It’s been a while since we’ve done any research around the use of digital video surveillance in stores. Why? Well, for starters, most of what we were seeing a few years ago revealed that retailers still couldn’t do much with their cameras beyond loss prevention.

Sure, virtually all retailers had these sophisticated devices in every store, but the software, manpower, and overall complexity of using them for anything more than forensic analysis of in-store theft was beyond the realm of feasibility.

But recently, we’re starting to get the feeling that the tide is shifting. Vendors who offer solutions to use camera data for traffic counting, traffic patterns, merchandising effectiveness, workforce allocation and effectiveness, planogram compliance, stock-outs – even customer service – all have busier booths at trade shows. We’ve also taken a few briefings with up-and-coming solution providers who, while you may not even know their names yet, appear poised to “crack the code ” on pricing for such deeply useful in-store intelligence. We’re starting to wonder if time and technology evolution are now starting to make the “dream ” a reality.

So where does all of this take us? In part, that’s up to you. As we do every year, we’ve reserved a spot in our planned research calendar to call an audible: a blank spot topic to be decided when we see it. It’s one of my favorite things that we do here at RSR, because while it is highly valuable to announce a research agenda in the autumn of the previous year (we announced our 2013 research agenda back in the fall of 2012, available here in both quick reference format, as well as a detailed presentation explaining our rationale for each topic), it’s also one of the ways we remain flexible. Sometimes you won’t know what’s hot until you see it.

As of right now, we’re thinking about giving that slot to a report on Digital Video Surveillance, with a working title of “Video Analytics Come of Age “. We’d like to know what you think – is it a topic that would interest you? Is it something your company is currently thinking about? And for members of the vendor community, if you’re working in this space and haven’t briefed us in a while, we’d love to hear from you, too, to learn what progress you’ve made and what you’ve been working towards lately.

Please do drop a line to share your thoughts!