Welcome to Episode 6 of Solink in the Cloud! Today, our host is Cathy Langley, Senior Leader of Asset Protection at Solink. Cathy is speaking with Anne Sullivan, the Managing Partner of Eye on your Brand. Anne brings over 30 years of asset protection experience to help businesses build, expand, and utilize their CCTV programs. Whether you have CCTV security cameras already or are looking to install them across your brand, Anne has helpful tips on maximizing their value.
Who is Anne Sullivan?
Anne Sullivan is a veteran LP/AP industry professional.
“My name's Anne Sullivan, and I'm the managing partner of Eye on your Brand. I started out as an end user in the retail and food industry, my last job being Vice President of Asset Protection and Risk for CKE Restaurants. I started Eye on your Brand in 2018 and haven't looked back.”
What is Eye on your Brand?
Eye on your Brand teaches businesses how to leverage their security cameras and cloud video surveillance for maximum ROI. Ultimately, her goal is to serve the LA/AP industry.
“We're a company that leverages video and we help folks in the loss prevention, safety, and operational standards area and everybody that touches every industry.”
Who does Eye on your Brand work with?
Eye on your Brand works across industries. While loss prevention and asset protection are often associated with retail and restaurants, as well as high-security industries such as banking and finance, the fact is that all industries can benefit from the data provided by cloud video surveillance.
“We get calls from restaurants, fast food, warehouses, and banking businesses. We also handle houses of worship and daycare centers. It's incredible. We've even taken calls from families of seniors who have had fraud happen to them looking for help.”
The inspiration behind Eye on your Brand
As part of her goal to serve the loss prevention community, Anne started Eye on your Brand. She wanted to make sure anyone working in the industry has a place to find new work when needed.
“CKE was another company that moved out of California and I didn't want to leave. I loved my 30 years of doing this job, and I wanted to make sure I always had a place for my team.”
In addition to the people, she wanted to protect the brands. One of the major lessons she learned in the industry was that the real success was not uncovering incidents but creating processes that prevent the incidents in the first place.
“While everybody can go out and get crazy amounts of confessions or catch theft, it really takes dedication to prevent it in the first place, and to figure out how you can partner with every part of the company and be important to every part. When you're touching all levels of the organization and giving back to all of them, that's when you become a successful loss prevention department, and nobody wants to cut a successful loss prevention department.”
What is Eye on your Brand?
“While our company is focused on leveraging video, we do get a lot of calls from either folks who have a system and they're trying to upgrade and they're getting pushback from their C-level or who want a system and they're just overwhelmed.”
When looking to sell CCTV to businesses, Anne has noticed something:
- Selling a CCTV system to a business without one is easy.
“When you have a company that does not have any cameras and they want to add cameras, it’s very easy. You show a quick test on the ROI and you get a new CCTV system.”
- Selling a CCTV upgrade is difficult.
“Now, where the challenge comes in is when you have a company out there and they either need to upgrade or add to their CCTV system; it's so much more difficult and you wouldn't think so because the infrastructure is in place.”
The issue is often that the business hasn’t found ROI in their current CCTV system and finds it difficult to justify investing further in security infrastructure. However, the issues are with the original system, and it takes new investments to make the CCTV system beneficial.
“Most of the time they have cameras that were originally poorly placed. Maybe the recorders weren't set up properly or have never been used to their full capabilities. The systems might have become dilapidated and unmaintained. Management says ‘we gave you money and you did nothing with it, there was no return’ and now you've got to fight that.”
Anne tells a story from her time at CKE to explain this.
“When I took over CKE, it was a $4 billion company with 850 locations that had four RPMs to manage loss prevention, which is a very high store count. They had cameras, they even had their own monitoring center, a multimillion dollar alarm monitoring center on site. You would think we'd be able to take a look at the video, but unfortunately, due to bandwidth, they couldn't even connect to the DVRs. When I joined, I went to my boss who is the Chief Legal Counsel and said, ‘we need recorders.’ He was like, ‘yeah, no, they've never done anything before, and we're not going to give you another million dollars for that.’ He said, ‘you go out and you show me we need them, we can talk again.’ But he was willing to give me money to upgrade the loss prevention team force, which was huge.”
Fraud sells, so use big wins to change minds
Ultimately, she overcame this pushback by providing new ROI.
“I brought in some new loss prevention professionals. When I hired them, I said ‘you're professionals, we work up here.’ Then these guys come into the job and I go, ‘Now I want you to work down here. Okay, I need old school LP boots on the ground, and I want you to go to the restaurants and catch me some bad guys.’ Now coming out of my mouth, anyone who knows me, they're like, ‘What?" Why is that?’ I'm going to be honest with you. Fraud sells, it's sexy as all get up.”
CCTV use cases
When looking at CCTV system use cases, Anne provides a lot of unconventional suggestions.
Remote access is how you uncover fraud
First, use CCTV security cameras effectively by supporting the system with loss prevention personnel. Separate the uses of remote access from those that require real people on location.
“You get the system that everyone has always wanted, but you forgot to put the foundation in to operate the system, you forgot to support the system. My personal view on CCTV systems is that remote access should be what you use to identify, reduce, and eliminate fraud. Boots on the ground is what you use for training, awareness, and gaining operational support to the CCTV systems you have purchased. The reality is that, when you have 850 locations, four people can't do it alone, and I don't care what system you bought.”
Proactive fraud prevention
Second, the best use case for a CCTV security system is to prevent fraud rather than uncover it. While it is harder to place value on the events that didn’t happen, that should be the goal of a loss prevention department. This is especially true in a tight labor market where deterring an employee from stealing means you won’t need to replace them after they do steal.
“When you're taking out people for fraud instead of trying to proactively stop them from stealing with awareness training, it costs more to replace an employee in today's market where everyone's struggling for employees than the actual return you're going to get from catching them stealing.”
Prevent excessive false alarms
False alarm fines are increasing everywhere, if local law enforcement still responds to non-verified burglary alarms at all. Your CCTV security system can also act as a video alarm system, either replacing your current alarm system or adding a video verification step before emergency response is requested.
“One thing you also want to do with your cameras, though, is take a look at other things that you could potentially solve with that system, because you can then take the resources that are being spent in those areas and pull them into leveraging the system. Does that make sense? After we get past the initial stages, I tell people to ask ourselves what other challenges could we solve. For example, if you could relieve the excessive false alarms you have now, you could take the resources of the people tracking them, and you could take the monetary for false alarm fines and put that towards your return on investment.”
Differentiate errors and fraud
Another key factor CCTV cameras can help with is differentiating between process errors and fraud. Not every void is a sign of theft, but it is likely a transaction that re-training could prevent.
“On employees, something in my career I've seen way too many times is using an ineffective system or not leveraging the system properly, where a loss prevention person gets information and sits down across from a team member and interviews them. I have always been big on it's all about a conversation and you back out as soon as you realize you are not on the right track, but there's a lot of folks that don't get that. They will keep drilling for fraud that actually doesn't exist because it's either a POS error or the refund was actually done earlier and they were too busy. So they just didn't follow a policy, but they didn't steal anything.”
Energy management
Energy prices are at all time highs, and policy mistakes can lead to excessive energy use. For example, poorly programmed light timers could lead to lights on while the business is closed, or employees consistently forgetting to close walk-in doors can lead to more refrigeration costs than necessary.
“This is actually a crazy area you can recover profit in. Since we're all on the cameras all the time, simple things like identifying that the AC is running all night when it shouldn't be or lights are turning off too late can save money.”
Improving your business environment
A busy, profitable street can change in weeks to a problematic place to run a business. Outdoor cameras can be used here as well.
“Let's say encampments are opening up. We have a lot of clients call us and say, ‘Hey, we have a transient issue at night. They have built their encampments on my sidewalk where my team members come in,’ which again is a safety issue. They can now leverage the energy management system to brighten it up for a few weeks and make it not as friendly of a place to sleep.”
Vendor relations
Vendor relationships can be difficult, especially when things happen after hours when you need to trust the vendor performed their services. Even when the vendor is doing a great job, issues may lead to them not being able to do their work or added expenses due to requests for service that weren’t necessary. Anne provides two such examples.
“In the restaurant world, you have to send a tech out to check the freezer or the cooler because the temperature has dropped, which is very serious for food safety. If you can check a camera and see if the door was just left open too long, triggering the sensor, then you just saved $250 to $275 in a trip charge when there's nothing wrong. Regarding maintenance concerns, and this is a big one, we have a large client who transitioned over to a new pest control company, and we all know in the restaurant industry pest control is very important. I have one example where the pest control person walks in, pumps the little bucket, and then turns around and walks out. Now, everyone will laugh and go, ‘well, okay, he didn't service the restaurant, so they'll give us back the $150,’ but stop and think about that. This restaurant now didn't get serviced, so what happens if they do have a flying pest, roach, or rodent problem, and somebody videos it? You've now damaged the brand and that could have been prevented.”
CCTV solution red flags
Finally, Anne wanted to remind listeners that not every cloud CCTV provider is created equally.
“Every CCTV solution provider is not created equal, so I tell folks you want to weed out the fact from the fiction. You need to validate, validate, validate. You have salespeople, because a lot of times you have the solution and then you have a salesperson, the integrator. You might be promised the world. Just yesterday, I got a call from a client saying ‘Hey, I want to test this system. Do you think the system could work for me?’ I was like, ‘yeah, it could work for you.’ They said, ‘okay, they want $3,000 to do a test.’ I will tell you right now, one of the biggest red flags is that, any company that has to charge for a test for a 400 location client doesn’t have enough faith in their own product.”
We can’t wait for the second half of this interesting conversation on CCTV security camera systems!
Here is the complete transcript:
Cathy Langley:
Welcome to Solink in the Cloud where we are talking to industry leaders about topics that matter. I’m Cathy Langley, Senior Leader of Asset Protection with Solink.
Solink’s mission is to protect people, patrons, and profits, which is why we’re bringing together thought leaders within the loss prevention, asset protection and retail security industries to share their expertise and passion.
Joining me today I have Anne Sullivan. Anne is the managing partner at Eye on your Brand. So Anne, for our listeners, can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your history?
Anne Sullivan:
Absolutely. As you said, my name’s Anne Sullivan and I’m the managing partner of Eye on your Brand. My history comes from, I started out as an end user in the retail and food industry. My last job being vice president of asset protection and risk for CKE Restaurants, and then started Eye on your Brand in 2018 and haven’t looked back since.
Cathy Langley:
That’s awesome. You bring to Eye on your Brand all of your past experiences, and I was thinking about this earlier or how it’s interesting for the last, what, five years now, all of the folks that you have helped, guided and then have heard their stories. It’s got to be an exciting time for you just every time you help somebody win. That’s just we’re all in this together. So, give me an example of the type of companies that are going to call Eye on your Brand? Who are you hearing from?
Anne Sullivan:
Okay, so we’re a company that leverages video and we help folks in the loss prevention, safety and operational standards area and everybody that touches every industry. So, the folks that we get calls from would be restaurants, fast food, warehouses, banking systems. We handle houses of worship and daycare centers. It’s incredible. We’ve even taken calls, Cathy, from families of seniors who have had fraud happen to them looking for help.
Cathy Langley:
I mean, when you break it down to anybody who potentially has a CCTV system, anybody who’s using cameras. Again, a wide, you’re covering so many verticals there.
Anne Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Cathy Langley:
When you and I started chatting about doing this podcast, we were throwing out all kinds of ideas. Initially we’re talking about how do you take a CCTV program from a cost center to a profit center, and then we sort of talked about all the stages of CCTV.
So just to prep our listeners here, what we’re going to do is we’re going to start talking about the stages of CCTV, and Anne and I are probably going to go off on a million different directions, so hang with us as we walk through this. Always our goal from Solink is that listeners grab two or three nuggets of information that can help them do better for their employer, for themselves, et cetera.
So let’s start with, with your history versus an end user and now in the consulting realm, how difficult is it to get the buy-in for, let’s start with the CCTV system? What are the challenges there?
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah, so it’s funny, because while our company is focused on leveraging video, we do get a lot of calls from folks who either have a system and they’re trying to upgrade and they’re getting pushback from their C-level, or folks that want a system and they’re just overwhelmed with what do I need? The vendors are all telling me this, that and that, and I don’t understand it.
So honestly, I kind of break it into two buckets. Either you have a company that does not have any cameras and they want to add cameras, which is very easy. You show a quick test in the ROI and you get a new CCTV system. Now, where the challenge comes in is when you have a company out there and they either need to upgrade or add to, it’s so much more difficult and you wouldn’t think so, because the infrastructure’s in place.
But reality is what they will look at is most of the time they have cameras that were originally poorly placed. Maybe the recorders weren’t set up properly or have never been used to their full capabilities, the systems have become dilapidated and unmaintained. Then even more sadly, what you face is we gave you money in the first place, you did nothing with it, there was no return and now you’ve got to fight that.
Cathy Langley:
Yeah, good point. So again, no CCTV system, a pretty easy sell?
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah.
Cathy Langley:
An enhancement when you had a poorly run program, a very, very heavy lift?
Anne Sullivan:
Mm-hmm. Very heavy lift.
Cathy Langley:
So from a standpoint of let’s just say I’m coming to you, I have a CCTV program, maybe I don’t even know how to get the best out of it. Are you guiding me in that of saying, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? What’s that conversation look like with somebody?
Anne Sullivan:
I do give them guidance on, and I’ll just tell you, a lot of times if I’m speaking to a CFO, for the most part I can just kind of talk them through and then they understand the numbers. My challenges come when I speak with loss prevention or HR folks, and saying, “Okay, you can do this, this, this and this,” because so many times they don’t even have the resources to do that.
I mean, it’s one of the areas companies cut in, and so it can be such a big lift, and I can give you an example. When I was at CKE, here you have a $4 billion company and they were probably my biggest challenge just to get recording device upgrades in my whole 30 years of doing this. So, yeah.
Cathy Langley:
Mm-hmm. Okay. So I guess in some cases, people, I’m going to say they don’t know what they have and maybe think about it from a narrow view. If I’m an asset protection professional, I may be thinking of it as I want to catch bad guys or I want to catch internal theft, right? How do you get people beyond that? Maybe it’s more like giving them an assignment to say, where are all your other opportunities?
Anne Sullivan:
Sure.
Cathy Langley:
Just from a standpoint of I’ve already invested this money, I’m not getting value out of it, and maybe to your point, maybe I don’t even have the resources to use the system, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Sure, 100%.
Cathy Langley:
Just getting past that. Yeah.
Anne Sullivan:
Those are some big challenges. As I said, I’ll go into my example. When I took over CKE, here I’ve got a $4 billion company with 850 locations who had four RPMs to manage loss prevention, which is a very high store count. They had cameras, they even had their own monitoring center, multimillion dollar alarm monitoring center onsite. So you would think we’d be able to take a look at the video, but unfortunately due to bandwidth, they couldn’t even connect to the DVRs.
When I joined, I go to my boss who is chief legal and said, “We need recorders.” He was like, “Yeah, no, they’ve never done anything before, we’re not going to give you another million dollars for that.” He said, “You go out and you show me we need them, we can talk again.” But he was willing to give me money to upgrade the loss prevention team force, which was huge.
Cathy Langley:
Okay.
Anne Sullivan:
So, I brought in some new loss prevention professionals and honestly my hiring of them was you’re professionals, we work up here. Then these guys come into the job and I go, “Now I want you to work down here. Okay, I need old school LP boots on the ground and I want you to go to the restaurants and catch me some bad guys.” Now coming out of my mouth, anyone who knows me, they’re like, “What?” Why is that? I’m going to be honest with you. Fraud sells, it’s sexy as all get up.
Cathy Langley:
Yeah. No, you’re right.
Anne Sullivan:
You show that person putting money in the pocket, everyone gets invited.
Cathy Langley:
That’s right, that’s right. You’re right, it is. I mean, the money in the pocket shot, it doesn’t get old, right? It doesn’t get old.
Yes, that’s right. From a standpoint of as I’m thinking about this and we have this big thing of a CCTV program, do you find that a challenge is I want to eye the retailer or eye the financial institution, et cetera, whoever your client is, that they want to run before they’ve even started walking and should have started crawling? How do you coach them from a building the program from a standpoint of probably we should crawl first before we walk and then we run?
Anne Sullivan:
Sure, 100%. That seems to be the running first a lot of times is the downfall of many systems and departments for that matter. You think you get everything. You get the system that everyone has always wanted, but you forgot to put the foundation in to operate the system, you forgot to put the needs to support the system. Unfortunately, that is where we kind of lose that ability.
My personal on systems is remote access should be what you use to identify and reduce and eliminate fraud. Boots on the ground is what you use for training, awareness and gaining operational support to the systems you have purchased, because reality is when you have 850 locations, four people can’t do it alone, and I don’t care what system you bought. But when you have 850 locations that you’ve brought in your ops and all your partners to leverage that system, you start getting something that shows value and worth.
Cathy Langley:
Right. So, as you talk about remote access … well, let me back up a second and talk about the guidance and counseling, I’m going to say counseling I guess, guidance, that you give to clients when they come to you and say, “I want to do this, I even have the buy-in. So I’m through the buy-in process, I want to do this. Now, I’m exploring and there’s so many solution providers out there.”
As we talk about this, I guess that’s really the first stage, right? Like, “Okay, I can do this. Now I need to decide who am I working with?” Let’s talk about what guidance do you give them? Are there red flags to look for? What are those pieces?
Anne Sullivan:
I’d love it if we could actually come back to that question-
Cathy Langley:
Oh, sure.
Anne Sullivan:
Only because when I’m talking to a client, the first thing I’m going to ask them, and sometimes they’re actually already at that stage, but what they haven’t thought about is thinking about from the system, from the starting place is what’s your goals?
Cathy Langley:
Good call, yep.
Anne Sullivan:
Understanding who’s going to use the system, what are they going to use it for, and why are you truly buying the system?
Cathy Langley:
When you talked about resources before so you can have your goals, do you actually have the resources to achieve your goals?
Anne Sullivan:
That’s 100%. When I have folks tell me, “Well, I’m buying it, because we just caught Sally Steele money, so now I need a system.” I very bluntly will tell people, if you are buying a new camera system or upgrading your camera system or leveraging your camera system just for fraud, you’re wasting your money. You’re just wasting your money. What are you going to do? Have somebody sit there and watch it 24/7 and catch someone for stealing $200, and you’re paying this person anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000 a year?
Cathy Langley:
Right. The old adage of how long does it take to watch 24 hours worth of video, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Well, exactly. The other thing is when you’re taking out people for fraud instead of trying to proactively stop them from stealing with awareness training, it costs more to replace an employee in today’s market where everyone’s struggling for employees than the actual return you’re going to get from catching them stealing.
Cathy Langley:
Right. Okay, so-
Anne Sullivan:
One thing, Cathy, I want to point out, because people will push back on that, I get it all the time, and they go, “Oh, really? Well, I caught someone for $25,000 in register theft last month.” I go, “Well, how did someone get to $25,000 in register theft in the first place?”
Cathy Langley:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, we’ve both been in the industry long enough to remember when a big statement was people are high-fiving, everybody’s excited about it, and now you’re like, the threshold of acceptable statement levels has gone down dramatically over the years, and it’s a red flag.
Anne Sullivan:
Sure, absolutely.
Cathy Langley:
Who missed it and how did we miss it and what do we need to do to catch it faster, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Exactly.
Cathy Langley:
You’re absolutely right. So yeah, those large statements are … I mean, again, we all know they happen, but it’s not a big win. I mean, at least you caught them at that point, but what do you need to do ahead of time in order to catch that?
Anne Sullivan:
Sure.
Cathy Langley:
So, we build out our use cases and we either know we have the resources to take care of our use cases, and or if we plan this as a decision tree, a branch of that decision tree could be I know I need to do X, but I need to find a more efficient way to do it, because I don’t have the people to monitor this, so I need either some kind of alerting system or some kind of way to narrow my view down.
Anne Sullivan:
Right.
Cathy Langley:
So if I have my use cases and I have my resources, then what’s next in the whole process?
Anne Sullivan:
Okay. All right, so when you talk about resources, I just want to point on something, because that is a challenge people will look for, one of the things you also want to do with your cameras though is take a look at other things that you could potentially solve with that system, because you can then take the resources that are being spent in those areas and pull them into leveraging the system. Does that make sense?
Cathy Langley:
Mm-hmm. Give me an example of that.
Anne Sullivan:
Okay, so one of the things I always share with people after we get past the initial stages, now let’s ask ourselves what other challenges can we do? So when you look at that, if you could relieve excessive false alarms you have now, you could take the resources of the people tracking them, and you could take the monetary for false alarm fines and put that towards your return on investment.
Your next place, and I don’t care if you’re in retail or fast food, banking, robberies. Robberies are huge not only for the loss, the fear, the brand and your risk. So, if you can actually change robberies and reduce folks from having robberies, and you’re like, “Well, how would you do that with a camera system?” Well, let’s leverage our camera system and the technology it has and identify folks arriving early or leaving late alone.
Easy robbery target. Too much cash in the drawer, easy. I don’t have to go audit a drawer, I can do it in a one-second shot. Look, are they making the drops? Backdoor robberies, are they in compliance? These are all areas that will absolutely build not only on the ROI, but also for the folks you had doing all that footwork before, you no longer have someone investigating a robbery, because it didn’t happen. You have them spending less time mitigating, again, putting those resources in the bucket.
Then you step out on, unfortunately all technology has issues. So POS exception reporting, okay? If you have it, fantastic. If you don’t, get it. It’s going to give you quicker identification for training opportunities. So many people think what they think is fraud and they’re chasing this case, and it’s just a training opportunity, or you have POS errors. Again, you’re chasing it for fraud, it’s just an error. You can take those resources of the chase and now focus on leveraging it for the fraud and just resolution or preventing the fraud.
Then probably your last one is so many people don’t think about big cost savings. If you were to leverage your CCTV system to compliment systems like energy management or maintenance concerns, huge return on investment, and those departments start loving you, because you’ve taken now the workload off of their plate.
Cathy Langley:
You just went through a lot there, Anne. There’s a lot there, thank you. I’m going to ask you a couple follow-up questions on a few of these, or even a statement. So, one of the things you mentioned was robberies, right? The impact that that has on your brand, the impact that that has on an associate. I personally have never had a gun pointed in my face. I’m very thankful for that, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Cathy Langley:
But there’s a ton of folks out there who have that are serving the public. So when we reduce the robberies, you mentioned two things, right? Am I opening the location alone? Am I closing the location alone? Huge. Then the other thing is your cash pickups and everything, not having too much money in your drawer, and that goes back to the whole risk versus reward, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah.
Cathy Langley:
If I’m a robber, I hit a location and I am able to score two grand out of the cash, let’s be real, these folks talk to one another, right? So anything that you can do with your CCTV system, especially paired with other technologies that you talked about, that you can reduce that, it’s a huge win.
The other thing I think that it does, especially as you’re working to reduce robberies is it’s huge for your employees, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah, 100%.
Cathy Langley:
You show that you care about those employees as leaders, and that goes a long way when we talk about how much does it cost to hire a new person and everything, right? So, that’s another big piece of it.
The other piece is you mentioned about the POS synchronization with data and the benefits of that. I think also that piece, you talked about is it really fraud or is it really theft, or is it a training issue?
Anne Sullivan:
Correct.
Cathy Langley:
I think that sometimes we miss the opportunities to … it’s a two side story here, but also coach and train our people upfront, but then also that shows perception of control.
Anne Sullivan:
Yep.
Cathy Langley:
Right? I think sometimes we can compliment people for doing things right, but there’s that we know that we can see this video remotely and we understand what’s going on, but most importantly, coach and train early on, and that’s a huge opportunity.
Anne Sullivan:
Cathy, if I could interject right there on the piece of the employees, and this is something in my career I’ve seen way too many times is using an ineffective system or not leveraging the system properly, and a loss prevention person gets information and sits down across from a team member and interviews them.
While I have always been big on it’s all about a conversation and you back out, and as soon as you realize you are not on the right track, there’s a lot of folks that don’t get that. They will keep drilling for the fraud that actually doesn’t exist, because it’s either a POS error, or the refund was actually done earlier and they were too busy. So they just didn’t follow a policy, but they didn’t steal anything. You have now taken that employee and put them in a place, because I don’t care how good you are, it’s still embarrassing to have someone sit across from you and ask you about fraud.
Cathy Langley:
That’s right, that’s right. That relationship has been destroyed [inaudible]
Anne Sullivan:
Yes, 100%. I don’t care how good you are, and a lot of [inaudible] will lead with the handshake and they feel better, ’cause you try to make them feel better, but the reality is you shouldn’t have made the error in the first place.
Cathy Langley:
Right. No, that’s a really good call out. I like to think that we as an industry continue to rise above that, but we’re still an industry made of humans, so those things still occur. That’s a really good call out, because at the end of the day, it is all about people and building relationships, whether it’s with your employees, with a solution provider, with your leaders, et cetera.
Anne Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Cathy Langley:
Can you give me an example? You talked about energy management. When you said, “Okay, we’ve got all of these pieces.” Talk to me a little bit about energy management.
Anne Sullivan:
Okay, so this is actually a crazy area you can recover profit in. So, we’re all on the cameras all the time. Simple things like identifying that the AC is running all night when it shouldn’t be. Lights are turning off too early or turning on too late in the morning and your team members are leaving in the pitch black, or in the dark.
Another easy one is let’s say these encampments are opening up, and we have a lot of clients call us and say, “Hey, we have a transient issue at night. They have built their encampments on my sidewalk where my team members come in,” which again is a safety issue. Allowing them to leverage the energy management system to brighten it up for a few weeks and make it not as friendly of a place.
Then the other thing is we work a lot with facilities, which sounds crazy, cameras and facilities, but in the we’ll say the restaurant world, having to send a tech out to check the freezer or the cooler because the temperature has dropped, which is very serious for food safety. Being able to check a camera and see if maybe the door was just left open too long, you just saved $250 to $275 in a trip charge for there’s nothing wrong.
Then the last thing that I talk about when I talk about maintenance concerns, and this is a big one, we have a large client who transitioned over to a new pest control company, and we all know in all industries pest control is very important. We just used some compliance spot checks on the vendors, and ended up identifying actually more than not the pest control people who were visiting the sites off-clock. I have one example, and I’d be happy to send you the video. He actually walks in, he pumps the little bucket and then turns around and walks out.
Now, everyone will laugh and go, “Well, okay, he didn’t service the restaurant, so they’ll give us back the $150,” but stop and think about that. This restaurant now didn’t get serviced, so what happens if they do have a flying pest, a roach problem, a rodent problem, and somebody videos it? You’ve now damaged the brand and that could have been prevented.
Cathy Langley:
Mm-hmm. I’m wondering, this is completely side and we didn’t even chat about this ahead of time, but you mentioned brand so many times.
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah.
Cathy Langley:
Obviously the name of your consulting group is Eye on the Brand. How did you come up with that?
Anne Sullivan:
Because when I decided to start my company, I first started it after leaving CKE. It was another company that moved out of California and I didn’t want to leave. I’ve loved 30 years of doing this, but I wanted to make sure I always had a place for my team to go and that I could help even the little guy. Big companies, but the little guy, everyone could afford a loss prevention asset protection.
So, when I started stepping back, I thought, “What’s made me the most successful in my career?” While everybody can go out and get crazy amounts of confessions or catch theft, but it really takes probably that dedication to prevent it in the first place, and to figure out how can you partner with every part of the company and be important to every part, ’cause you’re touching all levels of the organization and giving back to all of them? That’s when you become a successful loss prevention department and nobody wants to cut in a successful loss prevention department.
Cathy Langley:
That’s right, and thank you for that. When you think about it, some departments run to say like, “This is the only thing within my wheelhouse.” But when you branch out and you become that ultimate business partner, you are perceived as indispensable.
Anne Sullivan:
100%.
Cathy Langley:
Absolutely indispensable. I know, I knew I would get off track from time to time from CCTV, but ultimately that’s what this is about is, is protecting your brand and is making the most of the money that you’ve invested in a particular system?
Anne Sullivan:
Sure.
Cathy Langley:
So, what would you say is next in my strategy? So I’ve defined my use cases, I’ve looked at my resources, I understand who’s using, what pieces, what is the next step? Is there a next step?
Anne Sullivan:
It’s time to start meeting with vendors and looking at the systems. You now know what you’re looking for and what you got to touch on, so now you got to set up those meetings.
Cathy Langley:
I mean, both former practitioners, you and I have lived this, it’s overwhelming and it’s a lot of work to do it right, to do it right. Really, initially it’s preliminary conversations. These are the things that I want to accomplish. Building out ultimately a roadmap, knowing that this may be phase one, phase two, phase three, and is the solution provider that I’m looking for, can they take me all the way to my goal, right? Can they be with me the whole way through? And are they going to be with me the whole way through?
So understanding, I’m going to say checking all my boxes to say, can they do all the things I want them to do? If they can’t do something, is it on their roadmap?
Anne Sullivan:
Right.
Cathy Langley:
I say that and I go really on the roadmap, do we have a timeline for it if it’s critical to me? But then also I guess, would you say next is talking to other clients that the solution provider uses? I hate to say old reference check, but calling your peers and saying, “Who do you use? Why do you use them? What do you like?” Is that your next step?
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah, so I always tell folks you want to be current on the technology and how it’s evolving daily. It includes everything you just said, who’s status quo and who’s moving forward and evolving with the industry? That’s where a lot of people come to us and go, “Well, we don’t want to do that. Could you guys do that?”
Then I talk to folks, if they want to do it themselves, do your homework. You want to talk to all those industry partners. No matter what systems they’re using and after they explain their systems and what they like about it, what their challenges are, you ask them if you could change right now, who would you go with and why?
Cathy Langley:
That’s a good one.
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah, and that starts leading you down the path of things they’ve heard, they’ve seen at a show that maybe you didn’t, ’cause it’s not only about the capabilities, it’s about the quality of the system. Then I would just tell you, at the end of the day, you hit on it. It’s about the service level then, and then after they get the check, what’s it going to look like?
Cathy Langley:
Right. I love your question of if you could change today, who would you go with? Because a piece of that could be they promised me the moon and they’re not delivering, or they’re not keeping up with the industry, and or they’re also not telling me what else I could be doing, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Exactly.
Cathy Langley:
I mean, in our industry, I’m going to say I love the transition that our industry went when we went from, and it was said, vendor versus solution provider, and then solution partner, right? I love that transition, ’cause ultimately I would be wanting those folks to bring to me what else could I be using the system?
So all right, so Eye on the Brand also helps, whether it’s a retailer, financial institution, you would actually help them do that legwork for them-
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah, if they wanted to.
Cathy Langley:
Right.
Anne Sullivan:
Yeah, if they want us to. Like I said, a lot of folks want to do it themselves and they just want some guidance of, am I on the right track?
Cathy Langley:
Right.
Anne Sullivan:
Because anybody out there can reach out to a loss prevention partner or an HR partner or an ops partner and say, “Do you like what you’re using? Is it what you expected?” That’s probably one of my big ones. Is it what you expected?
Cathy Langley:
Right, okay.
Anne Sullivan:
Then Cathy, I will tell you, one thing I end all my conversations on after folks tell me, because there are some folks out there who have bought a system and have never even thought about future upgrades or sharing technology. They got their system, they were overwhelmed at first. They’re happy with it, and there’s no thought process after. As long as it’s working, we’re great.
So, I always end my calls with, “Hey, real quick, when was the last time X, Y, Z offered some new technology or shared some new technology?” ‘Cause it’s about a collaboration. It’s absolutely about collaboration and shared, “Hey, you can leverage a system like this?” Or, “Hey, we have other clients that are leveraging like this,” and actually share that, whether it be just through web communication, but continues the growth and continues to listen to clients to grow.
Cathy Langley:
Right. When you start your either … let’s say I’m coming to you with just guidance. I’m going to do it on my own, but I’m coming to you for guidance. Are there any red flags you tell me to look out for? If I’m looking for a CCTV partner, are there any red flags, or do you feel that the process is pretty much the same with every solution provider? What are my like, oh wait. If I don’t know, what are my red flags?
Anne Sullivan:
Okay, so every solution provider is not created equal, I will just tell you, and so things that I tell folks you want to look for, you got to weed out the fact from the fiction, validate, validate, validate. You will have salespeople, because a lot of times you have the solution and then you have a salesperson, the integrator. You might be promised the world, but at the end of the day you got some teeny tiny little county that no one’s ever heard of in your system.
But I will tell you, one of the biggest red flags I tell to everybody, and this was just yesterday, I got a call from a client and said, “Hey, I want to test this system. Do you think the system could work for me?” I was like, “Yeah, no, it could work for you.” They said, “Okay, they want $3,000 to do a test.” Now I’m going to tell you now, any company, and I don’t care who hears this, that has to charge for a test to a 400 location client, you don’t have enough faith in your own product.
Cathy Langley:
No, that’s a good call out. I guess you would also give me all of the parameters, all of the certifications that you should be looking for from a video protection standpoint, right?
Anne Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Cathy Langley:
Like cybersecurity, all that kind stuff? Okay.
Anne Sullivan:
Mm-hmm. Do you realize I have never to this day, with the exception of my banking clients, never ask about cybersecurity protection?
Cathy Langley:
Ever?
Anne Sullivan:
Ever. They just look and be like, “What? I thought IT handled that?” I’m like, “This is your video.” Your video, I have news for everyone is your brand. It’s how your company operates.
Cathy Langley:
I know, I used to always say that if there’s a breach in the company that I work for, it will not be through my systems, right?
Anne Sullivan:
You’re absolutely correct.
Cathy Langley:
I’m not going to be the weak link here. Yeah, absolutely.
Anne Sullivan:
Yep, 100%.
Cathy Langley:
Yeah, absolutely. Anne, first of all, thank you so much for your time, your experience. So, we have covered a ton here when it comes to CCTV programs, what to look for, building the strategy of what are my use cases, do I have the resources? How do I source a solution provider?
When we opened the podcast, we talked about we’re going to go from a cost center to a profit center, and we’re out of time for this podcast, but Anne and I are going to do a part two. In that part two, we are going to talk more about the profit centerpiece and building your ROI.
So I’m going to end with a question for Anne, and when we start the next podcast, this will be the first thing that we talk about. So Anne, what I want to know is the proudest moment of your career when you think about delivering an ROI, right? We all have those very proud moments in our career, but with your history of CCTV and building ROI and turning them into profit centers, what the audience is going to be looking for is what was your proudest moment?
So we’re going to end there, we’ll come back for a part two. But Anne, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate your experience and just being with us and sharing your knowledge, thank you.
Anne Sullivan:
Thank you, Cathy. Appreciate it.
