5 Ways Your Alarm System Can Track Business Activity for Safety & Security

A conventional business security system provides essential protection against break-ins, burglaries, environmental hazards and other threats. But in many industries, today’s businesses need greater insight into what’s happening at their facilities to ensure the safety of customers and employees.

Integrated security solutions from PROTECTION PLUS and Alarm.com provide these additional layers of security, while also gathering valuable data that can increase a business’s operational efficiency and profitability.

One feature of these integrated security solutions is Business Activity Analytics. This feature leverages your security cameras and other tools to collect specific data about activity happening at the business.

Here are 5 types of business activity it can track:

1) Heat mapping

Heat mapping uses your security cameras to identify the areas where people spend the most time within an area of your business. Visually, this is represented by images from your cameras with colored overlays (red for the most active areas).

Heat mapping is useful for identifying potentially dangerous spots where people congregate (creating hazards for evacuations, for example). It can also provide insight into retail areas with the most foot traffic, the popular seating areas in a coffeeshop and so on, allowing managers to make informed decisions about the layout of their business.

2) Occupancy tracking

Occupancy tracking enables you to track the number of people in a designated area. This allows you to monitor and maintain safe occupancy levels at your business, which is especially critical for restaurants, bars and other businesses that must comply with strict occupancy laws.

Business managers can receive alerts if occupancy exceeds the limit, run reports to identify the business’s busiest hours and maximize revenue opportunities by understanding occupancy trends.

3) People counting

This measurement is similar to the occupancy tracking in that it provides insight into the volume of foot traffic in various areas of your business.

In retail settings, for example, you might use this feature to monitor the number of people entering your inventory rooms at different times of the day. Or, you could determine how many customers visit different aisles or areas, giving you the insight to adjust product placement for greater sales performance.

4) Crowd gathering

Crowd gathering enables you to monitor and manage crowds at your business. You can set a threshold to be alerted anytime crowds are getting too big or forming in areas where they shouldn’t be. For safety, this allows you to take action before a dangerous incident occurs. Or, for customer service, it allows you to divert resources or make on-the-fly employee adjustments to prevent customer dissatisfaction with long wait times.

5) Queue monitoring

Would you like to know how long people are waiting in line at your business? Or maybe you’d like to compare the average checkout speed of your various cashiers?

The queue monitoring feature provides this data in clear, simple terms, allowing you to make adjustments where needed to reduce wait time and serve customers more efficiently. In addition to showing long-term trends, this feature can also notify you when queue times exceed the thresholds you set.

Learn more

For more information on tracking your business activity for greater safety, security and efficiency, contact our experts at PROTECTION PLUS today.