Paige Dougherty is an Account Executive with Verkada. She looks after Manchester and surrounding areas and works closely with the team at DMS from initial contact with customers to ensuring they are up and running making full use of the equipment. We’ve asked her a few questions about her role and her relationships with our team and customers.
How do you work with DMS and our customers?
Because DMS is so well known in the education sector, it has been great to work in partnership with you. When the initial customer contact is generated from Verkada, we are able to speak to schools confidently knowing that we bring our technology expertise to the table and DMS has the knowledge and expertise that being a technology partner to so many schools brings.
They fully understand their needs and can walk schools through the frameworks, providing tailored funding options for them to spread the cost over time and different budgets where appropriate. There is always alignment with our tech piece and DMS’ consultative side. Usually, we would remain longer in the process before passing customers over to a management partner like DMS, but we have found that the earlier we get DMS involved in the conversation, the more successful the outcome for the school.
Why do schools love your products so much?
The growth we have seen in UK education is phenomenal. There is nothing like Verkada out there for schools to totally simplify their security tech. The fact that everything is centrally managed from a single pane of glass is groundbreaking. You could have 75 schools or more on one platform.
For an IT manager it makes everything so much easier. A central platform for CCTV, sensors, access control and alarms. It definitely removes traditional headaches for the CCTV teams, providing a proactive monitoring system for all areas!
With our Out-of-Box Configuration these devices come ready to go with analytics built in. Using Plug & Play technology, there is no need for lots of cabling, a CAT 5 / 6 cable just fits in the back of each device.
Our products are all cloud-based. From a user’s perspective they can relax knowing that there is 24/7 support built into the platform which gives them autonomy to reach out via the platform to support. In most instances support will diagnose the problem and fix it quickly. Everything comes with a 10-year warranty and if something can’t be fixed it’ll be replaced immediately.
How do the products help schools in real time – can you give us some examples?
There are many instances of how our products provide so much more than traditional security tech can do. Safeguarding is top of the agenda for schools and it is increasingly important to maximise technology to increase efficiencies and free up human resources to focus on what they should be doing. Our cameras, sensors and access control can prevent incidents through live alerts once set up.
I’ve provided a few examples below of how our products can help in common situations faced by most schools:
- Children likely to abscond. It is really easy to set up proactive alerts to that the relevant people/departments get notifications if flight risk pupils cross boundaries or are spotted near an exit perimeter. You can set this up quickly by dropping their headshot into the system. You can also monitor movement around the school by pulling footage from the last camera they were spotted on and every other camera prior to map their journey throughout the school. Every person we speak to at a school is blown away by this, it is a huge asset for them as previously IT/Estates would have had to do this manually. We can also set up flight risk emails for any motion detected during school time at boundaries.
- Caretaker audits. Typically a caretaker would have to undertake a site audit every week/fortnight/month and inspect every device/area to ensure it was in working order. With our products every single device is on your platform and alerts are sent in real time of any breach, allowing your caretaker to focus and react instantly to those breaches.
- Vape detection. Our air quality monitors known widely as vape sensors not only detect vape emissions, they monitor air quality, temperature, humidity, motion and noise too. Every school who has had vape sensors installed has seen a reduction in vape incidents.
- Fire exit use. By setting up motion alerts when activity is sensed within certain areas, you eliminate the need to have a member of staff situated at fire exits when they could be doing more important work.
- Unauthorised access. By dropping headshots into the system of any person(s) not authorised to be on site (or at any site which is part of your portfolio) an alert is triggered if they are captured on camera. This allows schools to act quickly before a threat escalates. You can also search retrospectively organisation-wide. For example, if an offender has been on any school premises in your trust in the past 30 days footage will be accessible.
- Unauthorised collection. Similarly, in primary schools, if a parent or other person is not authorised to pick up a child, a real time alert will be sent to the system when that person enters the premises to ensure that the child does not leave with the unauthorised parent or person.
- Bathroom monitoring. Previously teachers had to stand outside toilet doors, perform bag searches and manually monitor activity within the bathrooms. This is a huge drain on resources and with the sensors this eliminates the need for a physical presence, freeing up teachers to focus on getting learners through exams.
- Noise level monitoring. If bathroom noise goes over certain level of decibels this could possibly indicate that bullying is taking place and teachers can intervene and disperse pupils.
- Incident awareness. The platform can be accessed on any web browser or mobile device. This means that if an incident is taking place and the teacher or staff member responding is a few minutes away - which is not uncommon on larger sites – they can watch things unfold as they make their way to it on their phones, meaning they are not going in blind but can continually assess the situation. If a fight is taking place or a fire at the location they can call additional support en route.
- Real time analytics. You can access your platform in real time and see tangible numbers – for example vaping on site has reduced by 20% this month – great stats for schools to report in their stakeholder newsletters.
What do you think makes this relationship so successful?
Both businesses are committed to helping schools deliver their digital transformation strategies. We work very well together and are in tune with who does what! Our respective skills complement each other and because DMS are on a managed services framework the procurement process is very straightforward for schools.
We both believe that this is the best behavioural and safeguarding management platform available in the UK for schools, colleges and universities.
Most importantly there is a lot of common ground and we are in alignment. DMS are on the ground speaking to schools every day and consulting on their technology strategies.
What is your role once the equipment is installed?
How it’s working well with DMS is they have the Trust-level knowledge and relationships and I take a technical standpoint with it. Following every deployment, I run demonstrations and work with the SLT teams to make sure that they are able to use the system.
New tech can be scary it is my job to make sure each school is comfortable and that they understand how the equipment works and that they can maximise all available features.
DMS will have already consulted on how it’s going to look on a wider scale and decided who needs to be involved at which stage/with which products so them already having that relationship makes it easier for me to step in and do my bit.
What would you say to schools who are looking for a more modern approach to their security issues?
Definitely speak to DMS and give Verkada a chance to wow you!
They can explain everything including implementation timelines from site assessment to install for your school. Because DMS have this relationship with us, it makes things easier. Book in for your demo and leave the rest to DMS!
Contact our team today at info@thedmsgroup.co.uk or call us on 0333 015 1900.
