Plustek

In the 21st century, for most countries in North America, Europe and Asia, coffee drinking has evolved from eating habits into a philosophy of life and one’s attitude towards it. This perception is also what most coffee shop owners hope to convey to their customers. Besides the delicious rich coffee, the perfect blend of music, the cakes and biscuits to enjoy, and even the in-store display of merchandises on the shelf, etc... The culture created by the store is in fact the most influential factor for customer loyalty. However, in the highly competitive coffee industry, how can one reduce costs and maximize profits when raw materials, coffee machines, snacks are easily accessible and open priced in the market? First of all, with the advancement in technology, implementing automated equipment can offer the most effective assistance when human resources are limited. Second, the improvement of store’s awareness for loss prevention and better response capabilities are essential. So how can one achieve these two key points? Besides the basic need of the existing human handled equipments such as stereos, cash registers, network equipments, what we want to talk about today is the introduction of the missing link - Video Surveillance. Due to the development of the Internet era, video surveillance has clearly divided into two kinds, analog and IP, in which the two have many obvious differences. The analog system often requires additional on-site equipment such as Digital video recorder (DVR) standalone plus a monitor or a PC with pc-based DVR boards. These devices easily run into analog and network-compatible issues when personnel outside the shop wish to connect to the system via internet, not to mention that you usually need to have professional installers deploy and maintain the system for you. But on the other hand, the Network Video Recorder (NVR) is a network device which is fully compatible with IT equipment in the store and also it doesn’t require a complicated installation process. All you have to do is just plug in the Internet line and it will automatically find the IP camera, which allows it to conduct basic monitoring. In addition, detailed resolution is very important when you need it the most to define events, especially since most DVR resolution can only reach 0.4 times of NVR resolution. Now let’s talk more about the 2 key points in increasing coffee shop competitiveness: Improving productivity through automated equipment as well as improving the responsiveness of loss prevention. For example, many successful coffee chain stores in the industry already implement highly automated coffee machine, which under appropriate handling by personnel can save time and ensure the coffee’s quality. The same concept also works for video surveillance, instead of a using a device which needs tedious human control, the intelligent NVR can be used to automatically save, backup, remind you of incidents, and also allows managers to monitor the shop via internet anytime. Thus, greatly increasing the flexibility of human resource allocation, even when an event occurs, you can save hours of human resource by using smart search to immediately find related image data instead of sending a man to search through dozens of hours of video files. Finally, you can also observe customer behavior and their interaction with the staff to find the more suitable store layout, display design and staff service training. All these tasks can be done with recorded images! Going on, improving response ability to enhance loss prevention. Loss prevention includes common cases of credit card fraud, suspicious customer and employee behavior, shoplifting, etc… All of the above mentioned can result in losses for coffee shops. In which the essential coffee shop set ups such as cash registers, merchandises, and self-seasoning area, are most prone to losses. With intelligent IP appliance, these events can be clearly defined and alarmed as well as schedule regular related video search. You can even output stored files for media player as a training course for staff during the weekly meeting, instructing on which situations should be avoided and on response protocol. How Plustek Smart NVR assists coffee shop owners? Plustek IP video surveillance system has done a lot of third-party integration and functionality research especially for the coffee industry, including support for megapixel cameras to film the environment and also allow higher details by zooming in. Through the usage of the free back-end software multi-manager, the recording data can be automatically saved and safely stored in the network storage device; In addition, managers can connect to the system via Internet to check the latest in-store situation and provide instant support, while observing consumer behavior. Regarding coffee shop deployment, the Plustek standalone NVR can be a valuable IT addition taking up only limited space with its palm size and energy efficient design which achieves the highest standards of automation. None of the above operations require professional training or any IT background; not to mention the special operating system also allows you to safely connect to the Internet with out worrying about viruses. In the end, if you know how to get on Internet, than you know how to use Plustek NVR Systems.