Minimize Risk & Maximize your Investment with Preventative Maintenance
“I feel completely overwhelmed by the daily fire fighting – my inbox and voicemail are brimming with service requests and I can’t find the time to address the long-term priorities necessary to maintain or expand my system…”
Sound familiar?
This is an all too common lament from IT professionals and physical security specialists – the frustration you feel when the urgent overrides the important. It’s particularly challenging for those tasked with the operation, maintenance, and expansion of an enterprise system - because there is a never-ending list of things to learn and do – but it affects all operators to some degree.
And, as the video surveillance industry continues to develop new and exciting technologies, that list only gets longer with every new release.
One of the best ways to ensure that you’re maximizing the value of your time and technology is to establish the proper preventative maintenance program – and scDataCom is here with some strategies to help you get started.
1. Clarify your A-List Priorities
Take the time to understand your department’s long-term priorities – and use your judgment as your company’s trusted expert to confirm that the goals for your security program are clear and realistic. If you haven’t clarified your A-list priorities, odds are that you’ll take on too much and will end up swirling in the black hole of service requests – which may not be the best use of your time.
So, what are your department’s goals? What risk management strategies are you accountable for? What kind of capital or operational spending do you have to help you accomplish these objectives? Most importantly – what are you going to do and what are you NOT going to do?
Your company’s leadership will assess your performance on whether or not you got a few critical items accomplished, so it is essential for your success and career advancement that you are crystal clear on what those key items are and that you have a strategy in place to accomplish them.
For instance – if you’re managing a video surveillance system in a healthcare environment a key goal for your department may be to ensure that you have coverage of all high-risk areas, and those areas may change as departments move offices, new construction changes the footprint of patient care areas, etc. Ensuring you always have eyes where you need them is a moving target and one of critical importance to the organization.
2. Start thinking like a leader
Whether you lead a department of dozens, or you are a one-man army, it’s time to start approaching your security program like a leader. In order to accomplish your goals, you must distinguish between unproductive and productive tactical efforts. You can do anything, but not everything, and if your daily firefighting is inhibiting you from the more strategic or specialized work necessary to accomplish your goals – then you could be in the danger zone.
If you are spending most of your day reacting to urgent issues instead of strategically devoting time to tackle important ones, then it could be time to evaluate your progress.
3. Delegate!
The workload of maintaining a video security solution is immense – at a minimum, devices need to be cleaned and software updated annually - and don’t forget that the best practice for checking firmware updates is quarterly to ensure your system is always running on the manufacturer’s latest and greatest updates.
If you are responsible for a large security system with dynamic requirements – for instance, if you’re constantly adding new cameras or the layout of your facility has changed due to construction – then you may also want to include checking and adjusting camera views and video storage loads annually as well. That’s a lot of work and the workload multiplies with every camera. Outsourcing your annual preventative maintenance is an easy way to delegate these tasks in order to use your time more effectively.
Preventative Maintenance for video security systems includes regular health checks of system components, as well as daily virtual screenings to ensure system efficacy. These automated processes help keep your security systems humming along and the proactive efforts can help stop small issues in their tracks – preventing them from escalating into larger, costlier, problems down the line. A solid preventative maintenance program will help your company maximize its investment – these are expensive systems, after all, and your efforts towards standardizing the necessary annual preventative maintenance on your camera system will, hopefully, extend the camera’s expected lifetime well past the industry average of 7 years.
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In the grand scheme of things, every component of your video security system has an expiration date - upgrading the system will be a significant capital expense, so extending the life of your current system with preventative maintenance is important and could save your organization a pretty penny. However, the real value is in ensuring that your business is protected when not if, there is an incident.
Comprehensive coverage of a workplace incident helps protect the organization, and all of the people in it, in case the worst happens. Contrastingly, a blind spot on your system coupled with a slip and fall, workplace violence, or vehicular accident on your property could cost the company millions of dollars. Regularly scheduled preventative maintenance greatly reduces the risk of failure on your network and increases the likelihood that you’ll have the coverage you need if (and when) you need it most.
When reviewing your preventative maintenance program, don’t forget to differentiate between the urgent and the important. Physical Security Specialists are often very experienced technical experts but the gut check should always be if you “should” perform these tasks in-house, not if you “can”. If the answer is no, then consider augmenting your efforts with a trusted integrator. The right partner will act as a force multiplier to your efforts to optimize your system, protect your perimeter, and proactively identify and resolve any system issues – helping you reduce organizational risk while also giving you back the hours in the day necessary to focus on the big picture.