Heinemann Australia

How an Australian Distributor & Retailer Uses AI-Driven Surveillance to Enhance Sales

Federico Abis, Information Technology Manager; Melisa Cabral-Hale, Head of Logistics for Supply Chain and Compliance; Brett Williams, Compliance Manager

Cameras

Heinemann Shop is a global retail organisation best known for their tax and duty-free stores in airports in over 100 countries. Representing the Trans-Tasman region, Heinemann Australia has nine stores across Sydney and the Gold Coast, as well as one luxury boutique inside Sydney International Airport.

In February 2020, the organisation made the decision to refresh their retail environment, which provided an immediate opportunity to upgrade security, analytics, and compliance operations.

Why Verkada?

After trialing a number of surveillance systems, Heinemann chose Verkada's hybrid cloud solution based on three key differentiators: leading-edge technology providing data-driven insights for strategic product placement, an industry-leading 10-year warranty for a clear total cost of ownership, and intelligent search features for reducing incident resolution time.

Product Planning Insights with Motion Plotting Heatmaps and Floor Plans

“Being able to understand foot traffic has been one of the biggest benefits. Now we can review traffic patterns across all stores to understand high-performing products, store layouts and human behaviour.” Melisa Cabral-Hale – Head of Logistics, Supply Chain and Compliance

Reduced Lifetime Maintenance Costs with a 10-year Warranty

“Verkada gave us immediate ROI and resulted in a 30% cost reduction compared to other solutions on the market. We were able to eliminate our existing servers and NVR devices while gaining higher levels of storage retention without impacting our WAN bandwidth.” Federico Abis – Information Technology Manager

Shortened Incident Resolution Time with Intelligent Search Features

“Never has finding and retrieving footage from any of our stores been so easy. We reduced investigation times down from days to minutes, and we can share footage directly with stakeholders without having to download and distribute raw video files. Plus the ability to find people based on their appearance or face has been a game-changer; we can quickly identify suspects, repeat offenders, VIPs, and staff.” Brett Williams – Compliance Manager

Looking Ahead: Integrating Door Access Control

“We can now scale the solution to other stores thanks to the ease of installation and plug-and-play design, and are now looking into integration with door access controls.” Federico Abis – Information Technology Manager

With improved retail analytics, the Heinemann staff can identify high-traffic areas and move products around proactively, allowing them to see what works and apply it to future sales. After experiencing the benefits of Verkada’s hybrid cloud solution, their next step is set up access control across the sites, which natively integrates with the video security solution.