Top Surveillance Industry ERP Features

Top Surveillance Industry ERP Features

Last Updated on January 1, 2025 by Sam Gupta

Historically, the surveillance industry was fragmented, with companies focusing on simple tasks. The tasks could be like installing a few pieces of equipment at a site. However, customer expectations are evolving. Projects are becoming more complex, involving everything from device integration to advanced IoT scenarios. Recent macroeconomic trends have accelerated this growth, driven by the innovative use of thermal cameras and infrared scanners across various industries, such as manufacturing plants, retail outlets, and hotels. As a result, these industries now require ERP systems to support their expansion. So, what key ERP features does the surveillance industry need?

Before we dive into the features, let’s first examine how these companies traditionally managed their processes. In the past, they could easily handle their operations using paper or spreadsheets. However, as their businesses have grown in complexity, this approach is no longer sufficient. The solution? They need an ERP system sooner rather than later to help manage their rapid expansion. In this article, you’ll discover the key ERP features for the surveillance industry and how to leverage them to deliver exceptional customer experiences.



ERP Selection: The Ultimate Guide

This is an in-depth guide with over 80 pages and covers every topic as it pertains to ERP selection in sufficient detail to help you make an informed decision.

Growth Drivers

  • Thermal cameras need to be installed across multiple facilities to prevent COVID-19 spread. Sometimes agencies such as Health Canada may require these devices to be approved, which creates further operational complexity due to compliance. Customers are also interested in the real-time status not only during the installation phase. But also failures to ensure preventive maintenance.
  • The introduction of new IP-based digital technologies is enabling new use cases for detecting and preventing undesirable behaviors. Such as shoplifting, thefts, vandalism, and terror attacks.
  • Tracking of consumer behaviors by scanning their faces at a retail store. Such as what a demographic may prefer to eat or shop

Unique Surveillance Industry ERP Features

Traditionally you may have been able to manage these processes through a simple job shop ERP solution. An example? You could book an order for a simple job and invoice based on the number of hours worked. With the changing operational complexity, you now need a hybrid solution. That could handle a wide variety of projects and jobs. The system must support simple requests such as service orders with few instructions. Similar to the ones you managed in your legacy system.

For complex service orders where multiple sites might be in scope, your system must also support complex projects where resources such as technicians, tools, and devices can be managed from one place.

Customer-facing Processes

You will need a system that allows you to enter details of the service request in the form of an order and prepare a quote. If the customer requests, the system must support multiple revisions to the quote with the ability to go back to the previous versions. The system must be able to provide various quote options to compare, with the ability to share with the customer directly from the system.

Once the quote is accepted and the order entered into the system, the operations team should be able to convert it into a job or a project without having to re-enter the details that were previously entered by sales teams. The centralized view of the customer must be accessible across the sites and projects. Your customers should be able to track the progress of the project over time, preferably on their mobile devices.



ERP System Scorecard Matrix

This resource provides a framework for quantifying the ERP selection process and how to make heterogeneous solutions comparable.

Operational and Field Processes

When your operations or project managers log in to the system to view the details of the project converted in the previous step, they must be able to see the availability of resources and schedules for both internal employees and subcontractors in one view for the entire project.

Your system must support the creation of daily and weekly schedules automatically or with minimal effort to print these schedules. The solution must be able to optimize the routes for appointments, with the ability to visualize on Google Maps for each technician with the lists of required devices or tools.

Once a technician is dispatched to service a job or a site, the routes must be displayed on the technicians’ mobile devices with the ability to log and track time. In case of inventory or device shortages, the technicians must be alerted once the inventory arrives at their location to complete the job. The field technicians must also be able to collaborate with the office team by sharing pictures of completed jobs through their mobile devices.

Financials

The system should enable real-time tracking of projects, including both the forecasted and revised budgets. Customers may have complex payment requirements, such as being billed based on installed components, time, and materials, or a hybrid approach where a down payment is required upfront, followed by milestone-based payments—such as paying after each site is completed. The system should also offer flexibility for customers to choose between transaction-based or recurring billing. Additionally, it must support subcontractor management, including tracking time reporting and expenses paid to them.



ERP Selection Requirements Template

This resource provides the template that you need to capture the requirements of different functional areas, processes, and teams.

Contracts and Warranties

The solution must be able to track recurring service contracts and warranties. It must track renewal dates for contracts and alert the customer service team to ensure timely renewals. The system must support different warranties for various components.

Conclusion

With the changing customer expectations and business conditions, surveillance and security suppliers and system integrators can no longer manage their business processes in their legacy smaller ERP systems.

They need a comprehensive ERP system that can not only handle simple jobs but allows end-to-end traceability and control for complex service requests. Their system must also be able to accommodate spikes in demand and future changes in the business model once the market slightly matures.

Now that you know what you need in an ERP system, make sure you spend some time thinking through these needs and allocating some time for a thorough review of different options that may be relevant to your industry.



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Thinking of embarking on a ERP journey and looking for a digital transformation report? Want to learn the best practices of digital transformation? Then, you have come to the right place.

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