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Case Study #1:
A security manager, of a fortune 100 company, was
having a problem with a new camera installation for more than 6 months and
the installing vendor could not correct the problem. The manager’s
director had finally had enough and instructed the manager to call in
another vendor and gave the manager 24 hours to correct the problem. The
manager contacted Team AVS and within a few hours they were on site and
fixed the camera within 30 minutes and there was never another problem with
it. (That’s was 1981 and the security manager at that company is now the
President of Team AVS)
Case Study #2:
Team AVS received a phone call from a purchasing
agent representing a large Utility company. She requested a bid price on a
piece of replacement equipment. The cost of the replacement camera for this
facility was $10,000.00. Looking at the equipment Team AVS informed her that
there was new technology released that would provide a better image at a
cost of around $650.00. She said she was happy with her existing vendor; she
just needed another bid on that equipment. She mentioned that her vendor
gave her a budget number and that is what they had to spend and just wanted
a quote on that model number. After some discussion, she allowed Team AVS to
come on site to demonstrate the new technology. The demonstration was a
success, the picture quality was much better and Team AVS was awarded the
project to upgrade “all” cameras on site for the same money she was
going to spend to upgrade a single camera.
Case Study #3:
A large
hotel chain was going to upgrade approximately 100 hotels across the Country
and had a contract with a national vendor for the work. They had finished
three hotels when there was a robbery at one of the hotels. The video images
from the new system were useless and provided little value. On the
recommendation of a well known consultant, the Risk Manager for the hotel
contacted Team AVS. Within three days, Team AVS visited hotels in Chicago,
Denver and Phoenix and conducted site surveys on the three different styles
of hotels. The recommendations were made from an applications standpoint
rather that just “throwing cameras at a situation”. Each camera and lens
combination was selected based on the requirements of that camera location
plus the head end equipment was selected for quality and ease of use for the
night auditors. The national company had sold them 16 low quality cameras
and head end equipment that was not user friendly. Team AVS recommended only
8 high quality strategically placed cameras. Team AVS was awarded the
contract for about 90 hotels and provided the hotels with high quality
systems and saved $1,000s on each hotel. When there were incidents at the
hotels with the AVS installed systems, the video produced high quality
images that were extremely valuable.
Case Study #4:
An IT director from a pharmaceutical company
contacted Team AVS and explained that he was unhappy with the access control
and CCTV systems they had purchased just a few years earlier. He requested
options from Team AVS to try and deal with this system. When he mentioned
the manufactures names, he was told that in fact he had purchased some of
the best technology on the market. It was determined that the integrator
that installed it had limited IT knowledge and could only do so much. Team
AVS went into the company, provided the cross integration between the
systems and placed the technology over the network so that the customer to
maximize the efficiency of his system. Because Team AVS was able to
demonstrate to the customer that they had purchased a very good system and
was able to bring the system on line they did not have to consider replacing
it with a new system.
Case Study #5:
Team AVS received a service call from a new
customer that requested a service call to repair a broken CCTV Camera. The
technician arrived on site and repaired the camera. During his visit he
noticed that none of the cameras were being recorded. In fact the three VCRs
were missing and the cables were laying there disconnected. When he spoke
with the customer, they explained that their current vendor had removed them
for repair over the last month and they were waiting for them to be
returned. The technician went out to the van and brought in three loaner
VCRs and put them in place for the customer and then told the customer to
just call AVS when their vendor returned the repaired ones. Of course there
is no charge for the $250,000.00 in AVS loaner equipment.
Case Study #6:
A major corporation contacted Team AVS explaining
that their vendor (for 15 years) had removed one of their DVR's for repair and
did not provide loaner equipment, so they had 16 cameras not being recorded.
They asked if Team AVS could help them out. Within two hours Team AVS was on
site, installing a free loaner DVR. The next day Team AVS received another
call from the same customer stating a second DVR had failed. Again within a
few hours Team AVS was onsite installing a second loaner DVR. At this point
the customer had issued a PO for a new DVR to the existing Vendor. The PO
was cancelled and reissued to Team AVS. Over the next few months the
customer moved all their Access Control and CCTV work for multiple locations
to Team AVS.
Case Study #7:
On a Monday, a major retail organization explained
to Team AVS that they had a very large Access and CCTV installed in a
distribution center two years before. They had gone through 3 different
integrators and none of them could resolve the long list of issues. Many of
these were network and software issues. The next day the local manager in CT
was contacted and an appointment was set up for Wed to be onsite. Once
onsite Team AVS corrected every issue they had plus a few they didn’t know
they had. The manager commented that for the first time in two years his
white board was wiped clean. The very next week, Team AVS received a call
form the Corporate Director who was in Indiana at another one of their
Distribution Centers. He said that their access system in Indiana had been
down for a month and they had major issues the CCTV system. The director
wanted to know if we had any recommendations for Brownsburg Indiana. That
same day we qualified an authorized dealer in Indiana and the next day Team
AVS flew a technician to Indiana to meet with the customer and the new
integrator on site. On that day, Team AVS resolved all the issues that had
plagued them for years. Within a month, the company awarded Team AVS all
their retail stores in the Northeast.
Case Study #8:
A customer calls Team AVS after locating us in the
Yellow pages. They stated that they had a new access control system
installed a year ago and their vendor can not get it to operate properly.
The customer was convinced that they wanted to purchase a new system to
replace it because it had been nothing but problems from day one. When asked
if the problems consist of error messaging in the system as well as ghosting
alarms and transactions the customer replied “yes”, we offered the
potential customer a “Free Customer Care Visit” to correct the problem.
Once onsite the technician was able to correct the problems and not only was
the customer happy with the resolution, they decided to keep the system and
expand it.
Case Study #9:
A large corporate customer in New England had a
break in at their International Office in Miami Florida. The Corporate
Director contacted Team AVS and asked us for assistance. Within 5 days Team
AVS had installed a complete Access Control and CCTV system in the Miami
Facility. The Friday of that same week, the President of Team AVS joins the
Director in Miami for a quality inspection of the new system.
Case Study #10:
A large pharmaceutical company contacts Team AVS
and requests a meeting. During the meeting it was learned that the customer
had purchased a high end access control system from a major integrator more
than 4 years ago. During those 4 years the integrator could not integrate
the systems correctly over the network or resolve issues within the
software. The facility manager then asked if Team AVS could provide a
proposal to swap out the entire system to a different manufacturer that they
had heard very good things about. The customer was informed that Team AVS
could provide a quote for a new system; however, there wasn’t any need to.
All the network and software problems that they were experiencing could be
corrected by Team AVS. Over the next couple of weeks, Team AVS spent a
couple of days on site and corrected the problems that they had been dealing
with for 4 years.
Case Study #11:
A major Fortune 100 company requested Team AVS
provide a complete upgrade to their Corporate Control Center. Over 15 years
they had been adding to the system time and time again without any plan. It
was a nightmare of a project. The Corporate Director said that it was
imperative that the system not be down during the upgrade/conversion. The
Director met the Team AVS crew at the site on Saturday morning to kick off
the project. On the next day, Sunday, the Director returned late morning
around 11am to find the crew just finishing up the project. When the
director commented on the fact that they must have worked late Saturday night to
get all this done, the response was simple. We knew you wanted the system to
be done, so we never went home. The crew worked straight through the night
and kept each device on line during the conversion.
Case Study 12:
One of the top Biotechnology Companies in
the world was building a new world headquarters in Cambridge MA. This
company had been a customer of Team AVS for about 8 years and Team AVS was
handling all their installations in the US and Canada. The challenge was to
now integrate all European, Middle Eastern, Asian and South American
operations into on Global Central Monitoring Station. The goal was to bring
back all access control transactions and video images in real time over the
customer’s network. The project resulted in a world class Security
Operations Center that monitors all security related transactions worldwide
in real time. All video cameras and access control actions are viewed live
by a staff of 3-4 operators. Much of the configuration and design of the
central station required custom solutions. It was even a further challenge
to develop the custom software applications. With the partnership between
Team AVS and this Biotech Company all of this was done on time and within
budget.
A few low bid cases:
Case Study #13:
A long term customer of Team AVS was building a new
distribution center and because of the size of the project, he was required
to put the security systems out to bid. When the bids came in, Team
AVS was $20,000.00 higher than the low bid of $100,000.00. After lengthy discussions the customer decided to award the project to the low
bidder because of the sizable difference.
The President of Team AVS sat down with the customer to try and
explain that the bids were not apples to apples and to try and predict what
was going to happen with the project. Because this was the first time for
that vendor installing the system and the fact that they were not factory
authorized for one portion of the equipment, it was doomed from the start.
The customer was told that the vendor would wire the entire facility and
when it came time to turn the system on, it would not work because they were
using the wrong wiring. So that meant that the building would have to be
rewired plus when this was done they would not be able to program the software
properly because they had never done it and it was not easy to do. It was critical
that the Security Director have the security system on line when the
building opened. There was no way that this would happen with selecting the
low bidder.
The customer moved forward with the low bidder and on a
Saturday morning the vendor called an emergency meeting with the Security
Director. At this meeting they told him that they had in fact installed the
wrong wiring and the building needed to be rewired. They were asking for a
change order for more than $20,000.00. The customer refused to pay this, so
the vendor ended up rewiring the building at their expense. Once the new
wiring was in place it was time to install the software and get the system
up and running. After several weeks of trying, they could not get the system
programmed. At this point the facility had been up and running for over a
month without security in the distribution center which was almost career
ending for the Security Director. The security director contacted and hired
Team AVS to come in and finish the installation and bring the system on line
at a cost of about $15,000.00.
Case Study 14:
A long term customer of Team AVS was building a new
facility and went out to bid and found an integrator with a much lower bid
than Team AVS. This situation was almost identical to Case Study #13. They
chose the lower priced integrator for the project. Again, they missed the
installation deadline and could not program the system. The customer then
had to hire Team AVS to come in and finish the project at additional cost.
Case Study 15:
A long term Property Management customer of Team
AVS had a new construction project. Although this company had used Team AVS
for 20 years for over 40 locations up and down the East Coast, the General
Contractor was the decision maker. The GC hired an integrator that came in
with a very low bid for the Access Control and CCTV system. Although the customer
was not comfortable with the decision, the GC insisted that the bids were
apples to apples. A few months later Team AVS contacted the customer to see
how things turned out. The customer was furious with the company that did
the installation. If fact when they finished the project manager went into
the customer’s office and “tossed” the manual on his desk and said
here you go and there was no training. When AVS did an installation for this
company not only was there extensive training, but we held 2 -3 resident
meetings to explain the system to the residents. AVS volunteered to come
down and provide training for the customer plus hold the resident meetings even
though they did not get the sale. When AVS arrived on site it was determined
that the system installed was NOT an access control system. It was just an
entry system that had 500 of the same cards and there was no database.
Everyone just got the same card. In addition to this, the installation was
done incorrectly, using indoor equipment in an outside application and the
system did not meet factory requirements. So there was no need for training
anyone. The customer spend months fighting with the vendor to correct the
installation and during this time the major parts of the system burnt out
because of the incorrect power configurations.
This system went over three years before it was
eventually turned on and when it was, it was just an entry system with 500
of the same cards.
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