OpenEye helps retailer tie video surveillance and intrusion together

About
Bargain Hunt is a retail discount store that carries overstock and returned brand-name merchandise at deeply discounted prices. Bargain Hunt operates 85 stores within a 400 mile radius of Nashville, Tennessee.

Overview
Bargain Hunt has experienced rapid growth over the last few years, increasing from 30 to over 80 retail locations and 2 distribution centers. As a result, they acquired numerous legacy security systems that were complex and required specialized training. Bargain Hunt wanted to make operations more efficient and easier for end users to manage. They turned to OpenEye and Alarm.com for a video management, intrusion, and access control solution to standardize security and loss prevention efforts, while laying the foundation for continued growth of 50% over the next 5 years.

Challenge
With a growing retail footprint, Bargain Hunt needed a security and loss prevention solution that would allow Loss Prevention Managers to easily monitor theft and safety in stores and distributions centers. The Loss Prevention department is small and covers multiple locations, so it was imperative the tool be easy for all users who need to access video remotely for investigations and data gathering.

At the outset of the project, Bargain Hunt was using a variety of video surveillance systems and had contracts with 40 different intrusion vendors, due to inheriting systems at leased locations. Jacob Long, Project Manager, set out to consolidate vendors and make operations more efficient. However, a large percentage of cameras were still functional and it was difficult to justify a complete replacement of the legacy infrastructure. Bargain Hunt needed an open solution that would integrate with other technology partners and allow them to expand over time.

Solution
Bargain Hunt consolidated their security system by selecting Alarm.com to monitor intrusion and access control of their distribution centers and stores, and OpenEye Web Services (OWS) for commercial video surveillance. As a cloud-managed solution, OWS brings all of Bargain Hunt's locations together in a single portal. This makes it convenient for Long and IT to set up and update, manage profiles and permission levels for all users, as well as remotely view and manage all locations. The fact that OpenEye supports all their existing ONVIF cameras was also a key decision point.

Bargain Hunt is rolling out the OpenEye cloud-managed video solution at every retail location and distribution center, with 22 locations deployed so far. Additionally, Long plans to standardize all new recorders on OpenEye hardware. As each location comes online with OWS, Bargain Hunt is able to take full advantage of the two-way integration between OpenEye and their Alarm.com system. Alarm.com event data is available in OWS for increased business intelligence and OpenEye video is available in the Alarm.com platform, pairing event video with the event notification.

"I can’t stress enough how OpenEye has taken a product and made it easy to use."
Jacob Long, Bargain Hunt Project Manager

Benefits
The primary reason Bargain Hunt selected OpenEye is ease of use. "I don't need a specialized technician to set this up or use it," said Long. He feels confident he can walk into any of their locations and employees would intuitively be able to use 80% of the system without formal training. In fact, Bargain Hunt was able to complete the first phase of their retrofit without help from the IT department. "You plug the recorder into the network and the remote connection is available to use and secure, without any extra work," explained Long. “I can’t stress enough how OpenEye has taken a product and made it easy to use.” In addition to the simplicity of adding new recorders and locations, recorder and user groups in OWS make it convenient for Bargain Hunt to onboard new employees, inheriting the permissions, access and settings of the group instantly.

Bargain Hunt has already seen the benefits of the actionable insights that are delivered through OWS. Asset inventory reports provide a complete view of all video surveillance hardware installed across the system, something that was missing before, helping streamline operations. The Loss Prevention department also implemented regular thumbnail image reports of the backroom cameras for District Managers to audit store reports, giving them a visual report to compare what they see to what is being reported.

The team has also taken advantage of the clip sharing functionality to assist law enforcement with investigations. After a store break-in, the Loss Prevention Manager was able to click the OpenEye video icon next to the intrusion event in the Alarm.com app to pull up video from the store cameras at the time of the event in OWS, locate and capture a screenshot in minutes, and then share it with investigators. This resulted in significant time savings over the 10 to 20 minutes it used to take.

Overall, Long is pleased with the decision to implement OWS as the cloud managed video surveillance system for Bargain Hunt. Long reiterated “I’m still doing research and haven’t found another product that does what OpenEye is doing.”