Transcript:

0:0What is the ROI on an alarm system or a video alarm system or an intercom system or an access control system for your building?

Hey everybody, this is Jeremy, your friendly neighborhood security guy, and this is your security survival guide.

0:19

We’re doing an audio podcast here.

I’m going to start doing more and more of these because I can just kind of chill and put them out without having to worry about all the all the production that goes with it.

But today I just kind of wanted to ramble on about what the ROI is on a security system because it’s a tough question.

0:40

Like if you kind of think about it, I can give you a quote for a security system and that security system could, let’s just say cost like $50,000.

And there’s obviously things we can do like we can put in a financing option.

0:58

So it’s not a CapEx, it’s an OpEx.

You’re only paying like 200 bucks a week for it, maybe even like less.

And you get all the features out of it.

But what are those features?

And how do you actually make that money that you’re investing back from it?

And that is a legitimate question that I actually struggle to find an answer for, for people.

1:19

I’ve actually gone out and reached out to a bunch of suppliers.

So my camera suppliers actual like wholesalers, a bunch of different people who sell security equipment to security people and design it to see if they have an answer.

1:34

And honestly, they don’t have a very good answer either.

It’s yeah, there’s how do you, how do you know how much you’re going to steal and theft and break insurance and robberies and uncertainty when those things haven’t happened yet?

1:51

Now, some people may have a historic loss prevention issue where they’re like, all right, well, we lose X amount of stock every single year and it just gets out of hand.

So we need to do something about it.

So if we spend Y amount, then over the course of three years, if X drops to this, it works out fine.

2:11

And that’s cool.

That’s a good way to do it.

The other one that is plausible and actually really easy to calculate is manpower replacement.

So if we go, hey, it’s going to cost you $50,000 to put in a video alarm system, but then you can reduce your guard presence to 0, hence saving you $30,000 a month means you’ve paid for it in two months, right?

2:36

So that part’s easy.

But for a lot of people, they don’t have on site guards.

They have an issue where in a lot of cases, like if I cold call somebody or if we reach out to somebody in particular that has no burning problem that they need solved, we’re like, look, this is an industry standard, you should get this, this is what it’ll do for you.

2:58

And they go, well, why should I pay $50,000 for that if I don’t pay anything for it now?

And that’s a solid question.

Now, kind of an unfortunate little side effect of being in security is really the time people seek us out for help is after something bad has already happened, which is in reality heartbreaking.

3:22

Like it’s just one of those things where if we were there before, we might have been able to make a difference on that.

Maybe they wouldn’t have lost, you know, $60,000 in stock and then that $50,000 purchase would have been worth it for them.

But how do you know right now for the client, if you’re the end client, you’re the business owner, you’re the facility manager, you’re the, you know, the property manager?

3:45

How do you know like what’s that risk verse cost that you’re willing to put in there?

It’s a solid question and I would love to give you the answer to it.

But in reality, it really is a personal question for you and what you have want to deal with and how much you want to worry.

4:02

I guess that’s the question is how much does not knowing your site is secure or your business is secure or your property is secure?

How much does not knowing what’s going on there keep you awake at night?

How much does it cost you in goodwill?

4:17

Like even for your homes?

Are your kids feeling safe?

Do you feel safe in their your homes?

Yeah, cuz unfortunately with security, that number is personal to everyone.

I can’t tell you what that number is.

4:34

As much as I would like to and I could, I know people can make up numbers like they can quote stats and be like, oh, you know, 50% of break insurance happen because there’s the person doesn’t see any sort of deterrence, meaning cameras or alarm system.

And so you’re far more likely to have that problem if you don’t have one.

4:53

But if it hasn’t happened to you, do you care?

And it’s not just security in that essence of people are guilty of that.

It’s just kind of human nature is if I’m not dealing with starving kids in my household, do I care that somebody else’s kids are starving?

5:12

And do I donate to those charities, right?

With that’s a very personal human experience of how much do we care about things that don’t directly affect us right now.

So the one thing that I guess we can say from this is it doesn’t cost anything for knowledge, right?

5:36

So if the investment cost is what kind of holds you back, it doesn’t cost anything for us to go out there and do a, a security inspection for you, right?

And that’s not just my me and my team.

You can go to almost any security provider, somebody you trust.

5:51

That’s always kind of what I advise people.

If you trust me, by all means come to me.

But if you have a security provider and you trust them, get to come in, do a do a security audit, go through, they’re going to look at basically the layers.

And I know I’ve had other podcasts and videos where we’ve talked about the layers of security, but it’s very similar to cybersecurity in that you don’t have just a layer and then you’re safe.

6:16

You have to have multiple layers that go through and do things.

So in physical security and electronic security, we have the perimeter layer, which is like your fences, your gates, if you have like a door, having like a security door or security screens on your windows, physical things like that.

6:36

Even bigger sites like electrical fences, like the big Gallagher electrical fences are work great.

I’m not a huge fan of certain specific things like beams, beams Dr. our head in from a monitoring point of view, but for different applications, they do make sense.

6:52

So after you have your perimeter, then what you have is you have your video yard area, right?

So the where we use a lot of camera analytics, but there are other things like thermal detection and also things like more traditional like Optex red walls are extremely good outside and so are like the HX 40s and 80s to a certain extent.

7:13

So there are devices that we can put, but basically you have a layer of detection directly inside the physical detection and this is the first electronic detection for most cases.

Then you have actual building protection.

So these are things, again, this is an electronic side.

7:30

So we’re talking about things like read switches on the doors.

If you have mag locks or electric strikes for access control, we can make it so those sense.

So if somebody comes through that, then it sends off an alarm.

We can do glass breaks.

So if somebody smashes a window, you can get a a detection off of that as well too.

7:49

So that’s the next layer.

And then the final layer we do for physical electronic stuff is we obviously have internal motion sensors and detectors that will basically give us that final layer.

So if you’re an operator and I want you to kind of think to being sitting, the way this works is you sit into a control room, you start getting some alarms coming through in a text form and you need to decide very quickly on if it’s a real alarm or if it’s not a real alarm, what the history is with the client.

8:21

But let’s just say you don’t know the site at all.

If you get just a read switch, that could be a very common thing.

So we action that as normal.

We have to.

If you call a client, you’re like, look, you have one alarm.

Some sites may don’t even action on one alarm, they actually action on multiple alarms.

But if you get a read switch and then a motion sensor inside and then another motion sensor inside, you can see this pattern and you actually know from the text log as an operator that there is somebody walking through this site, right?

8:49

And then we can action it put a little bit more aggressively per SE.

So it’s important to have those layers.

Same thing with cybersecurity, same thing with every any other sort of protection thing that you have even to the point of like castles and old school like medieval stories, right?

9:09

They have layers of the of protection.

So when you’re figuring out the cost of what you want to spend for protecting your property, really what you want to figure out is all right, how much product are you carrying on site?

9:25

How much does the actual worry of not knowing or not being able to secure it keep you up at night?

What would be the damage if somebody were to break in and cause a lot of havoc or steel product?

Those are what you kind of need to balance against the cost of the alarm system.

9:49

Now there’s a bunch of other things that kind of increase the ROI of the alarm system as well.

So with all access control and alarm systems, we do get a layer of automation, which we can then pair with things like ABB, which is a building automation or KNX.

10:08

And then we can do some smart things that kind of help you have both a visual representation of what you’ve paid for and also save a little money on the electricity.

So for example, if we pair that through an ABB, we can actually say, all right, look, we’re going to get an alarm if your solar production drops below a certain point in the day.

10:27

And then, you know, you have a, an issue with a solar panel that you need to get checked out.

Or if you have a refrigeration unit, we can have it come through and say, hey, this refrigeration is not up or down at the right temperature.

You need to check this out before all of your stock goes bad in the refrigerator.

10:43

You can also do things like control the lighting.

So in the case of the lights, we’re looking at preserving energy, right?

But also we have a layer of deterrence there as well too.

So if the system’s armed, everybody’s gone.

11:00

We can turn all the lights off when somebody walks in in the morning.

We can have it set up a scene.

So specific lights turn on depending on the time of day.

We can have those days.

Those times work off a schedule off the access control system.

So different times a day have different scenes.

We can also work in wired into things like your HVAC, so your air conditioning or your blinds or TV’s or any smart device that you have, even your washer and dryer really.

11:25

So if you have like an A gym and you have a washer and dryer in the the back of the gym and you only want to run at specific hours, we can actually set it up to, if it’s ready to go, you set up, your staff sets it up today at whatever time it turns on and runs regardless of what’s going on in the gym and who’s there.

11:45

So there’s a lot of smart stuff we can do there.

We can also give you smart apps, tablets on the wall, things like that where you can control the lighting, control the air conditioning, all the TV’s, stuff like that.

So that’s a way to kind of get a little bit more out of the alarm system then the camera system as well too.

12:07

Obviously the camera system you can see everything that’s going on.

You can record playback, do that.

But in reality, once you’re in day-to-day operations for commercial side, you’re not looking at it every day.

You can however, use it for certain things within the site that again are operational use.

12:23

So let’s say you have a shop and you have an area where cigarettes are stored.

We can actually set up the cameras to use a little bit of intelligence in there to say, hey, if somebody’s loitering around here for longer than two minutes, it sets off in a little alarm that triggers through to the the staff.

12:43

We can also do in industrial sections where if somebody’s walking around without proper PPE, so they don’t have a high vis vest on or a hard hat or something like that, it’ll actually trigger an alarm and send that through to the HR team or the, the operations staff.

So there’s a lot of different things we can do there to kind of add value while also still being able to give you an alarm system that is video verified back to our A1R1A graded control room.

13:11

So that no matter what happens, you’re covered, right?

Somebody’s looking out over your, your property even when you’re not there.

You could travel overseas, the alarm still is going to work to the control room here.

We can also do a lot of stuff overlooking staff as well too.

13:28

So obviously things like we can put like duress buttons, people can have pendant duress buttons, things like that, video duress buttons things, anything that will keep your staff safer, we can we can do that for you as well too.

So, yeah, that’s kind of my thoughts on that is security systems are really hard to pin down what the ROI is.

13:52

It’s not a situation where I can put in like a solar panel.

We put in a solar panel, we go, you pay this much, it’s going to take you X amount of time to get that return on investment with average, you know, power consumption that you’re using and the cost of electricity.

So hard one to do there.

14:09

Now, manpower replacement, pretty straightforward.

If you have a ongoing threat theft issue, which you’ve been tracking, pretty straightforward.

But if for all those people, which is a good 90% of the people that will not look into security unless something bad has already happened to them.

14:26

I want you guys to be able to listen to this and think about this and go, hey, maybe there is a value here before something bad happens because it honestly, it breaks my heart.

It honestly breaks my heart.

So I when I get a call from somebody and they’re like, I need help.

We need this done right away.

14:42

Somebody has come in, Jimmy in the back door, open up one of the roller doors, grabbed a bunch of stuff, drove right out.

Nobody stopped them.

There was the police didn’t even know what happened.

We didn’t even know what happened.

The staff showed up at 6:00 in the morning and we’re freaking out because the site was open and everything was gone and they didn’t know what to do.

15:05

We don’t want that, right?

That is not something that you should have to deal with or go through.

If it’s a situation to where a break in happens, we can call the police directly, especially if we have video verification, send them through, give you a call, let you know.

15:20

So you even before you get to sign or your staff gets to sign in the morning, you know what’s going on.

We can help you deal with having putting up static guards or remote patrols, anything like that.

That’s where we want you to be, somewhere where you’re safe and confident and know if something does bad does happen, people are looking out for you.

15:37

They’re giving the update to you.

They’re trying to stop it.

So all right, I think that will probably do it for today’s episode.

My ramble on what do security systems actually cost compared to the ROI of them?

If you have any questions, obviously reach out.

15:54

We’re happy to have a conversation.

You can get all of my contact details from wherever you’re listening to this episode on in the bio.

There’s a million ways to reach me, so feel free to reach out.

I’ll be happy to have a conversation with you.

And again, we do free on site security protections for Australia.

16:13

So if you are in Australia and you are curious and just want the knowledge doesn’t bother us, give me a yell out.

I’ll come out and see and we’ll take care of you.

Alright.

Until then everybody, you have a very good day and I’ll see you all soon, so stay safe.