In The Trenches Video Series
Security Systems for Self Storage Facilities
Our panel of experts discuss Self Storage Security, an industry with a lot of unique security considerations.
Our speakers today are:
- > Matthew Nederlanden (CEO)
- > Micah Shearer (COO)
- > Benjamin LaRue (Director of Sales)
- > James Campbell (Product Specialist)
Video Transcription
Matthew Nederlanden:
Let's say an outdoor facility that's fenced in, you have an unlimited number of potential access points where somebody could hop a fence or cut a fence or plow a vehicle through a fence that we would have to take into account.
James Campbell:
Hey everyone, this is James with SCW here on another episode of In The Trenches RoundTable. This is going to be an industry specific video and today we are talking about self storage security. This is an industry with a lot of unique aspects that we're here to discuss and I got a great panel to discuss it with. First I have our COO, Micah Shearer.
Micah Shearer:
Hi, everybody.
James Campbell:
Next I have our director of sales, Ben Larue.
Ben Larue:
Hi, everyone.
James Campbell:
And last but not least, I have our CEO, Matthew Nederlanden.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Hi, everybody.
James Campbell:
So when we're talking about this industry, we've obviously got a lot of moving pieces. We've got people's property, people coming in and going at different times of the day. Ben, you've got a ton of experience with these clients. What are some of the biggest concerns they have when they're talking to us?
Ben Larue:
Definitely, yeah. This industry seems to be growing more and more every day. Every week we seem to have more of these opportunities coming across the table. And from working with our national partners, one of the first things we've come to realize that is the most important thing is the information download or the understanding of the current infrastructure on site. And Micah could probably speak to this more so from the installation standpoint, but what I mean by that is really things like how are the buildings interconnected to each other?
What type of internet capabilities are on site, if any at all? Are new buildings coming into place? Are there plans for expansion? All these type of things. Even as simple as is there a place to actually store this equipment? Is there a locker that's set aside or is there an office? These are probably some of the first things that we would inquire about once we get reached out to about these type of facilities. So yeah, there's a lot to consider here, but those are some of the main ones that stick out.
James Campbell:
Great. And so what are some of the first questions you might be asking to a prospective self storage customer?
Ben Larue:
Yeah, definitely. First and foremost is to understand if they have any kind of site plans or material documents that speak to that infrastructure. One of our clients, we've gotten to the point now where we're actually working with their construction and development team to get those underground documents that show conduit between buildings and things like that. But really first for me, it's understanding very bare bones, how much do you know about your site, especially in terms of infrastructure and then understanding what type of system they're looking for and that we're able to even offer from that point. So, I think that's probably some of the first things.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah, let me take a stab at it as well. For me, the first thing that I want to know is, is your facility, an outdoor facility or an indoor facility? And that's going to radically change the number of threats that you're facing. So with an indoor facility, I've got an idea of my entranceway and so I've got an idea of what I need to protect and who might have access to the facility. The next thing that I would really want to know is what hours are you open? Are you a 24-hour facility or are you going to be closed certain times? Do I have the idea that anybody within a certain number of hours is a problem or do I have to be able to figure out which people are customers and which people are security threats?
Those are the biggest high level things that I would want to know because if you've got, let's say an outdoor facility that's fenced in, you have an unlimited number of potential access points where somebody could hop a fence or cut a fence or plow a vehicle through a fence, that we would have to take into account. On the flip side, you're a storage facility that is mostly indoor, we're going to be looking mostly at the entrance points and making sure that those are secure.
Ben Larue:
Matt, makes a really great point there. Matt makes a great point about the site infrastructure and as basic as, do you have a fence around your property? Is it indoor? Is it outdoor? Are there gates? Those type of things.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Is it locked during a certain number of hours? Is it open 24/7? These things are going to radically change the requirements that we're going to build around in terms of making your facility safe, and what safe means. Safe for a facility that's closed half the time is nobody is supposed to be in here. Alert me if anybody is in here. On the flip side, something that's open 24/7, we've got to make a more sophisticated idea of what constitutes safe during the hours that they're open.
Micah Shearer:
Ben, could you speak a little bit to why do storage facilities call you in the first place? What are the threats and the things that they're facing that prompt this question of I need cameras?
Ben Larue:
Definitely. Yeah, I think more than anything it's the idea of having a secure locked down facility. In this industry, in self storage specific, having high-end surveillance and security equipment in the form of access control and other types of security actually help the facilities increase their rental rates monthly. Being able to offer those type of services to their clients is extreme. You'll notice on a lot of banners, websites, marketing material from these sites, they're speaking to the 24-hour surveillance, they're speaking to the security. So that's first and foremost.
Another thing is just the unpredictability of the industry that they're in. Matt just spoke to the differences between climate controlled and indoor facilities versus outside. There's just so many variables in terms of not only the material possessions inside of the actual physical units that you think of when you think of storage, but the auxiliary things like damage to a building when a moving truck backs into the corner or someone backing into the gate because they're not paying attention to... We got to remember what people are doing at these facilities, moving typically large amounts of objects and things potentially with vehicles that they don't often drive and that can cause a whole host-
Micah Shearer:
The ability to really establish what did happen, not just who was there, but maybe they're supposed to be there, but what did they do when they were there?
Ben Larue:
Exactly. Exactly, 100%. Insurance claims is a big thing. It's a big deal.
Micah Shearer:
It strikes me based on something you said earlier about this being a real selling point, we have up to date 24/7 security and how many sites we see come across that they're not starting with that. A lot of them have cameras and have equipment, but frequently it's outdated, the infrastructure is really poorly put in place. We see a lot of cables thrown across the top of buildings, which is going to degrade that quality really fast. We see some really interesting PVC arrangements between buildings from time to time, so it feels like the industry as a whole is at this point where all outdated infrastructure, it's hit a wall and it has to be upgraded. And that's potentially why we're seeing so many of these opportunities come across.
Matthew Nederlanden:
I mean other than data centers, can you really think of any other industry where security is such a core competency for the service they're providing? I mean, you're paying someone to store your things. If you're not sure that those things are going to be there the next time that they come to visit, you really haven't done your job. This is a core competency for this industry.
James Campbell:
And I think that hits on the big concern most of them obviously are going to have is most of these are pretty big properties, especially the outside ones that are more spread out than they are building vertically. So most of these don't have guards, they don't have 24/7 security there, they need to have these forms of video surveillance and everything. The main concern is basically somebody's going to come in, cut a lock, grab everything, and then they're going to have to deal with insurance claims, deal with an unhappy customer and a lot of those other things. So, talking about solutions for this, what does video surveillance bring to the table for somebody that this seems to be the biggest request, what does that kind of bring to the table for a self-storage?
Ben Larue:
Yeah, some things that we've all kind of mentioned, but first and foremost, the ability to fact-check and truly have evidence that's usable. I think Micah mentioned earlier her reference to outdated legacy equipment in a lot of these sites, a large majority of these sites are going to be retrofitted from outdated legacy technology that you can't tell the difference between a vehicle or a person or a tree sometimes. And so having high resolution, high quality commercial grade surveillance in place not only increases your ability to see what's actually happening in the picture and in the frame, but then be able to offload that footage to the police, to the insurance company to then use that footage for the things that you need to. So the ability to fact-check and then ultimately actually see what's happening and taking place in the footage I think is key.
James Campbell:
Good point. Anything to add on for that, for anybody?
Matthew Nederlanden:
Sure, I'll take that one. I think that whether or not somebody breaks in and takes some of the stuff that you as a storage facility are paid to protect and to house is always going to be the top concern. But at the same point I think that there's a series of other concerns that we should make sure that we're also covering when we put in a system like this. So, the possibility that a customer accidentally backs up into somebody else's gate can be extremely problematic, can potentially ruin their things or run them over, introduce water intrusion, a number of factors. And then being able to find out issues like that where they're just accidental or disputes among different customers, issues with potentially semi-trusted staff who may or may not be doing the right thing.
I think a lot of times that the most common problem, which I think in this industry is somebody breaking into customer space are not the only problems that we should be looking for a security system to solve, disputes among employees or employee to customer disputes, all of those things are common in this industry and many others and I think that those are the sort of things that we also need to make sure that we are including in this package to make sure everything that could be causing one of those problems that might be extremely disruptive to your business might introduce risk in terms of regulation or employment staff or HR issues that all of those things get resolved with the same system.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, definitely. Matt makes a great point there about other concerns and other things you should be considering that this type of video surveillance system could solve for. Imagine for example, we use the gate scenario and a truck backs into the gate and breaks the mechanism on the gate. Well, if that's the only entry point to the facility, you're not only just having to replace the physical gate mechanism, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars, you are now limiting or not having access to the hundreds of clients that need access to the facility. What could that potentially do? That's halting business operations as a whole.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Or you just imagine if you didn't know about that for three weeks, how many times was your facility potentially compromised and causing a giant, giant issue because somebody accidentally backed up into the gate. We need to be able to know when these things happen.
Micah Shearer:
Many of the facilities are quite remote so you're not getting as much traffic and you don't have somebody on site who's showing up every day and checking on the condition of things.
Ben Larue:
Right, absolutely. And then finally I would say the final piece for what this surveillance system could solve for or a higher end surveillance system could solve for is actually the active deterrent capabilities of some of these systems now. Surveillance systems are great for being reactive in the sense of something happens, being able to review footage, check in remotely, those type of things,. But nowadays, cameras have the ability to sound alarms or turn lights on and they can do things that can actually prevent some of these things that we've been discussing from happening. And anytime and we have the ability to do that, that's obviously the best case scenario. So, it's important to consider additional things like that.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Anything that we can do to discourage crime is preferable.
James Campbell:
And speaking of video surveillance, again, especially for these outside self storage areas, a lot of times they're obviously multi buildings, a lot of them are not interconnected, they have no networking or anything like that, how do we tackle some of those challenges to actually get a system in place?
Ben Larue:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it entirely depends on what level of infrastructure we have to use and that can be in the most basic sense, do we have power in the building? If we break it down and say we have power in the building and we don't know how it's going to connect to the other building, we could put technically a standalone system in that building. We could have an outdoor rated NEMA enclosure on the outside of that building, a little recording device in that enclosure, cameras on that building will run back to that enclosure and there you go.
Micah Shearer:
My install team would have my hide if I did not remind you that putting an NVR in an unair-conditioned NEMA box is pushing the limits there just a little bit. Switches function a little bit better in that environment. NVR is a little riskier.
Ben Larue:
Exactly. Micah makes such a great point, you're truly starting to introduce multiple links to a chain and the longer the chain gets, the more chains or the more links, the easier it is to break. So, that's definitely not ideal or recommended, but in the most basic premise, in the basic sense, that's possible. Exactly. From there though again, if we understand the power and the infrastructure in the buildings, then we can start designing systems around that infrastructure. Many of the sites myself and Micah have been able to work on, we know building X, Y and Z might have power, building X has internet so now we can start distributing that signal throughout the facility using some wireless antennas. And I don't know if Micah wants to speak to that a little bit more specifically, but...
Micah Shearer:
You pretty much have two prime strategies. Either you've got underground conduit in between the buildings and hopefully it's clear and you can pull the cable through that, that's going to have the advantages that you don't have these multiple pieces of equipment that can fail or that you need to maintain and it's going to have an advantage that you don't actually have to have power in those outbuildings because the cable is going to be carrying that. Realistically, in a lot of situations where you're retrofitting that hasn't been planned for ahead of time, so you can't run low voltage cabling in the same underground conduit that you've run power for example. So in those situations as Ben has referenced, we typically do a wireless back haul and we can put that NEMA box. NEMA just stands for like weatherproof rated enclosure. It's a specific rating on the side of the building, and put all of the wireless back haul equipment inside that.
Now, that does require that that building has power. So sometimes that's a little bit of an obstacle. But we found typically we can be really strategic about where we place cameras and where we place those NEMA boxes so that you can limit the number of buildings that you need to ensure you get power to. And from there, it's just running the cable from sort of that, we call it an IDF, sort of that hub of equipment out to the cameras. The other thing we see being a consideration less because it's an obstacle and more because it's choice you have to make based on cost is where you can run that cable. If you can run it inside the building, that's going to be your cheapest and your quickest option. A lot of times you can't run it inside the building cause that means running it through individual storage units and people don't like to do that for obvious reasons.
You can run it on the outside of the building, it's perfectly appropriate to put it underneath the eaves, use some outdoor rated cable. There's no issue with sort of the longevity of that cable. But considering how many people are on and off these properties, a lot of times folks still want to put that exterior cable in conduit for aesthetic reasons and for security from tampering so that somebody can't walk up and just clip the cable. Considering the buildings are usually not that tall, you're usually looking at... What do we usually see, Ben, max of 10 foot?
Ben Larue:
Yeah.
Micah Shearer:
Maybe 12 foot almost buildings, does mean the cable usually runs in an accessible location and that's where that conduit comes in. Conduit's not cheap, there's cost of materials and there's a fair amount of labor to put that in place. So that's also where that strategy of that system design comes in place. But then I have gone back multiple times on, if we put all the cameras here, do we get the coverage we need and maybe if we move this camera from this building to this building, then I can eliminate a 200-foot conduit run and I can save folks 1,000 bucks right there. So it's a lot of strategy and getting you the most coverage without just getting buried in those infrastructure costs.
Matthew Nederlanden:
If I could even provide a little bit of a higher level overview for anybody who might not be in this industry, on explaining what makes this so challenging compared to other industries. Typically, when you're doing a surveillance system, when you have more than one building, you increase the complexity a great deal. Especially if you don't have internet at another building, so sometimes you see this with car dealerships where they've got a main sales center that has their internet and their computers and all of their sales staff works in it, and then sometimes you have an ancillary building that might store supplies or might be their mechanic shop and that may not have internet. You're always going to increase the complexity every time you add an extra building that doesn't have those same infrastructure. The really unique thing... Go ahead.
Micah Shearer:
I just want to say, and with a storage unit, you typically, or storage facility, you will typically have five, six, eight, twelve individual buildings.
Matthew Nederlanden:
The number of those is just substantially larger in this industry. And even beyond that, sometimes you have an ancillary building who has no power whatsoever because you might be renting somebody a storage space that has power because it is a storage space that is air conditioned, and you might be renting somebody a storage space that doesn't have power because it didn't need to be climate-controlled. And so storage has a really unique challenge in the fact that sometimes you have a building that doesn't even have any power and that really increases the complexity in terms of designing the solution because if you're designing a solution for let's say a house, you put up your cameras, they're on the side of the house, you know that wherever you plug them in, you probably have an outlet.
And with a storage facility you may not have internet at any of these locations, you may have to pipe it back to a central location to have internet and then you may not even have power locally. So those sort of challenges are why we need to know so many of those things upfront about the infrastructure, because those challenges are not the same in most other industries. If you're building a hospital and you've got eight different hospital buildings on your campus, it's almost guaranteed they all have internet and power, and that is not always the case in this industry.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely. And when we reference power, for those of you who maybe are acquiring a facility or those of you who are thinking about designing or building a net new facility when we're speaking to power, that doesn't necessarily mean a beautiful 110 volt outlet just already ready for us to plug into. That's really unrealistic. What power might look like though is in the form of security lighting is very common on these buildings. If those are present, usually means that there's power there. Are they running on a loop or 24/7? Those are some things that we would want to dive into later on, but...
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, we've discovered frequently they're on timers. So, if your circuit is cutting off farther up the chain right on a certain timer and you connect your security cameras to that circuit, you're also turning off your security cameras. So there's an additional just thing that you have to check and work through when you're setting that up.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely, absolutely. But if you're a net new facility, you should be considering security lighting for these buildings regardless, that means that these buildings are going to have power. When you're running the conduit for that power, make sure you're running separate conduit for internet infrastructure or CCTV's infrastructure like this. That's ideal. If you're acquiring a facility that's already existing and you're like, "Hey, I have no idea. I don't know what type of infrastructure I have." Look at the buildings, do they have exterior lighting? If they do, it means we've got power in that building. Now, let's try to figure out some of those minute details like we just mentioned. Are they on a timer? Are they 24/7?
Micah Shearer:
We've talked about a lot of these additional obstacles that go with these storage facilities, but one of the nice things is because we're doing everything outside for the most part, Google Earth, if you're somebody who's acquiring a lot of different facilities and you're trying to figure out your plan, you can figure out so much by just pulling up the address, looking at the street view, as Ben just said, look, is there a light on that building? Okay, you've got power. You can figure out later if it's on a timer, maybe you have to contract for some extra electrical work, but you know you've got power. And from that top, down shot we can look at, do you have line of sight between the buildings for wireless back haul? Sometimes I can even see a junction box on the side of the building and say, "There's probably some underground conduit there." There's a lot you can tell before you even step foot on site.
Ben Larue:
Totally, totally, absolutely. And if you're considering reaching out to a company, a security firm like ours for help in this type of need, pictures are our best friends. As many pictures as you have feasibly possible is ideal. If again, you're in that boat of like, I literally have no idea what infrastructure you could be talking about, snap pictures of the outside of the buildings, the inside of the buildings. If there's a unit set aside for administrative purposes, take pictures of that, the inside of it. Because more often than not, we can find things that might not be present to an untrained eye. So, pictures are your best friend.
Micah Shearer:
If you've got existing equipment in your office or in that building, take a picture of the back, Ben can look at that. And anybody on our team can look at that and they can tell you, is that an IP system? Is that an analog system? Based on that information, we know a lot about what our options are.
Ben Larue:
Totally. And final thought on that is really we would just also would love to know, and it's important for you too, what current security measures, security systems are in place? Do we have a gate that has access that you punch a code in to get in? Do we have a perimeter fence? Are there things like that in place that we might be able to work off of? Things like that always help us as well.
James Campbell:
I think covering maybe that process a little bit, I know we just talked about it, but what does that... So if somebody owns and maybe they just bought this new self-storage place and they're trying to increase the security as the new owner, that process, what does that look like from their perspective? Most of these guys aren't going to know the difference between wireless and what the best solution is there, how would you guide them through? You're going to start with the floor plans and Google Maps or actually Bing maps, the bird's eye view. I'm not sure if you looked at that, it's actually pretty nice.
Micah Shearer:
Oh, okay.
James Campbell:
Yeah, I use that for this. Yeah, so you're going to look at that, and what's the next steps going to be for different customers?
Ben Larue:
For me, I always try to ask a client, someone who's acquiring a facility, how much communication or dialogue they've had with the previous owner? Or, if they're going to be keeping on the manager that's running that facility? In some cases that might be the case. There might be a dedicated manager running that facility. They're going to probably have the most in-depth knowledge about what's currently onsite and "how things have been done". For those rural facilities, maybe those smaller facilities who don't have dedicated managers, I'm always going to ask how much can we leverage the prior owner to try to divulge and really get, I don't know, I call it kind of investigative work. It's like being a detective in a way. Really trying to figure out if we can talk to that maybe previous owner to understand what type of things they put in place.
Let's say none of that is possible and we've got this facility, absolutely try with site plans first. And then again like we mentioned, walking through, "Hey, is there a fence? Is there a gate? Do we have lighting on the outside of these buildings? Do you have a unit that's set up for administrative purposes? Is there internet on the facility?" All these type of questions would be some of the first questions that we'd be asking. And then again, most importantly, what level of access does that owner, does the person acquiring this site have? Do you have the ability to drive by and take pictures for us? That's usually the first course of action. First chunk of time I spend is diving into those kind of minute details about the site itself.
Micah Shearer:
And usually by the time Ben's worked through that process, he's gathered what information can be gathered. He's worked up, here's my best design based on the information we have. Then it gets kicked over, if you're looking for installation services, to our services team. And we're going to look over those plans as well, and then we're going to send somebody on site just to confirm. So if Ben finds out, they're pretty sure there's underground conduit between these buildings, so we're going to design a plan that takes that in mind or takes that into account. Ben's also going to be real careful about where he suggests placing those cameras to minimize the additional infrastructure work. Even assuming if we discover onsite that maybe there is an underground conduit, we're going to do a site survey, a technician is going to be tasked with confirming that infrastructure's in place.
If it's not, he'll kick that back. We'll do a site redesign and we'll go from there. There are always unknowns, there are always question marks. Even with underground conduit, even if we say, "Yep, it's there. Yep, it looks like it's got coax cable learning through it that we're going to pull out," because you can't reuse coax cable for obvious reasons. Sometimes you get on site and you start to pull that and you realize it's crushed halfway through and we have to go back to the drawing board and that's just all sort of part of this process. And I think one of the advantages of working with a team, because you're going to run into those things and that's going to take some time to problem-solve and pivot and figure out what the solutions are.
Ben Larue:
To piggyback off what Micah just said, I would say more than anything, the person inquiring about these services should know things will change. No matter how much we get set in stone, no matter how much we design and try to implement a solution, things will absolutely change. And that is just the nature of multiple buildings constantly outside exposed to the elements. Like Micah mentioned, crushed conduit, conduit filled with water, there's a whole host of things that could happen.
James Campbell:
Just to kind of recap the process a little bit, when it comes to doing installation, at least with us, we're going to start with the general information gathering process. We're going to make some assumptions and then we're going to verify them by having somebody there on site and actually make sure that things are as we believe. So what about do yourselfers, what kind of split do you see with that? Do you see people who self-install for self storage as well?
Ben Larue:
Yeah, actually quite a bit. You can save tens of thousands of dollars doing this work by yourself. And believe it or not, most self storage facilities that I've worked with in the DIY space work with an electrical contractor or an electrician on a fairly regular basis. Again, a lot of these sites are going to have automated gate access or security lighting with power requirements, so most of the time I would say two thirds of the people I've spoken with, clients that I've worked with that DIY, do it themselves, have an electrical contractor that they have kind of in their pocket, so to speak.
Micah Shearer:
Ben, are you typically seeing them leaning on that contractor to handle the structured cabling portion since that's sort of the biggest overlap with electrical work? And then are these DIY folks typically hanging the cameras and then configuring the system with the help of our support team? What portion of the work are they utilizing the contractor for?
Ben Larue:
Definitely. Always utilizing that electric contractor for that structured cabling piece, because that's what their bread and butter is. That's running cable for them is-
Micah Shearer:
Honestly, that's the hard part.
Ben Larue:
Exactly. And-
Micah Shearer:
The other part is time consuming, but it's not challenging in the same way.
Ben Larue:
Exactly, exactly. Not challenging in the same way. And it all depends on how handy and how much time is dedicated from the owner of that facility or the manager or the level of expertise, not that much is needed. Micah mentioned cable's the most difficult part, our support team can remote configure the system in terms of settings and customization feature, all that stuff. Really the most difficult part after cable is put in place is hanging the camera. So standing on that ladder, hanging it and aiming it properly.
Micah Shearer:
Well, I'm crimping the ends, which again, it's not that it's rocket science and we have guides that walk you through it, you're just not going to be as fast at it, basically.
Ben Larue:
Exactly.
Micah Shearer:
The guy who does it all day every day has built up that expertise. But you absolutely can do it.
Ben Larue:
Exactly. And again, it comes down to that time-
Micah Shearer:
No, maybe not that.
Ben Larue:
That's so funny. No, it's true. And that comes down to that time versus savings aspect. If you're an owner and maybe this is a hobby of yours and you're acquiring this as just a second business or second financial object for you, maybe you don't have the time, the hours or day it might take to set up and configure this type of system. So maybe going with a professional install to do that on a much quicker basis would make sense. But if you do and this is your full-time job, then again you can save tens of thousands of dollars doing it yourself.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Just to be clear, I'm terrible at crimping cable.
Micah Shearer:
Well, it's more like colorblind craft.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, well, that does not help.
Matthew Nederlanden:
It's hard when you're colorblind to pick out the colors of six different cables-
Ben Larue:
Absolutely.
Matthew Nederlanden:
That are separated by color.
James Campbell:
Yeah. One last question I do have about do it yourself is, so we're talking about floor plans and kind of camera placements, is that something you still working on with the do-it-yourself? Are you still going to offer them a floor plan and advise them where to place cameras and then deal with the infrastructure even if we're not the ones professionally installing it?
Ben Larue:
That's a really great question, James. Yeah, we definitely won't leave you hanging. All of our consulting services from gathering that information, fact finding, verifying building site plans, recommending of camera locations and camera types, absolutely, our team will be able to help every aspect of the way. Really DIYers, the main portion of the project that it's going to be on them is going to be the physical implementation, the actual physical running of cabling, hanging of camera, those type of things. And also don't think that we can't help or step in, you can absolutely tag us in if you need to. You dive into this thing and you're like, "This is kind of over my head." Well, hey, that's what we're here for. Let's get a team on site as quickly as possible-
Matthew Nederlanden:
You've even had people come back to us with sort of partial projects. They did part of it and they found something like, "I went to run the conduit through three out of four of them and it worked great, and the fourth one was filled with water. I need help." That's not rare at all.
Ben Larue:
Totally. And one final piece here too is that we do have that 30 day return policy. A lot of this time we spoke to earlier this kind of implementation and reiteration of projects as they go on, the same might be true for the cameras. We might get in a position where we think this camera's going to work best in this situation, but then we get onsite and realize, "Man, if we actually had a more high-powered camera, we could capture even more." So let's get that camera returned, let's swap it out with the right one. All this can happen on the fly, whether you're DIY or install services.
James Campbell:
We talked a lot about video surveillance. What other solutions are there for a self storage facility? Are alarms part of that typically, access control? Let's start with alarms. Is that something that you usually see included in these?
Ben Larue:
They certainly can be. I think-
Micah Shearer:
Not on the exterior facilities as much. Yes?
Ben Larue:
I was just going to say, yeah, not so much for exterior or-
Matthew Nederlanden:
Think these other products are going to break down by if your interior or exterior [inaudible 00:33:56].
Ben Larue:
On almost all cases, yeah. Absolutely. The only reason I say in almost all cases, because I have worked with a client in a self storage facility who wanted to use biometric fencing sensors on the exterior of his fence, that would be technically falling to the category of alarm or PIDs, perimeter intrusion detection, but that's very rare, and honestly, not recommended in most cases.
Micah Shearer:
That's extremely expensive. And it's not that it can't work, it absolutely can. It is very expensive.
Ben Larue:
Very expensive. If we want to focus on the two different outside versus inside, and we start with outside first, I'd say first and foremost above anything else, let's consider using a fence when it's able or we have the ability to. Outside of fencing, the next consideration I would always recommend, and probably the first before fencing quite honestly is security lighting. The best possible defense is a well lit area at night. And I think that is an implementation that should be thought of whether you're retrofitting or you're building net new. So those would be the first two things would be security lighting and fencing.
And then if fencing's possible, and we want to look into a gate mechanism, usually some of the first things thought about when we're talking about exterior facilities. And then in terms of that gate, do we want to start restricting access? Do we want to actually implement some type of access control system for that gate? And then we could start diving into some of the access control portions, but what am I missing on the exterior outside facility?
Micah Shearer:
You're definitely in that circumstance, as you're referencing, so now you are talking about different trades, different professions, different subcontractors. The person who installs your actual physical gate is not the person who's going to manage your access control.
Ben Larue:
That's a really good point.
Micah Shearer:
They are going to have to work together. The access control system that we provide, we love it. It's great. It's cloud-based. It definitely can integrate with gates, but you're talking about like there's a communication point there that has to be coordinated between our reader that says, "Oh yeah, that person can come in," and all the mechanisms that act to open and close the gate.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely.
Matthew Nederlanden:
For an exterior facility, you've also got to ask the question about whether or not you have a cash register office area, that sort of space. And you may want to have an alarm system specifically for that, especially if you have a lot of cash-paying clientele. So you may see an alarm in that area, but not necessarily on the storage doors, for example.
Micah Shearer:
That is where our alarm system would work really well. It's fairly small, it is commercial grade, but it is I think really well positioned as far as complexity for that kind of a location.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, definitely. And then the final, and we've talked a lot about this part is the video surveillance aspect is having video surveillance up, trying to maybe utilize cameras with active deterrent features that can sound alarm, sound warnings, flash lights, those type of things.
Micah Shearer:
They're meant to startle and deter.
Ben Larue:
Totally. Totally.
Matthew Nederlanden:
To make it clear that someone is observing you. And one of the biggest ideas of a camera system is you don't want it to be [inaudible 00:37:27], you want it to be obvious because it deters crime. It moves the crime to someone else's location. Yeah.
Ben Larue:
Exactly. Exactly, 100%. And then the final piece I just wanted to mention on video surveillance was becoming more popular nowadays is this professional monitoring aspect for the actual video evidence. And again, you're starting to introduce more costly solutions every step of the ladder you climb there, this being the most high-end top rung of that ladder, but the capabilities of literally having that video surveillance being professionally monitored and dispatching authorities based on different things taking place, that's a whole different conversation to be had, but something you should know, and at least know that's available to you.
Matthew Nederlanden:
And there's a provider in my area here who creates a sort of upcharge better version of their storage that has an alarm on it. Do you think that that sort of thing will start happening more frequently? Not necessarily every unit, but sort of the higher grade, the climate controlled unit, then the package above that has its own sort of monitoring. Do you see that as a potential way for storage companies to in fact differentiate themselves from their competition?
Ben Larue:
And that I guess is a perfect segue into interior and climate controlled unit.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. Let's talk about the differences that an interior space would have.
Ben Larue:
Definitely, I think first and foremost is the door access to the actual facility itself that absolutely should have some type of either access control capabilities that's going to be a lot more user friendly for your clientele than a lock and key. But then do we want to arm that door with an actual alarm that's going to dispatch authorities if it's not supposed to be opened during certain times?
James Campbell:
So you guys are saying access control, for people who may not know, what is access control?
Ben Larue:
Yeah. Wow, that's a really great point. So there's really three main components to an access control system. You've got your locking hardware in this form, it's going to be electronic locking hardware. You've got your reader, your high frequency readers, this is the way you actually access that hardware. And then that all talks back to the third component, which is a controller. That's the kind of brains of the system, that's really what communicates the reading device to the locking hardware and so on. That's usually the simplest way that I can put it.
Matthew Nederlanden:
So instead of a key, I would walk up and either have a fob or a card or even a cell phone and wave that in front of the reader and that's going to let me in, but it's only going to let me in if I'm on the list and I'm trying to access it between the hours I'm allowed. So, Ben might be allowed 9:00 to 5:00 because he rents a space and James might be allowed 24/7 because he's a contractor or whatever.
Ben Larue:
Totally. The worst case scenario for a self storage facility, a climate storage facility with a door access, worst case scenario is doing a traditional lock and key. Imagine trying to get that key back from a client who's unhappy with you. Imagine trying to get that key back from a client who maybe isn't the best with keys, it's virtually impossible. And that means you're changing locking door sets on a monthly, bimonthly basis.
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah, and that's a $1,000 a pop expense. It's really expensive to bring a locksmith out and-
Micah Shearer:
It's basically handling the door hardware part of an access control installation every time you need to replace the key.
Ben Larue:
And that's just per door. Imagine if you have four doors for the facility and you have three or four of these buildings in your total ecosystem, the cost can be exponential. And that's why these initial upfront costs for access control systems although do pose this like, "Oh my gosh, that's extraordinary."
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, it's not cheap.
Ben Larue:
It's not cheap at all. But the ability and the total cost of ownership is really what hits home here. And it's the fact that you can, like Matt said, restrict access, grant access really on whatever basis you want. If you start off with your facility being a restricted facility and it's only open during business hours, that's great. If that all of a sudden changes because you realize there's a market now for 24/7 access, easily accessible and changeable within the system, and that's why we would point you to access control, for those capabilities.
Micah Shearer:
And you're going to want to look for a system that is cloud-based so you can log into an interface when you're not on site and just say, yes, add that person. No, take that person away. One of the things I love about ours is the cell phone access. I don't have to physically hand somebody a fob or code it or do any of that,. I can send somebody a link to their email. They don't even have pull their phone out of their pocket. I walk up to the door, I wave my hand, it recognizes my phone and I walk in. The simplicity of... And there are some other systems that offer similar features, but one of the things I really like about ours is that simplicity of management and simplicity of just experience when you're moving in and out of the door as a user.
Ben Larue:
Totally. I just-
Matthew Nederlanden:
I mean, that's a... Sorry.
Ben Larue:
No. No, you're all right. I was just going to speak to what traditional access systems might look like versus what a hybrid cloud solution like we offer looks like. So, traditional systems are going to be systems that are only controllable on premise, physically onsite, you're tapping into that controller, that main brains of the unit and you're saying this key card belongs to this person, give them this access. It's a very manual process, can only be done on premise. Now you've got to keep track all these key fobs. Versus a hybrid cloud solution like what we offer through open path, you now have the ability to manage the system first, literally on the cloud, you just open a Google tab or you just open the platform and start managing it.
And then you have the ability to give things or the readers have the ability to use things like Bluetooth from your phone. So you're actually not issuing a key card every time, you're simply creating an account for this person. This person downloads the app to their phone and that's their access. So not only does it make creating these accounts and issuing access much easier, these cloud systems allow you to restrict access, take access away exponentially quicker, so quick. And it's what? Click of a button.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. And if you're managing multiple facilities, you have the ability to have that handled in a centralized location instead of needing to handle it at each location or train each office manager. You can centralize that.
Ben Larue:
Exactly.
Micah Shearer:
One other thing to add too, in terms of talking about traditional access control, we do run into people who have a more traditional system that's a little bit clunkier to manage but is still an access control system. One of the nice things about the open pass system as well is that it's agnostic on that locking hardware. So if you've got the electrified strikes or the mag locks, you've got all that in place and you just need to change out the reader and the brain, essentially. We can do that and you can get that added benefit of the cloud hybrid without having to rip out your entire infrastructure.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely, 100%.
Matthew Nederlanden:
I want to delve into a little bit of the total cost of ownership here and how much lower it is over time. So yes, there is an expense with putting in an access control system, wiring it. There's a lot of labor that's involved with putting in all of the pieces, putting in the locks, putting in the readers, all of that stuff needs to be run through a wall. It does have an expense on it, but it's going to save you so much money over time. So think about it in the sense of every time that your onsite manager has turnover, you don't have to replace the locks. Every time that somebody loses their keys, that is one of your clients, you don't have to replace the locks.
Every time one of your clients has a flip over, you don't have to replace the locks. It's just so much easier and simpler. And the fact that you can just sit at your home and manage 45 different facilities that you own without having to have somebody like in the old paradigm of the onsite access control that wasn't cloud-based, you had to go send somebody out there and then have them do some programming of the machine. This is just point and click cloud-based, super easy, unbelievably easy, and really saves you so much money over time compared to the old way of doing this, of re-keying the door every time you've got either a client or an employee turnover.
Ben Larue:
Totally. And if you're a facility that actually issues locks per unit, you can utilize access control in that way too. So, in terms of managing your access to your physical units, if you're issuing locks and keys, then this is an easier way to manage that and actually know who has access to the unit. The easiest and simplest way self sort facilities are vulnerable is when they issue lock and key and that client, that user goes, makes a copy of that key, and now you don't know how many copies of that key has been made, you don't know now who has access to the facility. It's becoming more and more popular people renting units just for access to the site, then to open the unit, break down the wall inside the unit, get to the next, get to the next, get to the next.
Well, having access control on a per-unit basis, again, although that might sound like, "Oh my gosh, that's super expensive," you're now litigating and really minimizing the amount of unknowns that are introduced to your facility. The single most important thing about access control is your manageability of who has access.
Matthew Nederlanden:
So what you're saying then is you could give everybody with their key card the ability to walk in the front door and then a per client basis, the ability to open their door and nobody else's. No worry that they lose the key, no worry that they tell someone else the code, no worry that you've got to send out a contractor to change the code or change the access or change the lock. It's so much easier.
Ben Larue:
Exactly.
Matthew Nederlanden:
So much easier.
Micah Shearer:
What I heard from what Ben was saying was this ability to, and maybe it's less applicable if you're using a fob or a card, but if you're managing the access through that client's cell phone, theoretically you have much more accurate way to track who walked into that building, who opened that particular storage unit. I suppose somebody could hand somebody else the phone, but that you have this other data point to cross-reference if an issue happened, who was actually there.
Ben Larue:
Totally. And with an access control system, you can limit their ability to access other parts of the facility. You might have everybody in your database, all your clients have access to the gate, and then those clients only have access to the building that their unit is in. That's another aspect is that as soon as you give the gate code out, as Micah just mentioned, that gate code can be passed around a million times. That gate code could go to people who shouldn't have access to the site. And then if those buildings aren't locked, if it's through traditional lock and key, who's to say that that person doesn't also have the key or you know, just don't know where those people are going now on your site. With access control, you have the ability to manage and really restrict all of those things if you want.
James Campbell:
I think a key theme I'm hearing with all three of you is that as time goes on with a traditional lock and key system or a gate code system, that all starts out pretty well. And then as time sort of slowly goes, that code seems to start to be mixing, you don't... Yeah, everything's sort of just kind of slowly, just becomes a little harder to manage. When you first get it's going to be like Fort Knox, everyone's going to care about the code and everything like that, but as time goes on, you get more client turnover there, it seems like access control is again, that total cost of ownership goes down. I guess-
Micah Shearer:
To be able to better maintain control of the facility, you have much better line of sight into who has access to what and you have this ability to basically zero sum the system whenever you need to.
Ben Larue:
Totally, yeah.
James Campbell:
Yeah.
Ben Larue:
With a traditional gate code system, you know when the gate was opened by the code that was punched in, you have that single data point. With a true access control system one like we would be offering or recommending that we've been discussing, you then know specific users that have opened that gate at what times, when they left, those types of-
Matthew Nederlanden:
And to put it simply, a key is cheap to put in, but the maintenance costs on a key system is astronomically expensive. An access control system is expensive to put in, but the maintenance costs are almost non-existent. That's the big difference
James Campbell:
I guess going back to my main point is I think my conclusion of that is that access control, your security starts here and even maybe with the traditional key system, they're kind of up here at the beginning too, but what ends up happening is the key system sort of erodes as time goes on it seems, and access control and the security kind of stays level the entire time because it evolves much easier. Eventually you can be like, "I don't know if we want to replace the door. You probably won't use that key again." There starts to become more of a cost analysis there and-
Matthew Nederlanden:
I would take some issue with that. I would say even at the start, access control is significantly more secure because you can set up the timeframes that somebody is coming in.
James Campbell:
True, yeah.
Matthew Nederlanden:
I hand you a key and I say, "Hey, manage my warehouse," and you can come in 24/7. You're here on a Saturday. Am I watching the video feed on Saturday? No, I'm off taking a hike with my kids. With an access control system, I can hand you a code and say, "You can come in 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday." That's a big difference. That's an astronomically improved ability to have better security because you can control and know when they're there when they're not supposed to be. Why are you here on a Saturday? I don't know. I don't know why you're here. And so that's a way better system, even from the start. That being said, I do absolutely agree with you that a key system is going to just degrade over time.
James Campbell:
Yeah.
Matthew Nederlanden:
It's either degrade over time or get astronomically expensive because every time you have any sort of turnover, whether the employee side or on the customer side, you got to re-key.
James Campbell:
Another question I have as far as going back, we're talking a lot about what benefits the access control owner, a lot of these things you're talking about, being able to use your phone to access and not even have a key card or a key that you may forget or lose, to me if I'm going to rent a storage unit, that sounds like a pretty good benefit to me. I want to use my phone. I don't want to have to go and bring a key, I use my phone for everything else. Why can't I use it for my self storage locker? What kind of benefits do you think, we talked about this with video surveillance, what kind of benefits could that be for the rest of the product suites?
Matthew Nederlanden:
So my parents had a storage unit for most of my life growing up. And back in the day, they had the little garage door open or things in order to get through the gate and then a separate one to get into the unit. And the number of times that they lost those and the number of times that they had to pay the fee, they were pretty upset about it. And they had prime people for storage unit pretty much rented it for most of my life growing up. And they lost these things over and over and over again and they were constantly pissed off about it. And it's just one less thing to sort of deal with. You don't have to convince somebody to pay the $50 fee to get the thing replaced. You don't get a negative review, you don't get a disgruntled customer, you don't have to fight the fight, you don't lose your phone. It matters to you. So you keep it.
James Campbell:
And to piggyback off that, Matt, that really boils down to as a facility owner in the storage business, what type of business operation do you want to run? It is much easier to collect that MRR, that monthly recurring revenue every single month and never have to consider it than it would be to issue a fee here, now you have a disgruntled guy or client, now you got to issue another fee for this person. And, "No, now I got to re-change my locks." "And now I got to make sure my fees are adjusted to offset the cost of those locks." "And my gate got backed into so now rates are going to get..." Well, if we implement these things from the start and your business in this business is collecting monthly revenue, then do what you can ahead of time to be able to collect that monthly revenue without a hitch. And then the more that you can do that, the less churn, the less turnover you have, the more successful the business will eventually be. There we go. That's ultimately what we care about.
All right. All this is great. If somebody's interested in installation or do it yourself, how do they reach us?
Matthew Nederlanden:
Yeah. James, that's a really great point. So all of the links to the resources we've been discussing today will be in the description below. Of course, all of our contact information will be as well. And then you can always jump on the website, getscw.com. A couple of forums, there's chats, ways to contact us there. So, anyone on the team's happy to help, we're all well versed in this space and industry, and as you can tell, we kind of care about it in a nerdy way, so we're super excited.
James Campbell:
Thank you guys for watching. Thank you to our panelists for participating here today. As Ben said, reach out to us at our website, getusw.com, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.