Totem Ecuador

About Totem

Totem is based in Ecuador and specialises in the engineering, construction and integration of electronic security systems for companies and homes. It has two major business units: Managed Electronic Security and Fire Detection and Extinction Systems, with extensive experience in projects of great importance nationally and internationally. It currently monitors about 4,600 CCTV security cameras, making it the largest monitoring centre in the country.

Totem has developed as a technology services company with a robust infrastructure, leveraging high quality global partners. It has extensive experience in the agriculture sector, remote monitoring approximately 80,000 hectares of shrimp farms in Ecuador while also responsible for the installation and monitoring of shrimp farms in Colombia, Honduras, Panama and Peru. It also monitors cacao operations, plus 10,000 hectares of tropical fruit farms. Currently aquaculture and agriculture represent 40% of Totem’s sales, the other 60% being made up of industrial, retail and commercial clients.

Totem focuses on optimising physical guards using technology, and installs cameras, access control and alarms systems to do this. After installation, it provides 24/7 monitoring of the systems, enabling it to reduce the quantity of physical guards on client sites.

Operator optimisation

As the largest provider of video monitoring in Ecuador, Totem is constantly adding new business and additional cameras to its control room. As a result, it was having to hire approximately 20 additional people a year to manage its CCTV monitoring service alone. It decided to embark on a process of optimisation, to ensure its operators were more efficient and profitable.

Totem’s ultimate goal was to find a solution that would allow it to manage its existing sites efficiently with quick response times to genuine alarms, while also allow it to continue to add additional sites without the need to hire new staff.

Investing in the best solution on the market

Totem was looking for a solution that would reduce the number of false alarms being sent to its control room. It wanted to find a long-term partner where both companies could benefit from mutual growth. After conducting a number of trials with false alarm reduction software, Totem found that Calipsa was working better than the other solutions for a similar price.

It concluded that Calipsa was the best solution on the market for its alarm filtering needs, particularly as it was willing and able to build a seamless integration with Totem’s VMS platform, Exacqvision, a Tyco solution. This ensured Totem’s operators could connect cameras to Calipsa via Exacqvision to filter false alarms, without the need to leave the platform.

“We found that Calipsa was the best solution on the market for our alarm filtering needs”

LUIS FERNANDO URIBE BLUM
CEO

Significant reduction in alarms received per day

Since working with Calipsa, Totem has seen a 40%+ decrease in the number of alarms received per day. With Calipsa filtering out false alarms, its total number of daily alarms has reduced from 800,000 to 350,000. It hopes this will also have a positive impact on response times to genuine alarms – a metric which is being implemented currently.

Totem has also found that operator efficiency is a lot higher due to a reduced volume of alarms. As a result, it plans to further support operators’ morale and wellbeing by reducing the number of them required to work the night shift. This is possible because false alarm reduction at night reaches over 80%.

As well as supporting the performance of its existing sites, Totem plans to use Calipsa on all future installations to continue building on the progress already made.

To read the case study in Spanish, click here.