A less tyring way to control access

When Ian Turvey joined Just Tyres three and a half years ago the company had 48 retail centres selling tyres throughout England and Wales. Across those 48 sites the company had 11 different alarm suppliers.

As commercial manager, Ian Turvey’s role was to review the company’s security and to develop a plan for the existing 48 centres as well as a strategy for the many new centres.

Just Tyres was planning to open. New centres need to become operational extremely quickly and Ian needed to develop a roll-out strategy for them.

The objective was to create an environment where centre staff could concentrate on selling tyres, rather than being bound up in unnecessary administrative detail relating to the premises. Another factor impacting Ian’s planning was that many Just Tyres staff constantly move from one centre to another, so standardising all processes within every centre made perfect sense. It was, therefore, a prerequisite that the security systems should be common right across the company.

So, from a security perspective, Just Tyres was looking for a control panel that could be installed across multiple centres. It had to be easy to use, provide all the information required, and provide secure and certain future for further expansion. The company also wanted a system, which would allow them to monitor centrally a wide range of daily events at the centres.

From a number of existing suppliers, Just Tyres selected the security installers Protection One as sole suppliers of installation and maintenance services to manage the majority of the existing centres and all of the roll-out projects. On the advice of Protection One the 816 range, the forerunner to the 8136, from Scantronic, was chosen as the preferred platform.

  “We already had panels from Scantronic installed in a number of centres and we had had very positive experiences with the product,” said Ian Turvey. “The benefits were clear, with the 816 we had found a product which was easy to use, and at a price which made sense.

“Furthermore it provided a solution to our other central monitoring requirements, since the panels, when linked to a central monitoring station, can log all comings and goings. All staff have their own unique codes so field management can tell exactly who has been in the premises and when, and it is therefore a very useful tool in the management of stock shrinkage.

“In addition, the system can be reset remotely in conjunction with the ARC so that false alarms and call-outs are kept to a minimum, and user codes can be programmed remotely avoiding the expense of calling out an engineer every time people leave or join”.

With the launch of the 8136 upload/download security alarm panel, Just Tyres is beginning to upgrade the original 48 centres and is installing the panel into all new centres.

It has the additional advantage of in-built download facility allowing remote access to operational information gathered on a daily basis in each centre. This includes, for example, such things as verifying check-on and check-off times at each centre, or unauthorised entry by staff.

Just Tyres is currently reviewing its requirements for the future. They are interested in the newly launched Scantronic 9850 panels. Explained Ian Turvey, “For the future, the 8136 may well exceed our requirements in the number of zones supported, and it is likely that the 9850 will deliver the functionality that we need, and quite probably save us money. It again will have the advantage of common usability with the other panels without any loss of functionality”.