Following High St retailer Halfords' decision to upgrade to Iris, Thomas Cook has replaced its Redcare signalling and the associated telephone costs - a service that had been costing the company around £150,000 annually. Steve Nelson, Group Security Manager at Thomas Cook, points out that after recouping the modest capital investment associated with equipment installation, he anticipates substantial monitoring cost savings of some 70% per year compared with Redcare.

Mr Nelson adds that Iris is also as inherently secure, with the option of dual-path signalling in addition to regular polling between the site and Thomas Cook's alarm receiving centre, provided by Romec Electronic Security. Each branch uses a Scantronic alarm panel supplied by Cooper Security and the decision to update Thomas Cook's Wide Area Network (WAN) across all its locations led to evaluation trials to identify the best means of providing the secure communication between each travel agency site and the monitoring station. The suitable product also needed to be compatible with both existing alarm panel types in place at the 600+ sites.


Thomas Cook is also examining the potential value of a recent addition to the Iris system range - a software module which allows visual verification of an alarm alert. Using the Visual Verification Suite, pictures from existing cameras can be sent direct to the monitoring centre operator's screen simultaneously with the alarm activation, allowing the operator to scan pre- and post-event images to help verify the cause of an alert.

Mr Nelson notes that this 'future proofing' technology would also allow the company's regional sales managers to remotely dial in to stores to observe customer flows and other management-related issues, adding value to the equipment and helping Thomas Cook to improve its efficiency and ongoing revenue.