Secure Innovation's Hazel Gosling highlights how the digitisation of the payment landscape calls for asset control systems to become more sophisticated, sharing one of the firm’s own solutions targeted towards the secure logistics sector.
The Perfect Storm
Running a thriving cash-in-transit business has probably never been more challenging. The continued digitalisation of the payment landscape gives the public and commerce more alternatives to cash than at any point in history. While the relative merits of e-payments, credit and cash payment methods may be challenged, the unarguable reality is that cash use has declined in the last decade or more, a trend accelerated by the recent pandemic.
In addition, labour market challenges throughout Europe, fuel price increase and general inflationary pressures are all squeezing cash management businesses ever tighter.
Throw in the ever-present risk from the criminal fraternity into the equation and it’s easy to see why the sector is not for the faint-hearted in 2022.
In summary, today’s cash management leader needs ways to improve operational control, eliminate waste and underpin their revenue streams while protecting staff, stock and assets. This is not an easy ask!
This means, among other things, that any investment must bring value to the business besides security and protection.
Harnessing advances in communication technology
Developments in wireless communication over the past few years, often categorised as Industrial Internet of Things [IIoT] or Industry 4.0, do offer an opportunity to level the field.
In manufacturing, technology providers have enabled businesses to reduce operating costs in areas such as equipment maintenance, production efficiency and supply chain precision; often derived from automated, granular analysis of equipment wear, production output or stock movement.
These applications, typically static, bring the user passive control of their operation through data management; information is harvested from multiple points and analysed, either automatically using artificial intelligence [AI], software algorithms or manually to help determine the appropriate course of action.
While this significantly improves the business compared to prior to installation, it does leave areas of inefficiency and the risk of further failures arising from delays in decision-making and the residual need for human intervention to prioritise and implement the required changes to tooling or schedules.
Where there is no immediate imperative to making these adjustments, this may be acceptable. But, in applications where a high level of risk exists; either fiscal, health or environmental, then these inadequacies may be too significant to ignore.
With the inherent risks faced by the secure logistics community, this level of control is not enough. As a consequence, the costs of third-party escorting, imprecise investments, monitoring centre costs and a degree of losses from criminal activity continue to be features of the industry.
Life on Remote Planet
So, when we listen to our customers at Secure Innovation, we’ve learnt that our asset control systems must go further than many standard IIoT solutions, and they have to offer ways in which these remaining problems are addressed.
Our team have spent the last twelve months developing a solution specifically tailored to the needs of the secure logistics industry. In partnership with prestigious organisations including the European Space Agency, we have developed a remote asset management solution which hands direct control back to our customers. This gives them the ability to monitor asset status, track and verify stock compliance and crucially, to directly influence asset protection in the event of attack or interference.
We know that total reliability of connection is critical to your logistics operation, so we’ve invested in a multi-layered technology structure, giving options to our customers that work anywhere, any time. Boasting resistance to criminal tricks such as signal jamming, Remote Planet’s resilience sets it apart from other tracking tools.
Secure Innovation’s in-house software development team have collaborated with British universities, research institutions and other stakeholders building a system that can works as a single asset protection eco-system. Connecting existing and future protective devices onto a single screen for a simple and intuitive set of controls. This integration can be managed by our team in the southwest of England.
Thanks to our ownership of the entire “technology stack” our team works with our clients to fully customise the system programming, installation and sensor specification. Providing them with a set of automatic or directed responses that are designed to strengthen the protective layers depending on perceived risk and to provide immediate response to events.
Customers can specify the automatic and manual responses to new issues depending on their unique operational practices and needs, cutting response times dramatically, improving compliance controls and creating efficiencies from the elimination of operational costs.
Showing how Remote Planet can help you
For more than 35 years, Secure Innovation have provided hardware security protection to the cash industry, and we’re privileged to be able to count on the loyalty of our customer base. We’ve always focused on delivering specialist solutions for the industry, and we have done the same with Remote Planet.
Our record of innovation, ISO9001 quality product and international service network creates customer satisfaction reflected in our 95 per cent plus customer retention levels.
