Real-World Solutions
While technology can work wonders, some retailers have unrealistic expectations. “Everything is possible if the funding is there,” Mellos said. “But sometimes, what we call bleeding- or cutting-edge might not be appropriate. Retail is running on fairly slim margins, so shrinkage is very important.”
In the real world, some solutions may not perform as expected. “One of the most ridiculous situations I encountered was to improve the capture of shoplifters with video surveillance integration to the EAS,” Lim said. “It sounded straightforward but because the EAS system was easily defeated by experienced shoplifters, there were no alarms in the first place. The false alarms were also quite ridiculous, as many retailers did not ‘untag' and thus a customer wearing a shirt bought a year ago would trigger the EAS system.”
For megapixel imaging, some customers do not understand the bandwidth and storage issues it incurs. “The transmission of large megapixel cameras at large quantities is the No. 1 request, or the transmission of video to a central location,” Mellos said. “It can be done, but most retailers are not willing to build or purchase the infrastructure needed to achieve the results.”
Calibrating intelligent video requires continued education as well. “The use of analytics for customer behavior is another user request, such as waiting on display or queue length,” Mellos said. “It can be done, but would be used on top of something that's working.”
Future Developments
Networking is the wave of the future. From greater visibility in RFID to hosted video, IP introduces greater efficiency in retail operations. “For many years, people have heard about the Internet of Things,” Coyle said. “In the early days of RFID, reliably collecting or reading an RFID tag could be a challenge. Nowadays the bigger issue is how to best exploit and leverage the newfound visibility data after it is read.”
One way to leverage data would be smarter search capabilities for operational benefits. “It would be great to be able to search for a specific type of repeated motion,” Davis said. “For instance, after every transaction the employee should close the drawer. If that motion is absent, it could mean the employee is purposely leaving the drawer open so he can avoid entering cash transactions into the PoS or he could have forgotten to close it before going to get the customer's meal. It's either an operational policy violation or theft, either of which needs to be corrected.”
Video analysis is becoming more accurate and using footage actively. Improvements in facial recognition, behavioral analysis and people counting will benefit retailers, Zhou of Hikvision said.
Integrating facial data with identification could apprehend repeat offenders. “Let's say a mall has a criminal record database,” Ku said. “With a real-time biometric pairing system, when anyone with a criminal record shows up, the camera would detect it and send signals to security.”
Cloud Services
Retailers receive the most benefit from hosted services, as the provider handles storage. Bandwidth increases will make hosted video more feasible. “We will see more cloud-based hosting, removing bandwidth demands from the infrastructure,” ?kesson said. “With remote access, a store manager can view the images from any number of different stores in real time from anywhere, even on a device such as a mobile phone. This is a huge change from the old analog days.”
For retailers who want information on-demand, a hosted solution can be a future-proof investment. “Users have instant access to new features and functionality by simply logging into the application,” Steinfort said. “The customer no longer suffers from the technology obsolescence that comes with model year development cycles, and the IT team is no longer burdened with software patches or equipment upgrades.”
Shoppers in stores are protected by retail security, which also makes their buying experience more pleasant. Depending on the nature of the business, security can streamline operations and provide an attractive ROI.