The new game – Changer& a business intelligence tool
Zicom as the leading electronics security provider in the country has come up with many new and innovative solutions in the recent times. e-Saas with various services under its heading is becoming a potent tool of Business Intelligence, says Sunil Rao, Business Head-SaaS Enterprise Division, Zicom. – By Sunil Rao
Q. What is e- SaaS and what does it offer to customers?
e-SaaS stands for Security as a Service. Simply, it means Managed Security Services , wherein we offer Safety & Security, Business Intelligence , Loss Prevention and Comfort & Convenience as value-added services.
Q. How is it different from that offered by competition?
In this business model, customer has no Capital expenditure and has no recurring AMC charges. Zicom owns and manages the technology while customer uses the technology! In simple terms, it is PAY as you USE. The service encompasses free deployment of hardware, maintenance and Remote Monitoring Services as a holistic end-to-end service offering from Zicom. Please elaborate on Remote Monitoring Services. There is a historical background to it. In 1995, Zicom pioneered the concept of a Command Centre, which is manned 24×7, 365 days and remotely monitors the health of the systems on a daily basis. It also offers Response Management to Alerts generated by the systems deployed at the site. Since then, Zicom has been upgrading this Command Center on a continuous basis, which meets all the designated International standards, both in terms of infrastructure and services.
Q. Which are the Services currently offered by Zicom?
Currently, we offer five services:
e-watch: (MAaaS) or Managed Alerts as a Service for surveillance
e-alert: Intruder Alarm Monitoring
e-sense: Fire Alarm Monitoring
e-attend: Monitoring & tracking of Time & Attendance on Cloud
e-count: People Counting, also popularly known as Footfall counting. This service is predominantly used by Organised Retail as a Business Intelligence tool to monitor and compare the sales conversion between the stores across locations.
Q. What is e-watch?
e-watch is Managed Alerts as a Service. It is a Remote Monitoring Service that monitors the health of CCTV surveillance system on a daily basis and also manages the Alerts generated by the DVR for instances like HDD Full/Failure, Video Loss, Illegal login & Connectivity failure. Historically, most criminal investigations have failed due to lack of forensic evidence and the main cause for it being the video footage of the event not being available. The reasons for it being the DVR not working at that moment, but the customer not being informed of it! In today’s social environment, the cops refuse to file complaints unless the business premises is equipped with a good functional CCTV surveillance system that can provide them video recording of the event. In such a scenario, e-watch service from Zicom is a boon to the Institutional customers!
Q. How expensive is this service?*
It is not expensive and people must try to understand this. Just for a nominal monthly subscription of RS.500, a client premises can be connected to Zicom Command Centre for a 24×7 of monitoring and Response Management. This service offers complete peace of mind in the sense it gives you an assurance that the system is fully functional at all times and in case of an event or any trouble, client receives an SMS from ZCC, simultaneously ZCC generates a complaint ticket and the fault is rectified, either remotely or at site. At the end of the month, the client receives a monthly MIS as well.
Q. Who are the e-watch customers and how are they benefitting from the service?
Typically, every CCTV customer is also a potential customer for e-watch service which includes. Organised Retail chains, the BFSI sector, Healthcare, Education, and almost all service sectors find great utility in e-watch as it operates as a handy tool to ensure uninterrupted functioning of surveillance systems.
Q. Could you please explain a little more about e-alert and e-sense services?
e-alert is a service relating to Intruder Alarm System monitoring. Our Command Centre remotely monitors the health of the system on a daily basis and also tracks any incident alerts generated at the site due to any breach of security. Once these alerts are received by our ZCC, a system generated SMS is sent to the designated officials at the client’s end. Simultaneously, the state owned agencies like the Police are alerted as a part of Response Management. e-Sense is a similar service relating to Fire Alarm monitoring. This service is of great value to clients as in most sites, Fire Alarm systems are not being serviced regularly and fail to trigger alarms in the event of a fire situation, leading to huge disasters and loss of valuable human life and property. These disasters result in loss of continuity of business and damages and the goodwill of business entity as well. Both e-alert and e-sense are highly valued by clients and have a great future in terms of business potential.
Q. How does e-count benefit the Retail sector?
Retail industry in India continues to operate with the challenge of dwindling margins and hence footfalls to sales conversion ratios are highly critical for them. In such scenario, it is imperative for them to closely monitor these ratios to enable them to focus on measures to enhance the conversions.Equipped with our e-count service, they can now monitor and compare the footfalls across stores across regions, track the peak hours across stores, analyse the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, monitor sales resources and plan for up scaling and skilling of sales agents in stores where conversions are major challenge. In case of consistent fall in footfalls, management may decide to relocate the store as well.
Q. e-count seems to offer something more than mere being a security service. Right?
Yes, you have hit the bull’s eye. E-count is a highly valued Business Intelligence tool that facilitates to increase the ROI in Retail sector.
Q. What opportunities do you foresee for the growth of e-SaaS in India? Will it be a big business even for Zicom per se considering the way the company is investing its resources in this business?
Very true, we are highly bullish about the success of e-SaaS in India. The first 12 months of business has shown positive trends and we have also learned a lot alongside while developing the model, based on which we have further fine tuned our business model and made it more robust to meet the client expectations and the market needs. Clients in India are ready to accept Managed Security Services as it mitigates their purchase risk and helps them to manage their cash flows as it is an Opex model. Internally, we are fully geared up to meet the growing business requirements, both in terms of finance and infrastructure to cater to growing numbers. The strong brand equity of Zicom coupled with our years of experience in the security industry has certainly helped us to pioneer this innovative concept in India.
Q. Could you name a few of your e-SaaS customers?
We have the best of the brands, both in Retail & BFSI sector. We value each and every customer of ours and it would be out of place just to name a few here.
Q. Who are the decision makers for e-SaaS business?
Since this is a new business model and virtually a new concept in this part of the Continent, the decision makers are generally the CXOs.
