BoConcept Gains Strength From VIVOTEK's Efficient IP Surveillance Solution

Denmark-based furniture vendor BoConcept has 150 stores worldwide

Denmark-based furniture vendor BoConcept, with 150 stores worldwide, has established its footprints across the world and stretched to Giza, one of the most prosperous cities in Egypt. Due to its magnificent pyramids, tons of tourists rush to this place every year, bringing enormous business opportunities and generating significant revenue to BoConcept's Giza store. With so many customers flushing in everyday, BoConcept's Giza store has been upgrading its hardware infrastructure to better address customers' needs and offer higher quality of services.

Challenges

The growing businesses of BoConcept have driven demand for a more sophisticated management scheme for the store and the customers. In order to achieve sustained growth, BoConcept needs a solution to solve the following four problems:

Protection for the furniture

The expensive and delicate furniture demonstrated in BoConcept Giza store requires extremely careful protection and maintenance. In order to prevent losses caused by intentional and unintentional damage, BoConcept needs a solution that can help employees stay aware of the status of the furniture more efficiently without paying extra attention at all times.

Monitoring of the spacious store

The large floor area of BoConcept Giza has increased the difficulty in management. Lacking an efficient surveillance solution, BoConcept is exposed to various potential dangers and risks, and is unable to detect potential threats in advance. Besides damage to its properties, the customers and employees may be injured, let alone the costs added by the amendments afterwards.

Control over the customers

BoConcept's Giza store has been upgrading its hardware infrastructure to better address customers' needs

Due to the huge amount of customers and the limited number of staff, BoConcept Giza's employees are usually occupied by the tasks of information provision, problem solving, and product demonstration. Therefore, the employees are unable to keep an eye on every customer at all times, putting BoConcept at risk of shoplifting, vandalism and other crime.  Besides, the inability to offer immediate help for each customer due to insufficient employees usually results in irritated customers. This will have a negative impact on the company's reputation and reduce customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Management of the employees

Quality of services is closely related to the quality of employees. In order to provide excellent services to customers, BoConcept needs to know how its employees interact with customers and how they deal with daily routines.  In addition, there are times when the company has to handle disagreements and problems between employees. However, lacking supporting evidence usually puts the manager in a dilemma to make fair judgment.

Solution

Realising the challenges faced by BoConcept, AIS, VIVOTEK's distributor in Egypt, suggested BoConcept to adopt VIVOTEK's PZ6122 and PT7135. PZ6122's pan/tilt functions give the user a wide viewing angle and can locate any position within the viewing area within seconds. Its zoom feature is capable of providing detailed information on both near and distant objects. By deploying PZ6122 nearby the cash machines, at the entrance and the exit, and towards the showcases demonstrating small, high-value, delicate furniture, BoConcept can reinforce surveillance in these areas with close-up images. For public areas, hallways, and warehouses, BoConcept deployed PT7135 for basic surveillance applications. The pan/tilt functions of these cameras

The growing businesses of BoConcept have driven demand for a more sophisticated management scheme

Both PZ6122 and PT7135 support synchronized audio reception. The recorded video with audio can effectively supports as evidence when solving disputes between employees and customers. PZ6122's two-way audio capability further allows the administrators to listen to and speak to the remote viewing sites directly, which significantly enhances accuracy in the verification of false alarms and the determination of emergencies or even break-ins.

Achievements

The deployment of VIVOTEK's network cameras has achieved positive results in BoConcept Giza's operating performance. With the surveillance system, damage caused by customers, such as uncontrollable children or careless adults, is minimized as employees can now stop the situation immediately and prevent possible damage in advance. BoConcept has strengthened surveillance over some particularly important areas such as the cash machine and the entrance. Customers with unusual behaviour and outfits or customers lingering around the cash machine will be detected at once. This has dramatically prevented the occurrence of burglary, robbery, and shoplifting.  With more comprehensive control over the customers and the ability to monitor multiple sections of the store at the same time, damage to the products is reduced significantly.

In the past, it was difficult for the manager to reconcile disagreements between employees and customers as well as those between employees due to lack of supporting evidence. Now the disputes can be solved more efficiently and convincingly with the recorded video. In addition, BoConcept can monitor employees' work more efficiently and have a better understanding of employees' work status. The recorded information is a useful reference for BoConcept when issuing bonus and planning to cut down unnecessary workforce. Overall, with VIVOTEK's network surveillance solution, BoConcept's sales performance has increased dramatically.

Benefits

BoConcept can reinforce surveillance in these areas with close-up images captured on VIVOTEK's cameras

With the pan/tilt/zoom capability, BoConcept employees can monitor the entire store without installing dozens of fixed network cameras, thereby minimizing investments in deploying IP surveillance solutions. In addition to extensive monitoring capability, BoConcept is able to identify distant and near objects with sophisticated detail. The high image clarity is mainly attributed to the 10x optical zoom lens of PZ6122.

Cost-effective solution

With network infrastructure to date being well deployed, this proves to be a cost-effective solution because no tangling cables are needed during deployment. Installation and maintenance of the surveillance systems is more cost-effective than the analog systems.

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