The House of Fraser is employing an event monitoring system that integrates PoS (point of sale) activities with CCTV.
The House of Fraser is employing an event monitoring system that integrates PoS (point of sale) activities with CCTV. Jerry Carter, Head of Loss Prevention at House of Fraser says: ?Within any organisation there will always be a small element who are determined to defraud the company of goods, services or cash. Our policy is based on active prevention, which has led us to employ the Photo-Scan EPOS-Scan system.? That system monitors video and live data from each PoS terminal, recording information and images for up to 64 events, together with other alarmed equipment such as access control and electronic article surveillance tags. As soon as a pre-programmed event is identified, the nearest camera provides the operator with a view of the PoS terminal, plus the current transaction data relating to that terminal, giving the operator a picture of staff and customer activity. Typical examples of events are the cashier keying ?no sale? or voids, refunds and credit card sales, with EAS (electronic article surveillance) alarms and deliveries. The retailer has installed EPOS-Scan in its Oxford Street store in London and at Guildford, taking advantage of an upgrade of existing Photo-Scan CCTV. As a result, the EPOS-Scan systems have already identified some poor procedural trends. Jerry Carter says: ?In many instances these offences are not severe enough to warrant dismissal, but the fact that we have been able to identify and deal with matters so quickly has sent a positive message to anyone in the store who thinks they can avoid detection. But EPOS-Scan is more than just a staff security system, it is equally effective in identifying credit card fraud and on a more positive note, can support staff training. Another strength is its search capability that eliminates hours of painstaking video search coupled with pages of terminal printouts. Because the user sets the ?event? parameters, event monitoring is automatic and staff are delivered evidential pictures and terminal data on screen as they happen.? Photo-Scan has installed its CCTV systems in 44 House of Fraser stores. The EPOS-Scan system may be extended to other outlets in the group. The EPOS-Scan system takes advantage of modern communication data highways by using existing LANs for system configuration, which can be expandable to ISDN or WAN (wide area network) for remote connection, thereby allowing several stores to be remotely accessed from a central station.
