How To Improve Building Operations With a Commercial Surveillance System

Commercial real estate organizations face growing operational demands across increasingly disconnected locations and devices. With rising tenant expectations, tightening budgets, and growing competition, maintaining efficient operations and security has never been more important. Teams must balance strategic initiatives, such as improving organizational processes and tenant retention, with the daily realities of managing building systems, responding to service requests, and protecting property perimeters. 

In property management, a cloud surveillance solution can be more than just a security tool; it can serve as a central pillar of operational efficiency. By leveraging the power of the cloud with intelligent AI analytics and advanced reporting, businesses can transform fragmented processes into streamlined workflows that keep buildings secure, tenants satisfied, and management informed. 

In this article, we examine the primary issues that are proving the most troublesome for commercial real estate operations, as well as how a complete cloud video solution can provide the needed tools to elevate processes for better tenant safety and satisfaction. 

Operational Challenges Slowing Commercial Real Estate Teams Down 

Managing commercial real estate at scale is no small feat. Between coordinating multiple properties, keeping tenants satisfied, and maintaining secure, well-functioning buildings, commercial real estate teams face a growing list of operational pressures, many of which stem from the same root problem: fragmented tools and limited visibility. 

Below, we examine three of the most common challenges impacting commercial organizations today: disjointed property systems, gaps in maintenance oversight, and perimeter security vulnerabilities.

Disjointed Property Systems Create Inefficiency and Risk 

Managing multiple properties spread across cities and states is inherently complex. In many commercial real estate organizations, properties operate semi-independently, developing their own processes and workflows to manage building systems, tenant requests, and security technologies. While these localized approaches may work in isolation, they often create inefficiencies when viewed across the organization. 

Technology sprawl is a common culprit of these inefficiencies. Team members must regularly navigate between multiple, unconnected software platforms, such as commercial video surveillance systems, access control platforms, and other business systems, leading to duplicated effort, data silos, and increased potential for errors. Poor device and user management further heightens risk, creating vulnerabilities that can be exploited if access credentials are outdated or unmanaged. Ninety-seven percent of commercial real estate professionals  professionals planned to maintain/increase software investments in 2024, a clear indicator that the number of tools used to complete work will only grow. Without a way to effectively manage these systems, workflows can suffer. 

Workforce pressures compound the issue further. Labor shortages continue to affect property management teams, with over fourteen percent of surveyed property management companies citing proper staffing levels as a primary concern in 2024. The administrative burden of navigating disconnected systems only pulls managers further from higher-value work. Properties that operate on variable occupancy schedules, whether due to hybrid work trends or seasonal demand, add another layer of complexity, making mobile and remote management capabilities essential for teams that need to stay informed and responsive without being tied to a single location.

Limited Maintenance Visibility Leads to Tenant Dissatisfaction

Timely cleaning, maintenance, and building upkeep is critical to tenant satisfaction. According to research from Kingsley Associates, when maintenance response times were within 24 hours of a tenant request, satisfaction scores were markedly higher. Delays, on the other hand, have the opposite effect, reducing confidence in property management and potentially prompting tenants to explore other options. 

Unfortunately, many commercial real estate organizations still lack full visibility into maintenance operations. Limited insight makes it difficult to identify trends, such as recurring delays in maintenance requests. This inevitably creates a slower resolution timeframe, which can erode tenant trust. 

Without complete visibility into property conditions, managers can miss early indicators of recurring, predictable issues. Lacking a consolidated view into maintenance and operations makes it difficult to maintain service levels consistently across every property. 

Perimeter Security Gaps Put Properties and Tenants at Risk 

Strong perimeter security both protects property assets and reassures tenants and visitors that the space is safe and well-managed. However, gaps in perimeter management can quickly undermine this confidence. Loitering, unauthorized vehicle access, and after-hours activity in parking lots and common areas are persistent challenges for commercial properties. Left unaddressed, these issues create an environment that erodes tenant confidence, invites liability, and can directly impact retention. 

While perimeter gates and access control systems are standard across most commercial real estate properties for securing locations, having the infrastructure in place isn’t the same as having complete visibility. Without proactive insights into who is accessing a property, when, and under what circumstances, gaps are inevitable. The difference between a secure perimeter and a vulnerable one often comes down to whether teams have the intelligence and remote management capabilities to act on what’s happening, not just a record of it after the fact. 

How Intelligent Cloud Video Simplifies Property Operations

Cloud-managed video surveillance gives commercial real estate organizations a unified view of security and operations across every property they manage, something that’s difficult to achieve when systems are siloed across locations. Rather than replacing existing infrastructure, teams can build on what they already have, integrating security and operational systems into a single intelligent platform that addresses multi-property oversight, maintenance visibility, and perimeter security in one place. 

Centralize Multi‑Property Management in One Cloud Platform 

For multi-location real estate businesses, centralized management in the cloud transforms security and operational workflows. A cloud platform can unify commercial surveillance systems across all properties, bringing every location, device, and user into a single interface. 

This consolidation helps eliminate inefficiencies associated with managing siloed systems. User provisioning becomes quicker and more consistent, ensuring that access permissions are accurate and up to date. Device health can be monitored remotely, enabling proactive maintenance and minimizing unplanned downtime. 

Leveraging an open platform allows outside business and security systems to be integrated into the platform, eliminating the need to jump between solutions. Access control, environmental sensors, and other data points can be tied to video for a more complete end-to-end surveillance solution. 

When location video data is centralized and readily accessible, security, operations, and IT teams can detect and respond to incidents faster, eliminating the delays that come with managing siloed systems. 

Use Reports To Keep Maintenance on Track 

Reports in a cloud video platform provide commercial real estate teams with actionable insights that go beyond basic surveillance. Thumbnail reports, for instance, deliver snapshots from key areas of a property, giving managers a quick way to verify whether maintenance tasks are being performed as scheduled. 

This could mean confirming that parking lots have been cleared of snow during winter storms, checking that landscaping work has been completed, or validating that cleaning crews serviced common areas as planned. Reports can be generated daily or weekly, offering an ongoing view of property conditions without requiring managers to be physically present. 

By comparing these visual reports to maintenance logs, managers can quickly identify discrepancies and address them before they affect tenant satisfaction. Over time, this consistent visibility ensures upkeep standards remain high across all properties, helping build greater retention over time. 

Streamline Perimeter Security With LPR Analytics

License plate recognition (LPR) analytics offer proactive intelligence and visibility to aid perimeter management. Rather than relying solely on access logs reviewed after the fact, LPR technology enables security teams to proactively identify residents, visitors, and unknown vehicles as they enter or exit a property, giving teams the ability to address issues quickly. 

This can not only be used to improve the overall security of a building, such as if an unauthorized individual enters the parking lot, but can also be used to automate workflows. For example, a recognized resident plate can trigger a gate to open automatically, while an unrecognized plate may prompt a security alert for human review. These procedures reduce manual workload while maintaining proactive gate security measures necessary to deter unwanted access. 

By integrating LPR with other analytics, such as person/vehicle detection, loitering analytics, and line crossing, commercial real estate teams can fortify location safety while streamlining processes for team members. Together, these analytics create a perimeter security system that works smarter, reducing the manual burden on teams while building consistent, visible safety standard that tenants notice and trust.

Bring Your Commercial Real Estate Workflow Into the Future With OpenEye

To best prepare a commercial real estate business for the future, it’s vital to leverage solutions that improve oversight of multiple properties, build better tenant satisfaction, and ensure locations are secure. Intelligent cloud video surveillance offers capabilities designed to assist with these goals, enabling centralized management, actionable reporting, and perimeter automation through technologies like LPR analytics.  

These tools help lay the foundation for future growth, creating opportunities for organizational expansion and improved customer retention.

OpenEye Web Services (OWS) works alongside commercial real estate organizations in a powerful cloud video platform, helping companies unify multi-property management, maintain high tenant satisfaction through maintenance visibility, and streamline perimeter access with intelligent analytics.  

To learn how OpenEye can help modernize your building operations while strengthening security, book a demo today.