Prosegur Security: Innovation, technology and people at the service of Primark's security
The security strategy that has made Prosegur Security the undisputed leader in its sector is based on a hybrid approach that combines the experience of its professionals with the most advanced technology and real-time data analysis, all coordinated from intelligent centres (iSOC). The security model developed jointly with Primark is a clear example of the success of this strategy.
The Primark shop opening on Madrid's Gran Vía in 2015 was a major commercial and also social event. The flagship shop paradigm, Primark-Gran Vía is the Irish fashion company's largest and most iconic shop in Spain. With a surface area of 12,500 square metres, it is a field of infinite commercial possibilities, but also a major security challenge for its facilities, which serves 500 employees and thousands of visitors.
This is precisely the challenge taken on by Prosegur Security, the division of Prosegur that has been managing, since 2006 and with equal solvency, the security of the stores that Primark has in Spain (64, including the one on Gran Vía), Portugal and the United States.
The security strategy (global for these three markets, but adapted to the peculiarities and specific needs of each one) has a strong emphasis on the detection and prevention of shoplifting, and hinges on a basic principle, described by Paulo Pina, global commercial director at Prosegur Security, as hybrid security.
‘This concept is built on three key pillars: experienced professionals; cutting-edge technology, which empowers the professional and keeps them always connected; and a strategic and real-time use of data’, Pina summarises. All of this is coordinated and orchestrated by an intelligent Security Operations Centre (iSOC): the brain that translates hybrid security theory into facts.
The ‘hybrid security’ paradigm shapes the work of Prosegur Security in the 14 countries where it operates and is at the heart of its global growth strategy.
Hybrid security is the core idea that inspires the work of Prosegur Security throughout the 14 countries where it operates today, constituting the backbone of its global growth strategy and, in the words of Pina, ‘allows the creation of customised security solutions for each customer, flexible and constantly evolving, reducing the specific risk of each one and ensuring the continuity and success of their respective businesses’.
As Luis Asunción, Commercial and Marketing Director of Prosegur Security Iberia, says, the ‘i’ in iSOC is vital, because it embodies the intelligence of this nerve centre of operations. In short, its ability ‘to process and analyse large volumes of data in real time and on an ongoing basis’. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data go hand in hand to enable agile and effective management of all ongoing security operations.
The Madrid iSOC alone', Asunción points out, ’ is capable of handling over 1,200 operators on a 24x7 basis, and that brain is replicated, with identical response capacity, in 14 nerve centres worldwide. It is in these centres that the huge amount of information accumulated by professionals assisted by technology ends up, but - as Pina points out - this information is much more than a mere accumulation of data. It is information with a lot of added value.
'The information that flows to the 14 iSOCs and that we manage with the most advanced technology, allows us to fully control the security operation, but also to generate data for its improvement and continuous adaptation'.
In short, Asunción sums up, a hybrid approach ‘that combines technology and human expertise, which allows us not only to react quickly to any incident, but also to learn and continuously improve our services’. Prosegur Security's operational platform keeps over 26,000 security guards and technicians operating in Spain in contact and exchanging data and information in real time, ‘but it is these professionals—emphasises Asunción—who interpret this information and make decisions based on their experience and knowledge of the environment’.
A fundamental synergy
The synergy between the security guards, the iSOC team and the technology that assists them both is key to the security strategy that Prosegur Security has deployed for Primark. ‘When a security guard detects an incident in a shop, he can instantly report it to the iSOC, which analyses it, evaluates the best response and provides the guards with insights on patterns of behaviour or recurring incidents,’ summarises the managing director of Prosegur Security Iberia.
The iSOC security team assigned to Primark receives solid general training, but also specific training in the retail environment and in shopping centres.
According to Asunción, the iSOC security team assigned to Primark therefore receives comprehensive training that includes, among other things, a solid understanding of its corporate culture. ‘That training covers key areas such as the use of advanced CCTV software and remote communication, conflict management and theft detection training, but also specific training in the retail environment, customer care and training in shopping centres and in the Primark business’, Asunción summarises.
The successful results of the security framework established for Primark are particularly clear to this Irish firm. 'Apart from the security risks inherent to our activity, such as theft or fraud, in our stores we ensure, first and foremost, the safety of our employees and customers. These shops draw a very high number of people. The challenge is daunting and Prosegur has responded to our security strategy by meeting the objectives we had set ourselves in the Security Department’, says Jorge Lagares del Cacho, Regional Security Manager at Primark.
Primark's head of security also highlights the effectiveness of the hybrid security model in preventing, combating and mitigating shoplifting, ‘one of the biggest factors impacting shrinkage in shops’.
The particular idiosyncrasies of each of the 64 shops that Primark currently has in Spain means that the security strategy must be adapted to the specific characteristics of each one, because, as Lagares del Cacho points out, a shop located in a shopping centre is not the same as those that open at street level, ‘in emblematic areas of large cities, and therefore exposed to risks such as protests of any kind, which can be violent, or acts of vandalism’.
It is precisely this need to differentiate the particularities of each Primark shop that Prosegur Security has understood perfectly, and not only in Spain. ‘Although Primark's operating and security execution model is essentially the same in Spain, Portugal and the United States, the environment is not. Even so, beyond preconceived ideas about what the reality is like in each country, it is our hybrid security model that allows us to adapt the security operation to what is needed in each moment and in that place’, says Pina.
Local and global at the same time
Prosegur Security is undoubtedly one of the largest security multinationals in the world, but, according to Paulo Pina, what distinguishes it and defines its business strategy is not its high quality standards—which it also has—but the very nature of its customers.
'Our clients value the fundamental role that security plays in their businesses and therefore seek security services that, in addition to being excellent, transparent, responsible and technologically advanced, create employment and added value in the countries where they operate', says Pina.
Multinationals that place their security in the hands of Prosegur Security are looking for all of this and more. According to Pina, they are looking for a model ‘that adapts to the particularities of each country and that, at the same time, can be managed homogeneously in all of them’. And that is precisely what Prosegur Security's global accounts programme offers.
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