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Risk management now a retailing fact of life
There was a time when damage to the bank balance was the greatest risk faced by shoppers; and self-control was the state-of-the-art in risk management. Not any more. The echoes of the explosion in Exeter's Princesshay shopping centre in May continue to reverberate around the industry, as managers in retail parks and malls all over the world look anew at their security provisions. In fact, any area where people crowd together in large numbers - airport, station, cinema, school, and arena included - finds itself added to the growing list of potential terrorist targets.
Such risks are actually not new to shopping centre managers, who have as much reason as most to co-ordinate their activities with local police, in coping daily with the likes of criminal gangs and vandalism. Alongside, such things as evacuation plans and procedures are repeatedly honed, to avoid panic and potential loss of life in the event of flood or fire or worse. Steve Bunce, former General Manager of the Chapelfield shopping centre in Norwich, explains: “We have to know how to deal with issues as diverse as terrorist threats, fires, lost children, anti-social behaviour, and organised criminal gangs.”
In a reactive sense, technologies such as CCTV have a role to play in spotting where things are going wrong and directing resources to the heart of the action. It's instructive to consider, however, how much more could be achieved if unified communications were added to the mix.
Wayne Connors, Managing Director of Tenant Active Systems (TAS) Limited, puts this into perspective. “In emergency situations,” he observes, “time is of the essence. Yet how many centre management teams can say, hand on heart, that they can truly communicate rapidly and effectively with their retail tenants?”
He's got a point. Such systems as have been implemented over the past couple of decades use old-fashioned “legacy” technologies, and were never designed to cater for the range of threats that we face today. In fact, some centre managers might have more success using semaphore than the systems they've got now.
Wayne Connors explains the issues. “An effective response to any circumstance that requires retailers to take concerted co-ordinated action - a bomb threat, say - is dependent upon having multiplexed communications with tenants.” In other words, one has to be able to alert many people all at the same time to the nature of the emergency and the action that is immediately required. In such situations the telephone is useless, unless you have a literal army of assistants and as many phones as you have tenants.
John Sanson, General Manager of the Grand Arcade shopping centre in Wigan, confirms: “In today's retail environment comprehensive communications between centre management and tenants is critical to achieving a rewarding - and above all safe - shopping experience.” Steve Bunce adds: “We could see that better and more effective two-way communication between centre management, tenants, and security staff would help us to assure public safety.”
What's required is a virtually instantaneous broadcast channel, and the means for people to acknowledge or reply to a message with equal speed and ease. Also it must be zonal and multimedia-capable, because sometimes you need the communications equivalent of a klaxon, and other times you need to be more choosy and subtle. In risk management terms, in order to prove action and reaction (or lack of it) an audit trail is another must have.
The TAS platform does all those things and more, being built on what is known as an internet protocol (IP) architecture. “IP is the communications technology of the future because it allows you to mix different types of traffic - voice, data, and video - on a single cabling infrastructure,” says Wayne Connors.
With TAS, a discreet always-on terminal in each retail outlet allows two-way communication - voice or screen-based as required - between centre management and the tenant. Predetermined templates are used for speedy emergency communications (no time-consuming keying of messages) and alarms and alerts can be suited to the nature of the situation. It even allows free telephone calls back and forth between tenants and centre management because it doesn't use the public network.
John Sanson explains the choice of TAS for Grand Arcade: “There are other systems in the marketplace but they all tend to be one-dimensional. TAS was the only system that offered all the functionality we were looking for in a single package. Furthermore its IP-based architecture ensured that it would be future proof.”
Wayne Connors points to another IP advantage. “It also allows integration between different applications,” he enthuses. In practical terms that means that TAS can talk to car parking systems, CCTV systems, mobile handsets, centre management and marketing software, and even point-of-sale systems. With five installations live including Princesshay, and many more in the pipeline, it's the early adopters who will drive such fascinating developments.
Steve Bunce comments: “With its use of TAS, the Chapelfield Shopping Centre is pioneering IP-based technologies to enrich the shopping experience and create a safer and more secure retail environment.” So, while on the one hand TAS is helping centre management to discharge its risk management responsibilities - and making shopping centres safer places - on the other hand the potential for retail innovation is huge.
Wayne Connors concludes: “We designed TAS to assist in proactively managing precisely the sort of emergency that occurred in Princesshay recently. But the opportunity is there to use the platform for so much more. I believe that the limits are only set by people's imaginations.”
TAS is a subsidiary company of ACCL (Active Communications Company Limited). You can contact Wayne Connors by calling +44 (0) 1689 896961 or sending him an email at Wayne.Connors@accl-ltd.com.
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