Security Project of the Year nomination

We’re excited to announce that we have been nominated for a Security and Fire Excellence Awards 2023 award, in the category Security Project of the Year.

The nomination is from a recent project where we have leveraged our capabilities through our partnerships with Quanika and Axis, together delivering an enterprise-class access control solution and resolution to Time & Attendance fraud, to manage large employee and contractor numbers for Next Plc’s logistics centres.

The Challenge:

Next Plc employs more than 12,000 people, excluding the large number of contractors and delivery drivers visiting their sites daily across 9 UK warehouses and 7 depots.

It was imperative that when challenged by Next Plc that we could deliver a seamless result to not only eliminate a siloed solution, but to implement one that prioritises business security and workspace operations, from inventory management to order fulfilment within their warehouses.

For perspective, the warehouses and depots are fully equipped with state-of-the-art sortation systems and equipment to optimise the process flow, alongside systems designed to improve energy-efficiency and waste reduction, whilst also handling the high daily throughput of people, vehicles, and goods.

Subsequently our solution needed to fully integrate all information into their high-volume databases, including Time and Attendance, Payroll, Health and Safety and a multitude of HR functionality via a single platform, in turn creating a complete end-to-end security solution, operating from a single pane of glass.

Just as important is the emphasis being placed on providing a resolution to support the prevention of internal and external theft, vandalism and organised crime targeting the wider supply chain, whilst also minimising strategic business risks associated with such a high-profile business.

This combined with a solution that needs to uphold their reputation and profitability which is under constant public scrutiny, further evidencing why efficiency is key.

The solution:

Next Plc’s initial requirement needed collaboration between DIS and our partner Quanika.

We together designed a Proof of Concept; The PoC was presented to our customer to determine feasibility and was one that could be implemented on a small scale initially at one warehouse, to test its viability, before proceeding to a full site roll-out.

Our bespoke solution derived from Quanika Enterprise, which is a software platform with integration at its core was fully integrated with AXIS Access Control Units and a Qognify Q VMS, which then handles the organisation’s entire infrastructure’s 5,500 cameras across 25 servers.

As a way to transform our customer’s Access Control, whilst in turn reducing the administration responsibilities associated with high employee levels (including new starters, leavers and individuals changing roles and permissions internally) we delivered a solution which synchronises Quanika Enterprise with Microsoft’s Active Directory which now supports not only their enrolment and subsequent automatic de-enrolment of employees upon leaving the business, but also assigns and revokes their required permissions.

Within the PoC phase our customer deemed this attribute to be highly valuable and further discussions were held to determine how quickly we could expand this project to provide compatibility with additional HR procedures for data exchange between Quanika Enterprise and their Payroll and Time and Attendance.

We immediately created a solution and coincided their additional request with the full site installation, which comprised of installing 105 Far Point Readers at all points of entry across their warehouses and depots.

Enrolment of all 12,000 permanent employees commenced, furthermore granting each one their required permissions (in brief creating their personalised level of access so they can only gain entry to specific locations.)

What’s more important here and specific to our customer’s commitment to their employees is that everyone’s clocking in and out coordinates with their payroll information which is automatically updated on their company HR system and within 15 minutes that employee can check to see what they are due to be paid.

To assist with the daily throughput of vehicles, people and goods a physical security solution was implemented, managed by Axis intercoms, Axis IP-Audio and Axis IP-CCTV, alongside Quanika Access Control which sees the whole area being bolstered by complete IP Network Video coverage, featuring sterile zone analytic notifications providing our customer with an efficient solution.

We’re proud to have completed the project from discussion to full site roll-out in 8 weeks, to adhere to our customer’s strict time constraints.

As with all projects we strive to implement not only enterprise-class solutions to solve our customer’s immediate pain point(s) but we make sure that our solutions are both scalable and futureproof to support our customer’s moving forward, both in terms of growth and the ability for them to utilise the evolving technologies.

We would at this time like to acknowledge that this nomination would have not been possible had it not been a testament to the unwavering commitment of our exceptional DIS team, who worked efficiently and with upmost professionalism to provide Next Plc with this install.

Stay tuned for the awards which will take place in London on December 4th, 2023, where the whole DIS team, Axis and Quanika will be keeping our fingers crossed.

We would also like to wish the best of luck to all the other shortlisted nominees across the various categories.