If you’re researching how video security software can help your store or chain or stores, this article is for you. It looks at what Milestone Systems’ software can do to protect and enhance retail businesses like yours. We’ll explain what’s included with Milestone’s XProtect® video management software (VMS), as well as the most popular extensions and integrations within your sector.
What specific tasks and challenges do you need your security system to help with? When speaking to retail customers, we often hear the following top priorities:
- Deterring shoplifting
- Adding extra protection to high-value goods
- Sharing video evidence of theft with police
- Stopping unwanted visitors
- Monitoring self-checkout areas
- Managing transactions and inventory discrepancies
Additionally, other non-security tasks often come up, primarily:
- Optimizing store layout and product placement
- Managing checkout lines
These challenges can be met with a combination of the following technologies and, of course, your security and operations teams:
- Deterring shoplifting
Retailers see this as one of their top priorities, and they’re right to. According to Capital One, projections indicate that shoplifting could cost retailers over $150 billion in 2026. Despite this, stores catch shoplifters only around 2% of the time.
The most obvious deterrence tactic typically comes from the physical presence of security cameras (preferably high definition) in your retail store. These need reliable and secure video management software (VMS) to connect and centralize your devices and video data.
Milestone XProtect VMS is our offering in this space, and while we might be partial, we truly believe it’s the best option available.
Retailers also often use Public View Monitors (PVMs) to deter people from criminal activity. They do this by publicly “broadcasting” what their surveillance cameras are capturing in their store, so would-be thieves know that they are on camera. With XProtect, this can be set up using the Matrix feature or our extension XProtect Smart Wall (both are available with XProtect Expert and Corporate).
- Adding extra protection to high-value goods
Luxury or high-end items are not only high-margin sellers for the store but also highly attractive to thieves. Of course, surveillance cameras and classic alarm-protected display cases go a long way to help deter the theft of high-value goods.
But, as an additional layer of security, retailers can integrate access control technology to limit access to sensitive areas to authorized staff members only. Stores can also set up alarms that trigger alerts when there are attempts to access unauthorized areas, or when display cases are tampered with.
- Sharing video evidence of thefts with police
Another popular feature for a VMS for retail is support for investigating thefts and the ability to quickly find, export and share video files with law enforcement. This is essential for prosecuting proven shoplifters, recovering stolen items and for any insurance claims stores might need to make for losses.
XProtect VMS supports this with a number of third-party evidence management integrations that can help streamline the process. Different integrations offer different advantages, including sharing directly into law enforcement platforms, and it’s worth looking around at all the different options out there.
XProtect Incident Manager, meanwhile, is our extension to solve the same problem. It allows users to gather evidence with just one click, and then share it with the relevant authorities. It’s included with XProtect Corporate or available as a separate license.
- Monitoring of self-checkout areas
As well as the above-mentioned video security cameras and PVMs, self-checkout systems can benefit from deploying various types of advanced AI, either camera-based or as software applications.
For example, some AI cameras can match items to a database of images. By comparing the weight and image with a database, the system can alert staff to potential discrepancies. Another example is mis- or non-scans at self-checkouts—video analytics can detect an unscanned product and alert the shopper to scan again. An alert can also be sent to the store manager.
- Stopping unwanted visitors
Likewise, video analytics can help you quickly identify known shoplifters. Just like how facial recognition has helped casinos identify guests with a gambling problem and prevent them from entering, retailers can deploy the technology to stop people who have been banned due to theft or other antisocial behavior.
One of our customers, a shopping center in Sydney, did just this using the Vix Vizion Imagus facial recognition software plugin. BriefCam is another such example of an analytics solution that can provide this and one that we find is popular with the retail industry. We’ll explore this in further detail later in the article.
- Managing transactions and inventory discrepancies
Inventory loss is a significant contributor to retail shrinkage, which accounts for $132 billion in losses globally in 2024. Common issues include shoplifting, employee theft, administrative errors, and supplier miscounts.
Transaction monitoring and POS analytics are a way to get to the root causes of and combat inventory discrepancies. Retailers can match transaction data from POS and ATM systems with video footage.
XProtect Transact is our extension designed for XProtect VMS that fulfills this need, and we will discuss this in more detail further down the page. However, you can also choose to use one of the many third-party integrations that work together with XProtect.
- Optimizing store layout and product placement
Store layout has a proven impact on customer behavior: the more time customers spend in your store, the more likely they are to make additional purchases.
A well-planned layout also ensures a logical flow of merchandise, preventing disorganization. Neglecting this can lead to cluttered aisles and frustrated customers, potentially driving them to competitors.
That’s where video analytics software can help. Retailers often look for heatmaps to see where customers tend to go and their flows through the store, so they can identify hotspots and problem areas. They can also analyze things like when peak checkout traffic occurs, how long people talk to staff, and even segment different shopper profiles by age, gender, visit duration, and other key factors.
Many of these features can be achieved in BriefCam. Below you can see the heatmaps identifying high-traffic areas within a store:
In addition to integrating with BriefCam’s suite of analytics, XProtect also works with a host of third-party solutions that cater to the needs of retailers.
- Managing checkout lines
If you work in retail, you’ll know that long customer lines can negatively impact your business’s bottom line. However, combining your VMS with a third-party queue management system can help you reduce wait times and allocate resources where and when they are most needed.
For instance, the queue management system can track customer numbers and, once the pre-set limit for a checkout line is reached, the manager will be prompted to open an additional checkout to accommodate the demand.
Another creative way to beat queues was developed by our tech integrator partner Addictive Technology Solutions, who combined license plate recognition (LPR) technology with point of sale (POS) systems to help fast-food outlets predict customer orders and speed up the drive-through process.
- XProtect Professional+
Our most chosen product variant within retail is XProtect Professional+. This makes sense, because it’s an ideal solution for mid-sized businesses that want support for an unrestricted number of cameras, devices, sites and servers, but don’t want the extra cost of more “advanced” core features such as failover servers or evidence management.
The multi-layered mapping function and alarm management capabilities within XProtect Professional+ are there to provide operators with a holistic view of the entire installation. Smaller retail stores find that they can comfortably operate with Express+, which allows up to 48 cameras on a single site.
You can learn more about the different XProtect variants here.
- XProtect Care Plus
Most of our retail customers, such as the team at Baneasa Shopping City in Bucharest, have chosen our Care Plus software maintenance program. Care Plus gives you access 2-3 XProtect software updates per year, which include new features and the latest cybersecurity protection. Customers with Care Plus also get a full trade-in discount if they ever choose to upgrade from one XProtect variant to another (e.g., from XProtect Professional+ to XProtect Expert).
Milestone Care Premium can be purchased on top of Care Plus, with the added benefit of 24/7 access to Milestone’s technical support team. If you “only” have Care Plus, your reseller can still reach out to Milestone’s support team on your behalf. You can get the full lowdown on our Care products here.
- Milestone XProtect Transact
Naturally, in an industry where payments take center stage, XProtect Transact is our most popular extension with retailers. XProtect Transact pairs data from POS (point of sale), ATM (automatic teller machine), and data systems with corresponding video from the time of the sale, scan or transaction.
It allows you to search for specific transactions and the corresponding videos to quickly resolve issues when stock or inventory numbers don't match up. This helps retailers spot and fix discrepancies faster and allows for easier documentation of incidents.
Every transaction, whether a scan or a sale, has a corresponding video snapshot and you can generate detailed reports on transactions, complete with video thumbnails. Here’s what that looks like in the XProtect Smart Client:
- BriefCam
We’ve already explored some of the ways video analytics software is being used by retailers to optimize their business, either by identifying known shoplifters or providing insights into their customers and store layouts.
It therefore comes as no surprise that BriefCam, Milestone’s video analytics solution, consistently ranks among the most sought-after products in our portfolio. BriefCam’s Retail Trends dashboard can track:
- Visitor volume
- Navigation trends
- Dwell patterns and hotspots
- Entries and exits
- Average visit duration
- Visitor demographics
Here’s the dashboard in action within the XProtect Smart Client:
This is not by any means an exhaustive list of all the video security software retailers would want, just the most popular. Some other regularly used Milestone extensions are summarized below:
- XProtect Smart Wall
Particularly useful for security operators in a control room-like setup with multiple cameras and sites to monitor, XProtect Smart Wall can also be used to display live video on PVMs in stores to discourage thefts and other undesirable behavior.
- XProtect License Plate Recognition
Large shopping centers and out-of-town stores could especially benefit from using LPR technology to manage and secure their parking lots. XProtect LPR helps boost security, track offenders and automate parking.
- XProtect Access
Stores can protect restricted areas that are for staff only with an access control integration. XProtect Access lets you integrate your VMS with access control and intrusion systems in a single interface.
- Milestone Kite
The products and solutions listed in this article have all been linked to Milestone’s XProtect VMS. But Milestone also offers our Kite video surveillance as a service (VSaaS) to retailers that prefer a cloud-based solution. Kite is ideal for retailers that have smaller locations and only need basic search functionalities as opposed to the more advanced analytics discussed in this article.
What if you work for a retail chain that prefers on-prem for larger locations and cloud-based surveillance for smaller ones? The good news is that you can use XProtect and Kite together in the same application interface. This hybrid setup lets you expand your video coverage to dispersed sites with minimal effort while gaining access to all live video, recordings and alarms, centrally from XProtect. For a more in-depth guide to the different deployment possibilities Milestone offers, head here.
When retail businesses choose to go with Milestone (and many of them do), they often cite the following reasons.
- Device agnosticism: Milestone XProtect supports more security devices than any other VMS provider. You have the freedom to use whichever cameras or sensors you want without being locked into a specific manufacturer.
- Customization: You can integrate third-party solutions with XProtect’s open-platform software, ensuring that your system meets the unique needs of your business.
- Cybersecurity: At a minimum, every XProtect variant supports HTTPS encryption, network separation, media database encryption and the digital signing of video files. Our software also enables customers to achieve compliance with standards such as GDPR and FIPS-140-2.
In addition to these product-specific benefits, customers trust Milestone. We’ve been in the video security business for more than 25 years. In this time, we’ve built up a global network of resellers and system integrators who can share their expertise in securing retail businesses like yours.
While this article has covered the most universal requirements within retail, we know that each customer has a list of needs that are specific to their business. Here are some ways you could contact us to find out more about how we can help your retail business protect its assets and gain a competitive advantage within the industry.
- Have a general question? Contact our sales team.
- Want to see XProtect, BriefCam or Kite in action? Book a demo.
- Looking for a trusted Milestone reseller? Find one close to you.