How AI-Powered Cloud Surveillance Turns Video into Business Intelligence

Today’s physical security market is highly competitive, as end users face intense pressure to improve operational efficiencies. According to IFSEC Global’s 2022 Video Surveillance Report, nearly forty percent of surveyed respondents were using their video security to uncover new business intelligence. Customers want technology investments that provide a clear return on investment so they can compete with other businesses. For security integrators, expanding their offerings beyond traditional camera systems opens the door to new possibilities and stronger client relationships. 

By shifting surveillance deployment conversations from reactive security to proactive business intelligence, your business can differentiate itself, access new customer budgets like operations and marketing, and get ahead of the competition. Below, we examine the main problems both security integrators and customers face that an advanced surveillance solution capable of delivering business intelligence can help solve. 

Expanding the Scope of Legacy Surveillance Systems 

Frequently, video surveillance is positioned as a defensive tool designed to record and investigate incidents. Pitching video surveillance strictly as a security measure limits the scope of potential customer sales, failing to distinguish one solution from the next. Because of this, customers often view their system as a necessary expense rather than a strategic business asset and investment. This restricts the conversation to security directors or facility managers, bypassing other key stakeholders who could greatly benefit from video data. 

A traditional security approach limits your business’s earning potential by not highlighting how an intelligent surveillance system can benefit all sides of a customer’s operations. This can impact opportunities to gain buy-in from teams that may not have used video security in the past, such as operations and marketing departments. By presenting a solution that transforms security from a basic cost center, you’ll help customers see it as a powerful tool that drives overall profitability. 

Customer Frustration With Inefficient, Unscalable Operations 

Legacy surveillance systems can create difficulties due to manual monitoring and missing remote access. As video data is trapped on local recorders in traditional setups, managers are required to travel on-site to view footage or verify daily operations. As such, effective handling of operational challenges is more difficult to do, as these tasks cannot be accomplished off-site. 

Without remote visibility, businesses have a more difficult time spotting compliance issues, uncovering patterns in employee performance, or revealing operational errors that need correction at scale. They lack the necessary tools to monitor customer waiting times, check on store layouts, or adjust staffing to accommodate peak hours. 

More advanced solutions assist integrators as they seek to solve these operational pain points. A scalable, centralized system can streamline end user workflows and help coordinate operations smoothly across teams. 

How Fragmented Systems Create Customer Risk 

Customers often rely on siloed systems, including video, point of sale, and access control platforms, that do not communicate with one another. When security and operational technologies operate in a vacuum, the business suffers from a fragmented view of its environment.  

This lack of integration creates blind spots, delayed response times to incidents, and hidden vulnerabilities that undermine the return on investment of their systems and the overall security of their business. For example, without marrying video evidence to transaction data, it’s difficult for businesses to quickly identify suspicious activity, verify events, or fight fraud effectively. Managers must cross-reference timestamps manually between completely disconnected platforms, a process that is prone to human error and consumes valuable administrative time. 

Security providers who only offer standalone or closed video solutions miss the opportunity to become an indispensable technology consultant. By helping customers connect their disparate systems, you establish long-lasting relationships based on continuous value. An integrated approach is essential to providing the enhanced visibility organizations need to respond effectively during the events that matter most. 

Unlock Business Intelligence by Offering AI-Powered, Open Cloud Video Solution 

To help customers leverage valuable data, optimize operations, and connect business systems, security integrators can offer an AI-powered, open cloud video platform. Moving away from localized, disconnected systems allows your organization to present a modern, future-proof alternative. An intelligent cloud video solution turns video data into actionable intelligence, increasing profitability for both providers and customers while providing a greater overall return on customer investment. 

Providing Data-Driven Business Intelligence 

An intelligent cloud solution enables providers to shift the conversation from “just security” to broader business optimization. Rather than serving only as a tool for incident review, an advanced platform actively analyzes environments to provide meaningful insights that help guide strategic choices. Customers can use video analytics to extract valuable intelligence by using data visualization tools, helping them gain a clearer picture of daily operations and identify opportunities for improvements.  

For example, occupancy and traffic insights can help businesses understand activity levels across entrances and locations, revealing patterns and trends that inform staffing, scheduling, and service decisions. Over time, this kind of visibility helps organizations move beyond assumptions and make operational choices based on real-world activity.  

An advanced platform can also highlight broader events and trends to visualize patterns in activity picked up across your system. For example, vehicle detection events can be tracked at loading bays to verify deliveries over a broad timeframe. This information can then be used to ensure adequate staff are available during delivery hours. With greater visibility into patterns, managers are better equipped to address inefficiencies, improve processes, and respond proactively to potential issues. 

In addition to operational insight, system visibility plays an important role in maintaining performance and reliability. Health monitoring and visual reporting tools help customers quickly assess the status of devices, storage, and other key areas, making it easier to spot issues that may affect uptime or day-to-day operations. 

By proving how these insights can optimize staffing levels and improve processes, integrators deliver a tangible ROI that resonates with business owners. This unlocks non-security budgets across their organization, maximizing your earning potential and proving the solution’s direct impact on their bottom line. 

Delivering Streamlined, Cloud-Based Management 

Offering intelligent cloud video solutions that enable remote access and centralized management help meet customer needs as they seek to improve their operations. As managing a growing footprint of physical locations is a significant challenge, cloud architecture can address this by bringing all cameras and devices into a single, unified interface. 

Remote access allows customers to leverage their video from wherever they are without the need for physical presence, decreasing incident response times, letting customers solve problems faster, and opening doors to greater future scalability. Centralized management provides greater oversight of users, devices, and locations, and enables cross-team collaboration with shared video clips and alerts. 

By providing a cloud surveillance solution, you and your team position yourselves as future-thinking problem-solvers who help end users scale easily. Offering centralized management and remote access enables customers to standardize processes across all their locations and drastically improve team coordination while opening the doors for future growth. 

Offering Integrated Ecosystems 

An open platform solution gives customers the power to tie video data to their business and security infrastructure, including POS systems, access control, environmental sensors, and more. A closed system restricts growth, while an open ecosystem expands the utility of every connected device and enhances visibility into third-party system events. 

Through these integrations, customers can receive alerts with video verification of events such as point-of-sale transactions or a forced door alert, providing greater context and reducing blind spots. Notifications sent directly to an email or phone allow administrators to take quick action or easily dismiss false alarms. 

Providing this complete visibility reduces operational risk and embeds the provided solution deeply into the daily workflow of the business. When the technology you’ve deployed for a customer becomes the central hub for operations and security data, you create long-term customer loyalty and establish a reliable relationship. 

Unlock Actionable Intelligence for Customers with OpenEye Web Services 

As customer expectations evolve, the physical security market demands more than just basic video recording. To stand out from the competition, security providers must offer solutions that bridge the gap between “just surveillance” and actionable business intelligence. You need a platform that enables you to transition from selling security cameras to delivering proactive insights that optimize entire business operations. 

OpenEye Web Services (OWS) is the platform built to empower security providers to do exactly that. By turning video data into actionable intelligence, OWS helps increase profitability, offers a greater return on investment, and saves on operational costs.  

OWS delivers an open, intelligent, and trusted cloud video platform equipped with AI analytics and centralized management. Our platform enables security integrators to provide a measurable return on investment, opportunities to drive operational efficiency, and comprehensive visibility. 

Discover how partnering with OpenEye can elevate your product offerings, increase your recurring revenue, and help you win more business. Contact us or book a demo today.