Admit it. You’ve done it. You went back to work to get your laptop or purse or document or travel coffee mug after hours and set off the security alarm. You thought for sure someone else would be there, because someone is always there, it seems, but this time you were wrong. Despite fumbling around in your wallet or frantically searching through your email for the last reminder regarding security codes, you realize it’s already too late. Most systems have a delay of 30 second to 3 minutes before the security company is called and your time is up. The police are on their way and you’ll have to explain that you are not, in fact, there to commit a crime. You just wanted to retrieve a personal item from your desk.
The worst part of this scenario is that you’re the boss, so you should know better. Of course you’ve drilled it into your employees’ heads at every staff meeting, because each time someone sets off the alarm and the police are called, there is a charge. In fact, you just went over this as last week’s department meeting. How embarrassing. If only there were a way to communicate right away to the security company that you know you made a big mistake and that you are not an intruder.
Commercial security systems are a necessity, in fact 1 out of every 7 businesses have one, but they can also be a huge pain. It’s hard to communicate to every employee the importance of knowing how to arm and disarm the system and despite all your efforts, hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t set it off by mistake. And those mistakes are adding expenses that are completely avoidable with the right security company and system. A closed circuit television system (cctv camera solution) might be your answer. A cctv camera solution allows professionals at the security company to go live at your business and carefully listen and look for signs of an actual intruder before calling the police. With their managed access control system, they are able to see what looks like an employee frantically dumping out her purse to look for that elusive laminated security code card so you can avoid that costly call to the police to check out a false alarm. It probably comes as no surprise that 94% to 98% of all alarm calls that police respond to are false. And considering it takes 2 officers usually 20 minutes to investigate, that’s wasted time they could have spent on more serious police matters of public safety. Saving the police time and the company money are two reasons for advanced access control systems.
Of course you can’t just go without a business security system entirely. They have been shown to deter burglaries. In fact, 67% of all burglaries can be thwarted with the mere presence of a reliable and effective security system. Even convicted burglars themselves say that they would attempt to determine if a business had a security system before attempting a burglary. Another study revealed that 50% of intruders say they would discontinue with their planned crime if they discovered security surveillance.
Night time and after hours protection are not the only reasons to consider a cctv camera solution. In retail stores nationally, theft contributed $44 million in inventory shrink according to a National Retail Security Survey. A closed circuit tv system can allow for daytime monitoring of customers and employees in an effort to reduce shoplifting and inventory loss.
Your security access control system should be working with you 24/7 to keep your business or school safe. Surveillance and alarms are indeed critical but it’s not realistic to expect every employee will successfully learn or remember how to arm and disarm the system. For this reason, a cctv camera solution allows the best of both worlds. Security by day and night and access for employees when needed without expensive and time consuming police calls. And you won’t have to wait for the police to arrive to explain that you are, in fact, the boss but couldn’t remember or find your own security code at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night.