BJ's Wholesale Club is one of the top three leading warehouse chains in the United States. Headquartered in Natick, Mass., the company operates more than 180 locations in 15 states, 102 gas stations and three main distribution centres, and sells everything from general merchandise to fresh meat and perishables across its retail enterprise.

In a store environment as large as BJ's, response time to potential incidents is paramount. Each BJ's location employed an older video system comprised of a PC-based DVR and analog cameras to monitor its stores. On average, the system was comprised of 32 cameras per store, typically four PTZs and 28 fixed cameras. But the legacy system was quickly reaching end of life and BJ's found it was spending more time resolving issues with its DVRs, than using them to its advantage.

"We faced a lot of challenges with the old system," Delgado said. "Maintenance and upkeep was needed often and the system wasn't scalable. The DVRs maxed out quickly and the length of storage was limited. Facing these issues on a regular basis, we quickly determined that an organisation like ours required a future-proof solution. We needed to begin deploying a platform that would meet the needs of the business downstream."

At BJ's Wholesale Club, maintaining a safe and secure environment is of utmost importance. The company needed a surveillance software solution that could help it identify theft, fraud, intrusion and trespassing throughout its various stores, gas stations and distribution facilities. The system also needed to be scalable in case camera deployments were expanded and be able to store video for a specific time designated by BJ's, and not by standard system capabilities. The retail giant was also interested in moving to an IP solution to leverage the company's network infrastructure.

BJ's wanted to be able to review video remotely and the capability to accomplish that from an IP standpoint is much greater than with traditional CCTV systems. This capability would enable other departments to leverage the system during investigations," said Patrick O'Leary, Director of Sales, Eastern Region, at Checkpoint Systems, BJ's integrator and partner. "The company also wanted to build off its growing IP infrastructure, making an IP-enabled security solution an ideal choice."

And there were other needs: BJ's required surveillance software that could provide the flexibility to integrate video systems with other applications and provide remote monitoring capabilities. While on the search for new technology, Delgado also stressed that a new solution should help the loss prevention and security teams conduct more effective investigations. BJ's needed a system that would have the capability to integrate with the company's point-of-sale solution to link video with transaction information.

Omnicast is an enterprise IP video surveillance solution that provides seamless management of digital video, audio and data across an IP network, assisting retailers with controlling and limiting loss. In addition, a single Omnicast enterprise system can accommodate thousands of cameras and enables BJ's to set its own parameters for storage and recording schedules. By far, the solution easily met all of BJ's current needs and also offered areas for expansion in the future.

"The key features that made Omnicast an ideal solution for BJ's was the system's scalability from an enterprise standpoint, its user friendliness and its ability to tie together multiple systems," O'Leary noted.

Currently, BJ's has deployed Omnicast at 75 locations and plans to have another 60 locations online over the next year for a total of 135 locations at the project's completion. "The advanced IP video surveillance software was initially installed in BJ's new stores," said O'Leary. "However, we are now focusing our efforts on replacing the obsolete DVRs, and installing encoders to leverage the analogue cameras in existing stores."

All of BJ's cameras networked to Omnicast are monitored locally within the stores and are available for remote viewing from BJ's corporate office, providing enhanced visibility into each store from a remote location.

Similarly, the recording and retrieval of video is of critical importance in the retail environment, as every time a camera or a recording device is down is an opportunity for loss. Omnicast's failover and redundancy features ensure BJ's has access to live and archived data at all times, limiting the chance that an occurrence of shoplifting or employee theft occurs unrecorded. Failover servers can automatically assume all functions of a failed component, while redundant servers continuously record all or only high-priority camera feeds.

Omnicast's open architecture also facilitates the integration with various third-party systems including POS solutions, correlating video to POS transactions and therefore facilitating after-the-fact investigations. BJ's was thrilled to know that Omnicast's Integrated POS Search gives them the ability to identify suspicious register transactions including voids, refunds, markdowns, as well as employee and gift card sales. This cutting-edge tool also gives BJ's the ability to conduct transactional investigations by employee number, by product, by department or any other category defined by their point-of-sale system.

With a single click on an entity (e.g., door or camera) the specific widgets associated to each entity appear and disappear automatically and bring you a world of information such as door status, door unlock actions, camera stream information, camera PTZ controls, and more. If you click on a video display tile, all door-related functionalities disappear given that you have no need for it when your focus is on a camera.

"With the benefits and scalability of Omnicast running in its stores, BJ's has taken a giant leap forward in building a video surveillance software system that can help the company best manage shrinkage, increase safety and reduce losses, and make operations more efficient." concluded Delgado. "In fact, Omnicast has been so well received at BJ's that they are now undertaking plans to expand the Omnicast system into their corporate headquarters, along with Genetec's access control system, Synergis, to leverage the benefits of a full enterprise solution."