Undercover

Global Surveillance System Policies: Eyes on the World

The need to standardize our surveillance systems seemed obviousuntil we had to sell the idea globally

By Anonymous

We established a plan to roll out all the surveillance systems across the United States within five years. Rather than paying for everything up front, we agreed to a strategy of upgrading as the company opened new locations and renovated existing locations, as well as through annual capital requests allocated to the security department. Basically, if we planned to remodel a location within five years, we could build the new system into the remodeling costs. Otherwise, we used security capital.

Not only was the U.S. transition a great achievement, we also had success in introducing the new platform in some of our international locations that were newly opened or undergoing significant renovation. Because of this success, security decided to extend the new platform to all our international divisions. This wasn't without precedent; the company had standardized many of the information technology systems. Therefore, we assumed that the acceptance by U.S. management guaranteed it internationally.

Going Global

As we had in the United States, we decided to upgrade all the systems within five years. Again, this was to be accomplished through the opening of new locations, renovations and department capital spending. However, as soon as we began planning the improvements, international management began to push back.

First, the managing directors of our international markets expressed disappointment that they had not been involved with the decision-making process. This was especially important in light of a difference between how domestic and international divisions handle their finances. In the United States, managing directors were responsible for sales targets and expense plans, but they were not allowed to adjust their expenditures to drive additional sales and earnings. International managing directors, however, were directly responsible for growing their topline revenue. They could adjust their expenditures significantly—provided that they drove additional sales and earnings. Now, they questioned the ROI of the new surveillance systems, especially in markets that had much lower crime and a less valuable inventory allocation than our locations in the United States. For the most part, they agreed that the systems needed to be upgraded, but they felt that any DVR system would be fine.

I remember vividly a conversation with one of our international vice presidents, who indicated that he didn't want to spend that kind of money on "just a camera system." He had other capital priorities where he thought his money should be allocated. His money? I thought it was our money. We were so familiar with the U.S. model that we missed the point that international divisions had more of a financial interest than their U.S. counterparts.

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