Synectics

Global surveillance solutions business, Synectics, is celebrating 30 years of innovation – with its high-end technology solutions protecting people, assets, and processes in more countries than ever before.

Synectics is a market leader in the design, integration, control, and management of advanced surveillance technology and networked security systems, for environments where security is operationally critical.

With headquarters in Sheffield and a purpose-built Operations Centre in North Lincolnshire in the UK, Synectics serves customers across a diverse range of sectors, including Oil & Gas, Gaming, Transport & Infrastructure, and High Security & Public Space.

Launched in 1987 as a surveillance technology research and development house, Synectics was founded on an ethos of customer-driven innovation. The products developed in the early years established its position as a trusted surveillance technology provider within the Public Space sector – coinciding with the UK’s burgeoning, government funding-led public space CCTV initiative.

The business now operates throughout Europe, in the US, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Paul Webb, Chief Executive of Synectics plc, reflects on how the company’s current global success owes a lot to those early days and the focus adopted. “From the outset, we took a leading role in key industry developments around analogue control and switching technology and, with the introduction of digital recording, became an early adopter and influencer within the market – showcasing the capabilities and benefits it offered.

“Our approach has always been to listen to our customers and let their needs drive product development. The feedback received – from customers wanting to monitor, manage and store their video data more effectively and efficiently – drove the development of the original Synergy software platform. It is a principle that continues to be at the heart of our technology development, 30 years later.”

The company’s global expansion truly began in the early 2000s, by which point Synectics had a growing reputation for developing solutions for large-scale projects with a defined critical or legislative need for security.

It was this reputation and expertise the business knew would appeal to a broader sector portfolio – one with global opportunities.

Paul continued: “We’d already started to build a strong profile in high security and particularly in the public space market, based on our collaboration with customers to tailor solutions to meet their specific requirements. It was apparent that there were compatible industries where our experience and technology complimented the surveillance needs of these customers. These sectors, notably transport – a natural evolution of our public space heritage – oil and gas, and gaming all have similar challenges and requirements.

“Expanding into these sectors, supported by strategic acquisitions, has opened up geographic opportunities for us which we have further strengthened by establishing field offices in the US, Dubai, Singapore, Macau, and Germany.”

Thirty years after Synectics opened its doors, the company’s surveillance solutions protect over 3 billion passenger journeys every year and are entrusted by the world’s biggest casinos to provide constant coverage and help prevent fraud. They can be found safeguarding land-based and offshore oil and gas projects in the North Sea, Europe, Asia, Middle East, Australasia and North Africa. Within the public space sector that the company was founded on, Synectics’ solutions also monitor over 100 town and city centres worldwide.

Paul Webb concluded: “Over the last thirty years we’ve helped pioneer widely-used technology, and with Synergy 3 command and control platform as the backbone, we continue to deliver integrated solutions crucial to modern security and surveillance management throughout the world.

“But what we are most proud of is the fact that these innovations, driven by the businesses we serve, evolve to meet their needs. It’s this relationship with our customers that has underpinned everything else, from our global expansion to the sectors we operate in. We look forward to where these relationships will take us in the future.”