WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Convenience-store chain Yesway has selected March Networks, a video monitoring and intelligence company, for surveillance and analytics.
Yesway is currently deploying Searchlight for Retail from March Networks in 136 locations across Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming. The c-store chain, which is operated by an affiliate of Brookwood Financial Partners LLC, is expanding across the U.S. and plans to standardize on March Networks as it moves forward.
Brandon Pohlman, safety and asset protection manager for Yesway, said the company selected Searchlight for its scalability and centralized management features as well as its exception-based reporting capabilities. Through its combination of video surveillance, point-of-sale (POS) transaction data and analytics, Searchlight helps Yesway visually monitor operations at all of its sites and analyze transaction data for anomalies.
"Having our video surveillance, POS data and analytics together on one easy-to-use platform is a huge advantage for Yesway," Pohlman said. Using the software, the c-store can search and sort all of its transactions and match them with corresponding video clips. The company can also group higher-risk transaction types such as refunds and assign risk factors to its stores based on the number of these transactions.
"The insights uncovered by Searchlight have helped Yesway reduce its shrink levels and improve the speed and efficiency of asset protection investigations," Pohlman said.
In addition to asset protection, Searchlight also delivers business intelligence through the integration of video analytics, including people counting, queue length and dwell time. Several Yesway departments use Searchlight's information to monitor operations, merchandising and customer service across the organization.
Iverify, a full-service interactive security company and a certified partner of March Networks, managed the Yesway installation. Marty Brakel, national account manager for Iverify, said March Networks' products are ideal for the c-store market. "March Networks Searchlight is a professional-grade solution for customers like Yesway that need robust loss=prevention tools and the ability to manage hundreds of locations simultaneously," he said.
In addition to Searchlight, Yesway is also deploying the March Networks 8000 Series Hybrid NVRs for video recording and March Networks SE2 Series IP Cameras for video capture. It is managing the solution with March Networks Command Enterprise, advanced system management software that simplifies multisite video management.
West Des Moines, Iowa-based Yesway is No. 43 in CSP’s 2019 Top 202 ranking of c-store chains by number of retail locations. It owns and operates more than 450 c-stores and truckstops in nine states: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming.
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