Resellers and integrators are busy now but labor cost and prices are rising while margins deteriorate. How can a more comprehensive, cloud-based approach for video surveillance, access control and other functions like door stations and environmental sensors help?

As a company that supplies integrators, we pondered on this issue for the past few years. We asked ourselves how partners could provide their customers with an easier and more valuable solution, and at the same start deriving more service income with the team they already have.

Remote Management: Transforming the Service Industry

Could providing more services remotely make a difference? Was it possible to eliminate travel time and gas cost? Would customers pay for remote services? We also worked very closely with IPTECHVIEW, our affiliate software development group focusing on secure remote access, remote management and brain-stormed to help them build a solution that would not only delight end users but also empower resellers to become a better resource to their customer.

IPTECHVIEW: Empowering Resellers & End Users

IPTECHVIEW learned early on that to only focus on the ‘integrator/reseller side’ would not work since resellers don’t want to pay for the solution to manage their customers. Instead, they focused on making better tools for the end users to access their IP Technology solutions like access their video cameras easier and with the devices they want to. Adding more security and easier-to-use privilege and user management. Making tools that don’t require end users to get training and did so for many facets in the IP Technology space while at the same time giving the reseller the tools to do all their administration and management securely and remotely.

IPTECHVIEW Surveillance & System: Cloud-Based Solutions for Simplicity

The result was IPTECHVIEW SURVEILLANCE and IPTECHVIEW SYSTEM. SURVEILLANCE became a serverless fully cloud-based video surveillance that is designed to simplify things for the end user so that all stakeholders at an organization can easily and intuitively use it.

On the reseller side, SYSTEM became a management tool to securely and remotely monitor and configure all customer projects. This enables partners to know about problems before the customer even sees them and responds super quickly. Resellers stay more visible and are positioned to offer support services in a quick and uncomplicated way. This in the end leads to partners selling a lot more services and happier customers that get a unheard of service level at a completely affordable price point. The best part is that the ability to offer all services remotely derisks the concept of service plans and resellers are starting to embrace these and sell them along with the SaaS cost of the platform. This raises the partners margin enormously and creates a new long-term income stream for IPTECHVIEW partners.

These are the main problems of on premise solutions that IPTECHVIEW resolves:

Technology Hype vs User Value

IPTECHVIEW created a suite of irresistible solutions that our partners can sell that provide users exactly what they need, no overhyping of AI or other techno babble.

Simplify Video Surveillance for more Security and Protection

The key to better Video Surveillance is to simplify it so that all stakeholders in the organization can use it without any formal training. One system that serves staff, management and loss prevention specialists needs. One of the obstacles to more ubiquitous access is the need for an easy way to define access privileges for users and groups, make credentials and access easy with singe-sign on. All users accessing the system can benefit for having access to see their own areas of influence. In today's hybrid world this becomes more valuable than ever. The overall visibility and situational awareness for the organization brings more protection for all. IPTECHVIEW fulfills the goal of providing access to live and recorded video to all different users and user roles and delivering intuitive access and situational awareness through named spaces and floorplans.

Being stuck in a single solution versus having Access to the Future

IPTECHVIEW future-proofs the user’s investment in learning and equipment by making Its tools more universal and going beyond just one application like video surveillance. Today IPTECHVIEW includes access control, audio and video door stations, environmental sensors and many vertical add-ons like license plate recognition for making gates or face recognition for opening doors among many other analytics options.

Vendor Lock-in

Technology moves fast so we do not want our platform to be limited to only one hardware vendor but rather a selection of the best vendors for each task. It is prudent to take control of the solutions we offer and the segment of the network we use and the power going to our devices, so we can better serve them. To do so we included infrastructure vendors like POE & core switches, load balancing and bandwidth managing routers, communication, and audio devices like door stations, and integration to the phone system and make select vendors part of our supported system.

The gift of Time

Last but not least, we know the time and labor costs are critical to our partner’s success. The old way of buying equipment and receiving, unpacking and verifying it, updating firmware, format SD-cards, assembling, testing, configuring on-site, or even worse, repackaging and re-shipping to the end-user no longer makes sense. We decided to centralize all these functions and build a model where partners can simply wire and install.

With IPTECHVIEW the only things done on-premise when installing are physical wiring and mounting of the cameras and devices. All the settings for analytics and fine-tuning can be done by the partner’s implementation specialist remotely. This change in workflow is an important evolution in the role of the integrator as the customer’s technology partner and also the stepping stone to offering profitable remote services.

Stability and Growth

IPTECHVIEW has had live customers since 2018 and today close to 2,000 locations, some customers with 100s and 1,000s of cameras. With over three years of practically flawless operation, we feel it is time to go out and promote this new platform so that more partners and their customers can benefit. Please join us in our movement to change video surveillance and other IP Technology projects from the on-premise installation-centric and "one-off" server based systems to pre-configured, intuitive cloud solutions that are partner-managed for the long term.