Key Results
£1.5M–£2M in Projected Savings: LabsGroup estimates it will save £1.5–£2 million over 10 years by moving to Verkada.
Three Systems, One Platform: Consolidated three separate, disconnected security systems into a single, centrally managed solution.
10 Years of Cost Predictability: Moved from short warranties and unpredictable hardware replacement costs to a 10-year licence model.
Fewer Cameras, Wider Coverage: Verkada's wider field of view lets LabsGroup cover the same footprint with fewer cameras than its legacy providers required.
Cross-Functional Adoption: IT, security, building management, maintenance, marketing, and finance teams all now draw on the same platform and data.
Investigations Completed in Minutes: Natural language search helps the team quickly locate incidents and share relevant footage with internal teams, couriers, and law enforcement.
A Diverse Estate in Need of a Unified System
LabsGroup manages a diverse estate spanning apartments, coworking spaces, offices, and retail destinations, including Camden Market. Jamie Stables, Head of IT, has overseen the company’s IT operations and infrastructure—including surveillance and CCTV technology—since joining in 2020.
In 2025, several of LabsGroup's existing camera models were approaching end of life, meaning they would soon stop receiving updates or support. Jamie raised the issue with his CIO and proposed exploring other security solutions in the market.
Jamie was drawn to Verkada in part because of his familiarity with Meraki, whose founders also started Verkada, and he was attracted to Verkada's future-facing AI capabilities.
The Challenge: Disconnected Systems and Limited Visibility
Before Verkada, LabsGroup relied on three different security providers, each with its own logins, alerts, and contract expiry dates. That decentralisation made day-to-day management difficult and complicated financial planning around renewal cycles.
Short Warranties Drove Up Costs: Legacy systems came with short-term, one-to-two-year warranties, leaving LabsGroup exposed to high, unpredictable replacement costs as hardware aged out of coverage.
On-Premise Infrastructure Required Constant Upkeep: Maintaining on-premise servers took significant time, particularly around firmware updates. Those updates often created blind spots of 30 to 60 minutes while systems were being patched.
Operational Features Were Limited and Unreliable: Getting operational data out of the legacy systems meant purchasing additional software and hardware — and even then, the data was often inaccurate, slow, and lacked support for real-time alerts.
The Solution: One Cloud-Managed Platform Across the Estate
After a successful trial of Verkada cameras, LabsGroup invested in Verkada equipment across its apartments, co-working spaces, and Camden Market.
Cameras: LabsGroup now uses a combination of dome, fisheye, and bullet cameras. Because Verkada's cameras offer a wider field of view than their legacy equipment, the team found it needed fewer cameras overall to achieve the same coverage.
Intercoms: LabsGroup has also recently added Verkada Intercom to the estate.
A Deployment Built Around the Business
LabsGroup worked with Highgate, a trusted existing partner, to plan the rollout. With in-house engineers, the team was largely able to self-install, scheduling deployment over several months to minimise disruption. Installations often began around 5–6 AM—and occasionally as early as midnight or 1 AM—to stay ahead of Camden Market’s busiest periods.
The Benefits: Proactive Security and a Faster, Simpler Operation
Since migrating to Verkada, LabsGroup has moved from a reactive, fragmented approach to security to one that is centralised, proactive, and easy to scale across its estate. The impact spans well beyond the IT team, touching how the business investigates incidents, manages access to information, and plans for the future.
Centralised, Cloud-Based Security
Moving off NVRs and disjointed systems onto a single cloud-based platform has meant far less maintenance for the IT team, freeing up time for other priorities.
Proactive Rather Than Reactive Security
If a person of interest is detected on-site, the team receives an automatic notification. LabsGroup uses this feature less for flagging "offenders" and more for knowing when a VIP — such as an executive or a celebrity — is on the premises.
Verkada also alerts the team if a camera goes offline, sometimes before the team is even aware of a broader network issue.
"Verkada's actually been sometimes the first to notify us of an issue with our network going offline in some instances. It sends it into the help desk to go, 'Camera A has been seen offline now for 20 minutes.' We then look at it and go, 'Hold on, log on to the network, look at the switch, it's offline.' Right, we know to get down there... it's saved our skin a few times."
More Comprehensive Coverage, Faster Investigations
With no more blind spots, LabsGroup captures high-quality footage that can be easily used and shared in investigations. Natural language search speeds up the process of finding a specific incident.
In one case, an iPhone belonging to a member of senior management was marked as delivered but could not be found in the collection area. Using natural language search, the team quickly located the courier and discovered that the package had been handed to someone on the street rather than delivered to the mailroom. The investigation took only a few minutes, and the footage could be easily shared with the courier and police.
"The search functionality has been really useful. It shows you everything within a certain time frame, and you can narrow that down as needed, so it takes the legwork out of having to do the research yourself. It just works — everything's at your fingertips, and you search for whatever it is you want."
That same ease extends to how the team follows a person's movement across the estate. Rather than pulling footage from each camera individually and manually stitching together a sequence of events, the team can use Verkada's unified timeline to trace a person's activity across the full site in one continuous view — turning what used to be a piecemeal, time-consuming process into a single, straightforward search.
Broader, Cross-Functional Adoption
Because the platform is easy to use, a wide range of teams across LabsGroup now have access to Verkada. Administrators can manage users directly within the platform and set granular permissions, so each team only sees and interacts with the tools and data relevant to their role:
IT Team: Views device statuses, performs configurations, and manages deployments.
Security: Monitors activity across the estate.
Building Managers: Review minor incidents, such as missing parcels or leaks.
Maintenance: Performs preliminary diagnosis of issues like leaks.
Marketing: Tracks occupancy trends to inform events and campaigns.
Finance and Asset Management: Don't access Verkada directly, but draw on camera data pulled into Power BI via API.
A Lower, More Predictable Total Cost of Ownership
Verkada has helped LabsGroup avoid the unpredictable replacement costs associated with cameras falling outside short warranty periods. The 10-year licence model also gives the team greater long-term budget certainty and reduces the need for frequent infrastructure planning.
"I don't need to worry about CCTV for another 9 years until our renewal."
Looking Ahead
LabsGroup is now testing Verkada sensors to monitor CO2 levels and detect vaping in communal areas, extending the platform beyond security and into broader operational insight.
Jamie is also considering migrating the estate's access control onto Verkada. LabsGroup currently juggles two separate access control systems, and consolidating onto a single platform would extend the same benefits the team has already seen with cameras and intercom: one login, one set of permissions, and one place to manage the entire estate, rather than reconciling disparate systems.
"Verkada is a no-brainer. It's no stress, no hassle."