CCTV Video Analytics

Years ago when CCTV was first becoming widespread the main focus was around ensuring that you were capturing and recording any movements that may have arisen on your property. The CCTV’s sole purpose was to provide a literal picture of what was going on when you were away from your property. Over the years however CCTV has become much more widespread and as a result its purpose has evolved as have customers’ expectations.  With the advent of smartphones people now expect a lot more from their security camera systems and it has become a requirement that a good CCTV system has the ability to provide CCTV video analytics.

Just like you monitor your marketing activity and your stock levels to see what’s working and what’s popular it’s important to monitor traffic into your business. If you’re running a service station then you will literally analyse the traffic, but if you’re operating a store you’ll want to consider foot traffic. CCTV video analytics extend far beyond just the number of people going into your store. CCTV video analytics can identify the areas of high traffic and low traffic, so if there are items that you want to sell that are in a low traffic area you can use your CCTV video analytics to help inform decisions that will enable you to shift your goods into a better area, which in turn can help you increase your store’s revenue. That may assist you in proceeding with any expansion plans that you could have in the pipeline.

CCTV video analytics also include facial recognition capabilities, heat mapping and traffic counting, which means you can identify the busiest times of the day and plan your promotions or price changes around those times to maximise sales. You can also see exactly who is visiting when, for example, older people may visit at a specific time of the day and university students at another time of day so you can cater for their needs more adequately.

During COVID-19, CCTV video analytics have played an important role. The analytics have the ability to detect whether or not people on your property are wearing masks and complying with other COVID-19 measures. If they are not complying then you can alert your staff who will be able to take action and your store will be much safer for the other customers. Business owners have also been able to make decisions about when to reopen because of the data insights that they have gathered from their CCTV security system.

The reality now is that whilst CCTV video analytics were originally designed for security purposes their usefulness has increased outside of that and CCTV monitoring is now an integral part of business whether it’s making decisions on where to place goods, when to hold promotions or where to position your security staff (assuming you have security staff members on site).

Why CCTV Video Analytics?

These are just a few of the reasons why CCTV video analytics are useful, however they can also be used in crime detection. You can review past behaviour and determine high risk areas for shoplifting. If an area is high risk and items regularly get stolen then you can consider adjusting the store layout to reduce the number of thefts in your business, which again, saves you money and that reduction in expenditure could potentially be passed onto your customers.

If you’d like to try out CCTV video analytics and learn more about how they work, and how they may be useful to your business than pick up the phone and call Eclipse Security Systems and we’ll see what system is best for you.