How Can a CCTV System Pay for Itself?
By Anoop Kumar

Lets start with the costs. Let us assume you are going to fit a CCTV system in your corner shop.
You need a good DVR to start with and you also need 3 monitors; one for the shop entrance, one behind the counter and one in the office. Then you need a couple of monitor brackets. You'll need a camera to give you identification pictures at your front door, then two to cover the till counter area to have 6 covering key areas in the shop and one in the stores as well as one in the office. You can then put one outside the shop front and one to cover your delivery door.
So this gives you a total of 12 cameras, 3 monitors and a 16 channel DVR. With cabling the entire system would cost around £2,500, which includes the cost of a local electrician coming to fit it and a little for the odd camera replacement and servicing of your DVR
A good system should last 5 years with the maintenance mentioned above. This means the system is costing you less than £10.00 per month
Shrinkage
According to industry averages a retailer loses about 2% of his sales in what is often referred to as shrinkage. So if your shop turns over just £250,000 per year you could expect to be losing £5,000 a year. A well set up CCTV system should halve this, saving you £2,500 in the first year alone. The main causes of shrinkage are as follows:-
Internal theft, that is, theft done by the employees, is the primary cause of shrinkage, as reported by the National Retail Security Survey. Abuse in discount, credit card or refund is the common type of employee theft. Shop owners often give more priority to preventing thefts by customers and therefore give less importance to monitoring their employees. Some examples are the employees taking printer papers home or cleaners taking bin bags and toilet rolls.
Next to internal theft is shoplifting. Even though it is monitored more and is a smaller loss than internal theft, shoplifting in fact creates a loss of billions to shop owners every year. Concealment, transferring items from one container to another, swapping or altering price tags are some of the common ways of shoplifting.
Another reason for shrinkage is errors in administration and paperwork. This makes up around 15% of shrinkage. Some examples are the mistakes in pricing because of markups or markdowns.
Staff & Efficiency
Study your new CCTV system recordings for a day. You will be amazed at what goes on when you're not watching or not there. Let's take something simple like cigarette breaks. How many staff sneak a cig or two in between normal breaks? Ok, its only maybe 2 a day x 2 staff who take 5 minutes for each cig. Its still 20 minutes a day or 2 hours in a 6 day week. See how often staff use their mobile phones. It will amaze you. Banning staff from having their mobiles while at work can save you a small fortune. CCTV will give you the evidence to enforce it.
If you have internet access in the office you can then see how many hours disappear in staff checking their emails, shopping online, looking at YouTube videos etc.
Also, you can't always open and close your shop or you may be away on holiday. Review your recordings, see how many times the shop opens late or closes early. Also see which members of staff come in late or go early and still claim a full day's pay. Even see which members of staff have a complete day off and don't tell you.
Some business owners find they lose numerous hours a week due to the above and even at minimum wage costs it still can amount to at least £25 a week or £1300 a year
Deliveries
I know the staff have been instructed to check all deliveries, but one was serving and the other was sneaking a smoke break. The deliveryman just drops the goods of and gets the one serving to give him a quick signature because he is in a rush. Lo and behold, something's missing!