Kateřina Kulíšková, Business Development Strategist at Innovis, speaking at Hikvision’s 2024 Shaping Intelligence Summit in Hangzhou, China.
Innovis, the technical innovation arm of the European M2C facility management and security company, has worked with Hikvision to develop a system that transforms site access for trucks entering logistics and manufacturing sites. Called Welcomo, this system was presented at Hikvision’s recent 2024 Shaping Intelligence Summit by Kateřina Kulíšková, Business Development Strategist at Innovis.
Q: Could you please tell us about yourself and about your company? How did it get started and how has it evolved and grown?
A: Innovis is part of M2C Group which is a large facility management company with over 10,000 employees. We are headquartered in Prague in the Czech Republic and have clients in many countries but particularly across Eastern Europe. The role of Innovis, which is a technological division of M2C, is to use technology to add value to these customers and others, creating innovative solutions to improve business efficiency. My role is to act as the business development strategist. This means I’m always looking to create new opportunities with our partners which is how I came to meet the team from Hikvision here in the Czech Republic.
Q: Can you tell me about the kinds of solutions you offer?
A: Essentially, we aim to digitize and automate existing processes to improve overall efficiency. So, we provide automation solutions, video analysis systems, a remote monitoring center and, more recently, solutions designed to help customers improve the management of their energy consumption. We develop these solutions for customers such as IKEA, Coca-Cola, and Toyota in many different types of sectors, including retail, industrial, logistics, banking, and automotive.
Q: Recently you presented your logistics site access management solution at Hikvision’s 2024 Shaping Intelligence Summit. What was that like?
A: Great! In fact, I would say it was one of the most insightful summits I’ve been to for years. Any integrator will tell you how hard it is to keep up with the pace of development, especially when it comes to security technologies and AIoT. But at this summit I could speak with people from other organization and share the common challenges that we are facing. A great example of this was with energy management which is an area that Innovis has recently been working on. At the summit I discovered that this is an area that Hikvision is also focusing on, and I learned of several solutions which I have taken back and plan to implement in our remote monitoring center. More directly, presenting at the summit was a great new business activity which has already led to many companies contacting me to discuss new opportunities.
Q: Can you please outline the key challenge that your Welcomo solution solves?
A: We have many logistics or industrial clients with large sites accepting deliveries from trucks throughout the day. But getting trucks onto the site and leaving again promptly can be a lengthy, inefficient, paper-driven process. In my presentation I named this for what it is: ‘chaos’. One client told us that their old system caused such delays that it caused traffic jams of trucks on the public roads outside their facility. So, we created our Welcomo solution which is designed to speed up the whole process and to make it more secure at the same time.
Q: How does Welcomo work?
A: With Welcomo, drivers enter the main gate and are welcomed by a large Hikvision LED display which gives them simple instructions in their native language. It’s fast and efficient because the barrier gate is controlled by Hikvision’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera. This also means the whole system can present a customized welcome for a particular driver of a particular truck. If required, the system can capture full identification and verification of the driver using ID cards or passports. So, the warehouse now has real-time data about the drivers who are entering the site, the slots they have to prepare for them, and so on.
Q: Can you briefly overview the technology that you used for the Welcomo solution?
A: Welcomo is essentially a software solution which is now in its second generation. The key hardware components we use are Hikvision ANPR cameras, barrier gates, and LED displays and Welcomo as a kiosk with its own hardware components inside. HikCentral provides a single environment to integrate all aspects of the system. It is also HikCentral which enables us to integrate Welcomo with a customer’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system if required. Welcomo is also prepared for a straight integration with any existing systems on the site.
Q: What sorts of companies do you provide this solution to?
A: We’ve provided Welcomo to many companies in different sectors including manufacturing and logistics. Recent customers include the automotive giant Parker Hannifin, and Coca-Cola.
Q: How would you summarize the key benefits of your system?
A: Drivers get welcomed in their native language, and security is improved because you can identify and verify the individuals that are on-site. But the most important benefit of Welcomo is efficiency. Instead of taking 10-15 minutes for a driver to park their vehicle, go to the front gate, talk to people there about where to go, register on their paper-based system, be informed about health and safety guidelines, and so on, the whole process with Welcomo can take as little as 1 minute. This, of course, translates into important financial benefits. Welcomo essentially replaces the person working on the front gate and this, coupled with the time savings, means our customers can reduce costs by up to 30%.
Q: What are the top benefits of the partnership with Hikvision for your customers?
A: Hikvision is the leader in many of the technology fields that we use in our solutions at Innovis – and our customers know that. Working with a company with such amazing research and development capabilities as Hikvision provides a great strength to us at Innovis since our whole purpose is to innovate on behalf of our customers. But perhaps the most important aspect of the partnership from my perspective is Hikvision’s approach to collaboration and the development of joint solutions.
Q: Do you have a final comment about the partnership?
A: Yes, I absolutely love working with the people from Hikvision! For me, the Welcomo project was my first experience working with a technological partner and I have been so impressed with the way the whole team at Hikvision here in the Czech Republic – and Pavel Sutka in particular – helped with everything from the technical integration to the creation of the documentation. I would definitely like to explore more of the possibilities for how we can cooperate together in the future.
