McDonald’s Uses Integrated POS and IP Video Surveillance

McDonald’s restaurants in Scandinavia are now using an integrated Point Of Sale and IP

video surveillance system called CheckView, which uses the powerful and easy-to-manage XProtect software from Milestone Systems, the global leader for open platform IP video management software. The flexible and scalable solution installed by MDIS and IT Gruppen has been developed for the retail sector to help manage shrinkage.

The old surveillance system at several McDonald’s locations in Denmark only focused on traditional security issues, such as theft and vandalism, and did not address the specific and future needs of McDonald’s. The restaurants therefore decided to implement a new system called CheckView from Checkpoint Systems Inc., which is based on the powerful XProtect software from Milestone Systems. This provides integrated features, such as remote clients to monitor retail transactions from the POS system, easily searchable and viewable simultaneously with the IP video images from the cash registers.

The CheckView solution helps McDonald’s better analyze and manage transactions. The Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) module in the CheckView solution records every transaction from the cash register and combines them with the correlated event video in the Milestone XProtect Transact database by date, time and location. This makes it possible to quickly and easily search transactions by specific information - also remotely over the network. This enables the restaurants to monitor internal theft and administrative errors, for better control of inventory shrinkage.

“The system is incredibly easy to manage, and I am confident that we will receive a fast return on our investment,” says Casper Scheibye, Supervisor of McDonald’s in the Copenhagen suburbs of Valby and Hvidovre. "Our investment has received a lot of attention from other company locations."

The video part of the solution is 100% digital surveillance using megapixel technology from Axis, IQinVision and Vivotek. Megapixel cameras have significantly higher resolution compared to traditional analog cameras and produce higher quality images for recording and printing. Milestone XProtect IP video software is designed with an open platform, which allows just such a mix of different brands of network cameras for a best-of-breed solution.

“Our old surveillance system no longer met our requirements and needs. One of the main reasons for choosing CheckView with the Milestone IP video platform is the ability to upgrade with the newest technology available. The megapixel cameras improve the quality of the pictures, and we can clearly monitor the restaurant, as well as the drive-through areas. With the CheckPoint/XProtect integration, we can also manage shrinkage much more effectively,” says Casper Scheibye.

“The solution is based primarily on Milestone XProtect Transact. Restaurants are faced with the challenges of theft issues and shrinkage, and the opportunity to be able to manage these issues is very attractive. We have an in-depth knowledge about the retail industry and have been responsible for many CheckView solutions. Our collaboration with MDIS creates the perfect set-up, where we are providing the platform, and MDIS offers the know-how to the restaurants,” says Michael Hygild Sørensen, Account Manager at IT Gruppen.