Securitas – Belgium and Netherlands

Remote Guarding Services

The Challenge: Securitas management in both Belgium and Netherlands jointly identified several opportunities to enhance their video services within their alarm receiving centers. Given the close proximity and similarities between the two distinct operations, it was decided that any new system to manage their event driven video provision should work for both stations independently yet allow each station to act as a complete backup for each other.

Background: Securitas is one the largest global security providers in the world, employing over 300,000 employees in 52 countries. Securitas offers a broad range of security services specializing in guarding, technology solutions, consulting and investigations.

In many countries, Securitas offers a remote monitoring operation using continually staffed Alarm Receiving Centers. From these centers, the Securitas operators will receive alarms and alerts from the monitored sites and can use remote CCTV and two way voice communication to act upon any alerts. This may involve warning off a potential intruder, notifying the police or their own Securitas guards as to a potential or real threat to site providing enhanced or bespoke video solutions tailored to the individual customer.

The Solution: Immix Central Station was selected due to its large integration base, its ability to scale to a high volume of anticipated alarms, and the ease of its user interface.

Immix enabled Securitas to take on the remote guarding contracts from various existing installed systems without requiring any additional systems or operator training. The services have grown by over 1000% in four years without the need for a major investment in additional hardware or new operational staff.

Immix has enabled Securitas to offer a diverse suite of remote guarding services; from simple video verification on an alarm, to sophisticated and personalized concierge services.

Immix also met the Securitas requirements of a fully audited system that is easy for management to generate operational efficiency reports. Every action taken by an operator is tracked in a time/date stamped multimedia audit trail, providing a critical tool for post event analysis and investigations. It’s an excellent sales tool for selling the remote capabilities of Securitas, reassuring customers that their people and premises are being protected and monitored professionally and has also proven to be a powerful tool for assisting in prosecutions of intruders.

Securitas make extensive use of the management reporting function of Immix to ensure their centers are optimally staffed and each operator is working at the maximum efficiency. The reports also used to identify sites that are causing an unusually high level of nuisance alarms. They work quickly with the installers to ensure that these are fixed in a timely manner without compromising the security of the site or the efficiency of the overall station.

Results: Securitas have used Immix to grow their remote video monitoring business from less than 100 monitored sites in total to over 2,800 sites in less than four years.

Securitas have scaled their system and operational capacities and thus reduced the overall cost of monitoring each site. This has established Video
Monitoring as a profitable division within Securitas Monitoring services.

Immix provides a major level of system resilience through enabling the install in each country to act as a complete backup for the other. This solution reassures the Securitas customers that their alarms will always be handled in a timely and professional way even in the event of a major outage at the respective local Alarm Receiving Centre.

“Once Immix was installed, we were able to standardize on a single process which brought excellent efficiency savings. We were then able to grow our remote monitoring services by taking on many different types of connections and providing different levels of service for our customers. We have grown from a small number of connections to a what we have now which is a very substantial video monitoring service in both Belgium and Netherlands. We can only see this growing as we continue to implement the various capabilities of Immix. Immix has met our requirements throughout and they have regularly implemented new features into the system on the basis of our requests. We have found Immix to be an excellent partner for our monitoring business and a perfect fit for our business.” 
– Dirk Puylaert, Security Manager for Securitas Alert Services Belgium.