Revolutionizing Retail Safety and Production with Advancements in Security and Fire Safety – Part 1

Hello, and welcome to Paveon perspectives at sold one. We're talking about revolutionizing retail safety and production with advancements in security and fire safety. Retail businesses are facing an increasing number of security threats from theft and vandalism to organized retail crime video surveillance is a critical tool for deterring and preventing these threats. Video can also be used for productivity by monitoring food displays to ensure displays aren't empty and that the food is kept fresh and accessible for customers and video cameras can also make sure drive through orders are matched to the car that's placing the order so that no mistakes are made in the customer's leave happy and satisfied, which is what you always want. By using video for productivity tailors can improve their bottom line and provide a better customer experience. In this interview today, we will discuss the latest trends in video surveillance technology for the industry and how retailers can use video surveillance to improve customer service. I am pleased to bring on two great guests for the conversation today Ralph De Aguardi is the president of Firecom, a Fabian company, and Jeff Stores is general manager of the retail security group Paveon. Thank you both for being with me today. Thank you. Happy to be here. Before we get into questions and this conversation that I'm really looking forward to having with both of you. Can I ask you for a brief bio starting with you, Jeff? Absolutely, Michelle. And thanks again for hosting us today. So Jeff stores have been in the industry for a little over twenty years, relatively new to Paveon and was brought in to run two of the businesses that, we recently acquired security source and short circuit that are, long legacy companies within this within the retail industry, for a national security provider. And what about you Ralph? Yeah. I've been in the business for, thirty five years, boat security and, in fire, sat on both sides of the table, twenty plus years in a senior executive position in retail security and the last fifteen in, in fire and security. Now over at, So clearly, we know why both of you are here for this conversation. It's gonna be a great conversation. You have a lot of expertise both of you to bring to what we're gonna be talking about today. So let's start off with this. Why is what you do so important for businesses and customers in the retail industry? Yeah. So, you know, a couple of things. We really look at the value add that that our security provides to the customers, and we add such visual protection both pre and post incident. Able to look look forward, look ahead of incidents maybe, but also, the document incidents that have already happened and and do the investigations. And then we we've really moved into this, and this has become something relatively new in the last few years about adding that value for the marketing team and the operations team within the the organizations that we're working with. And then, obviously, it's, you know, one of those that we've always been around to continue to secure the property and the merchandise that sit in these spaces, whether it's in their warehouse or in their actual retail space out out that the customers are in. And, Rob, what are your thoughts on this? I can answer that very quickly. Essentially what I'm the business of doing is protecting life and property. And, that's what we continue to do here at pavilion. So what would you say are the biggest challenges that customers see when it comes to properly outfitting and then maintaining reliable security and fire alarm systems for retail spaces. Yeah. Great great question here. One that's ever, ever evolving and changing, and we've definitely seen as we've come out of COVID this change. We saw a lot of technology changes. So I think two things that stand out to me within, the challenges that our customers are seeing, one being funding, and the second being the IT network to allow these LP teams to utilize the full capabilities of these systems that the OEMs have have now these robust systems that the these OEMs have put into place. The functions and features, whether it's the analytics or the AI capabilities that these these systems have now is really tough for sometimes the, end user to be able to get the funding to fully utilize these. I hear this all the time is love what what these systems can bring to us, love the function and features. But I cannot get the funding to do the add ons or you know, and probably even more importantly, I hear all the time is I don't have the network bandwidth within my space. You know, these these people go from coast to coast, and there's a lot of parts of the country that don't have the network ability yet to utilize all the functions where that's pushing things to the cloud or just utilizing some of the analytics that are on board these these these systems these days. So that's one thing that I hear that I think We continue to evolve, and we continue to struggle with, but it's one thing that it's out there. It's coming, and and as we you know, our our country as a whole, develops a better network. I think we'll be able to utilize a lot more of these, OEM features and functions. Ralph, how about you? You know, Jeff, I'm with you as far as the funding goes. That's, that's always a consideration. As far as, you know, other other challenges, they're few and far between with fire. What's wonderful about fire is that it's code driven solution period. So it's under NFPA and or the AHA, the local authority housing, housing jurisdiction. So at the end of the day, what we're doing for the customer is based on code. And, it's, you know, it's a it's a simple solution we're just following procedures and complying. So, Jeff, you talked about things are ever changing because we know that, you know, with the advancement of technology constantly seeing new improvements and and things that are changing in the industry and the need for upgrades. So what new trends are you seeing in security fire safety and video surveillance. I'd love to hear from both of you on this. Yeah. So the the quick easy one, the the video, I think that's probably where we seen the most change over the years that also technology being, brought in. Is to so from the video standpoint, you know, we continue to see, the cloud, the push to the cloud. How do we get there, how the storage changes, getting those those chassis off of off of the individual locations, and and taking sitting on on customer network for for the cyber security and being able to push the cloud. It's just there's that hesitation of do we have the bandwidth and can we get to the cloud? The next big trend right now that I see that's really emerging is the proactive video monitoring. We've always had video monitoring a lot of times it was post incident or it was video monitoring that was, a prerecorded, voice come down. When you talk about proactive video monitoring, I think that's one thing that really kind of changes changes the game that we can say, you know, hey, hey, you in the red shirt. I see you down there. You're in, a secure area that you're not supposed to be in. So we're getting ahead of incidents before they happen. That's one thing that I really see changing. And then and then the last one here I wanna talk about is the the weapons detection. So we're we're getting ourself. The technology's getting there. You and I, if we go to ball games, whether that be the NFL or or Major League baseball or or basketball games, things like that, as we go into these major stadiums, we probably don't even know it, and we're walking through a weapons detection system, that may you may notice it. You may not notice it. You know, it's not the old metal detectors where somebody was wanding you going in and out. You're walking through. You're freely walking through, and you don't even know that you're being, detected for weapons, whether that's gun or knife or or bomb kind of thing. So those kind of things are are evolving quickly in and and becoming more affordable to get into the retail space. And then you can start to look at that in from a distribution center too. To make sure your shrinkage, your and your employees aren't taking the products out from your your distribution center. So there's definitely advancements, coming, and I think you know, we're seeing this, kind of trickle down effect that, these high value areas, of people started started this. And now we're starting to come into space where there's less less traction in and out every day, but they're becoming more affordable for for all of us to use. And Ralph. Well, I tell you, over the last several years, carbon monoxide has become a, a very significant topic both in, Mercantile and, commercial facilities. So, what what we do is We follow, again, like, a code driven solution with regards to carbon monoxide. We interface the carbon monoxide detects devices at any places where this carbon monoxide triggers such as boiler rooms and, maybe guests gas driven fans, loading docks. It's interface with the FACP and, when, in fact, There is an activation of a carbon monoxide detector. It comes over the FACP as a supervision as a supervisory alarm, and it does dispatch fire department. And, this is this is something that, is really important to to to pavy on. At the end of the day, you can always smell smoke and you can feel the heat of fire. But when it comes to carbon monoxide, you can't smell it. You can't feel it. Okay. It's not visible to you, but it's a silent killer. And, I would say that the biggest trend, the most significant topic of conversation as far as, life safety goes in retail and, of course, in commercial would be the carbon monoxide. And really, the bottom line here, the safety and security of customers. I mean, that's really the result that we want here. So I love this next question because it really brings both of you with your separate entities coming together how does security and fire safety systems? How do they work together? So I'll be I'll be kinda short and sweet on this one because this really falls into to Ralph's world. But, you know, from a from a video standpoint, for us to build to, use the video verification from, like, a security operation center, to say, Hey, this is where we've seen this dire the fire started, or maybe this is where we need we have people that are that are still in the building. We need to get them out, that integration piece. In into what Ralph's team does day in and day out is how we can help them. But really this, I'm gonna turn this one to Ralph because I think this falls right into his, his area. How about you Ralph? So look, Jessine does a wonderful job with reference to closer to television and, and and monitoring. What's what's fantastic about having, Jeff and his team is the mere fact that, if there is a fire if there is an emergency situation. We can have Jeff's cameras actually interface with a fire alarm system providing us with a visual, view of where the fire is, where the smoke condition is you know, do we have a problem with people getting out of the facility? Do we need alternate routes? So Closearket Television is, it's come such a long way with with the IP technology and the Christmas and clarity that, you know, without it, it, we we we feel like we just don't have the full piece of the fire alarm system anymore. And, thankfully, we do here at, at Paveon and, Jeff's, opportunities with reference to different technologies and different manufacturers are endless. So, I'm really happy that, we're working together. What are the most common security threats facing retail businesses today? Yeah. So, obviously, threats are changing all the time. Right? And and and there's probably some out there happening today that we're not aware of. And we're and we're trying to get ahead of those. But when when I think of of threats on on on your business today, not just retail but anywhere. Right? It's brand recognition. And and if something happens, whether that's cyber or there's an incident with, employee customer interaction, something like that, and we all have our cell phones. Things get recorded everywhere today. So how how do you take, that threat and minimize that threat and make sure that you're staying ahead of that threat? Really becomes attack on that brand that we're trying to avoid. So, you know, training training, I think is huge for the industry about where the employees interact with customers and you can use our video systems to, retrain people and show people how to interact and how they did interact. I think it's one of those where role playing, you know, it goes so far where you can take our our video and and play back and show the employee how they interacted with somebody. To avoid some of those customer interactions that we we've all seen on on social media that we're trying trying to avoid. You know, another big one right now, I think, is You know, it used to be loss prevention was all about making sure shrinkage wasn't going out out the door, and a lot of that is where the mindset has changed. You know, let the people walk out. Don't confront them. Right? We we don't want an incident where we're either a customer or employee is in a in a situation where they could be threatened or hurt, physically. So now it becomes, you know, where where does the loss prevention take that from a loss revenue standpoint? And now you use your systems to make sure that the employees feel safe, whether that's they're taking the the trash out at night, out out the back door, or or there's vagueress in front of the building and we can use the voice dial to make sure that those people aren't there. So employees and customers feel safe going in and out of of the store. Making sure that the customers were not having to close stores early, because there's, people hanging out both out back in front stores or in the parking lot, things like that. So using that proactive video monitoring to make sure that your space is is secure for your employees and customers to to enter the building. So, you know, Jeff talked about the video talk down, which is really a wonderful technology. Along with the video talk down comes the video escorting. Okay. And, it enables us to, actually escort out of the facility. Any one of our customers, any one of our employees who might feel threatened gives us the ability to watch them as they're leaving the facility and also intervene audibly over a loud speaker if in fact they, they run into any kind of a problem outside. So, video escort can't say enough good things about it. It's a wonderful technology, and we do it very well. And I wanna thank all of you for tuning in to Paveon perspectives. We were very excited about this series episode number one today, exploring revolutionizing retail safety and production with advancements in security and fire safety. And you definitely heard a lot of information about that topic today. We invite you to Follow along at patreon dot com and be sure to listen to the other upcoming episodes for this series. I'm your host Michelle Dawn Mooney. Thanks again for joining us. And we will see you soon