA, robberies remain unsolved in enormous scales - in 87% of cases. Many robbers not without the bases test confidence that will be able to avoid identification by forces of traditional video surveillance, having only put on a baseball cap or having pulled a hood. And really, the turning-out video image accurately shows what happened when and as, but, unfortunately, leaves only one question without answer: "Who?".

The hidden cameras can play a role of a point of support for change of this statistics also here. To robbers not to avoid what they do not see. It does the hidden cameras by ideal means for obtaining photos of villains, fantastic on quality, who plunder that place where there is your business. The owners of businesses using the hidden cameras for these purposes successfully place them on the ways of an input and an exit at the level of eyes and also with a counter, directing from below up.

Final thoughts: look where you have dead bands

The traditional video surveillance system is absolutely necessary: it fixes the most part of what in your business makes primary activity. But it inevitably has the blind sections. You know them. The problem is that know them and "bad guys", especially those which work for you.

Without spending a fortune for security, you, probably, will never cover with video surveillance each square centimeter of your object. There is, however, commonly accepted tactics which will turn this weakness into your advantage, - we call it "funnel".

"Funnel" is the simple, but effective method demanding from you a minimum of investments. Just designate blind sections in your company about which you are sure that all consider them the most suitable for illegal activity, and mount the hidden cameras to monitor them.

You not only will detect theft, you literally drive thieves into a funnel which neck - that place where you will be able to make at a short distance the picture allowing to identify them. You will be struck how you can record many different acts of malefactors when it seems to them that nobody sees them.

I really so strongly believe in this tactics that I encourage the firms wishing to use the covert video surveillance, to install at least a basic video surveillance system which will help to direct all illegal to the hidden cameras.

Additional notes

Video recorders

What type of the hidden cameras would not be used by a certain business, I recommend to connect them to the network video recorder (NVR) or to the digital video recorder (DVR) with support of network, first of all for remote monitoring.

Owners, managers and investigators conduct remote monitoring, sitting in an easy chair. Sometimes they do it via the mobile phone, being outside firm. Crime does not happen in time which is ideally suitable for this purpose, and as many businessmen know, criminals usually wait when you leave the firm territory.

Access to your cameras in real time will give you peace of mind and the chance to react immediately to any emergency situation.

Video analytics

If the hidden equipment is used where vigorous activity takes place, then it is very good to use video analytics in combination with cameras and video recorders. It will execute digital processing of the video image and to automatically check it for existence of suspicious activity.

Some, more advanced systems of video analytics can even distinguish the buyer who took goods to study more attentively, from the thief who is not putting a subject back. Video analysts, many of systems, if they are used together with digital and network video recorders, send you notifications to the mobile phone and by e-mail when something is detected.

I hope, I helped you to see potentially vulnerable areas of business and also to learn about methods of elimination of undesirable elements from your salary sheet.

The unnamed author of this article - the employee of one of the American firms working in the field of security.

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