Britain loves a camera. Whether it’s the CCTV on your high street or the security lens above your office lift, we’re the most-watched nation in Europe. For years, those cameras had one job: catch people doing something they shouldn’t. But now, thanks to artificial intelligence and the cloud, the same cameras are pulling double shifts. Not only are they still keeping an eye out for intruders, they’re also quietly compiling the data you need to run your building more efficiently.
As Eagle Eye Networks observed in their 2025 trends report, video surveillance is now about “making operations more efficient” just as much as stopping bad actors. In other words, your cameras have moved from being passive guards to becoming proactive business analysts and, crucially, they don’t even charge overtime.
From Big Brother to Big Data: CCTV’s New Tricks
Traditionally, CCTV was reactive. An incident happened, someone fished out the USB stick, and footage was reviewed long after the event. Many UK businesses are still in this mode – one industry survey suggested that the majority of SMEs continue to rely on manual USB downloads and paper log checks. It’s very 1990s.
Modern cameras, however, are not just recording. They’re analysing live feeds, generating metrics that matter to facilities managers:
- People counting – how many entered the lobby today?
- Dwell time – how long did visitors wait at reception?
- Heat mapping – which corridors are congested, which meeting rooms sit empty?
What used to require clipboards and interns with clickers is now being done automatically. And it’s not sci-fi: AI video analytics packages routinely offer these features out of the box.
Beyond Security: Benefits for the Whole Business
Facilities Managers’ Secret Weapon
The obvious question: what’s in it for facilities managers? Quite a lot, as it turns out. By unlocking this data, FMs can run their buildings smarter and cheaper.
Smarter Energy Use
Heating and cooling are typically the largest line items in a facilities budget. Yet most HVAC runs on fixed schedules. Cameras can tell you, in real time, if a floor is empty. Why blast the heating for 200 seats when only 10 are occupied? Facilities that integrate occupancy data with HVAC can slash energy costs while also cutting carbon. Given that the UK’s smart building market is forecast to grow over 10% annually, much of it fuelled by energy efficiency mandates, this is a win on multiple fronts.
Cleaning on Demand
Cleaning is still often done by the rota: vacuum every night, mop every morning, deep clean on Fridays. Analytics lets you clean when needed. If 500 people trudged through the lobby on a rainy day, you send in cleaners. If the sixth-floor meeting room wasn’t touched all week, skip it. This is not cutting corners; it is redeploying resources efficiently where they matter most.
Smarter Space Planning
Every FM suspects certain spaces are underused, but proving it is another matter. Cameras generate the evidence: heatmaps might show the “innovation lounge” is gathering dust, while the café is jam-packed daily from noon. That allows you to repurpose rooms, adjust layouts, and design spaces that reflect actual use. In retail, this approach has long been used to optimise store layouts. Now, it’s making its way into offices, schools, and even housing complexes.
Beyond the FM Desk
The benefits don’t stop with facilities. Other departments are discovering value in the same data.
- Marketing: Footfall counts show which entrances are busiest. Dwell time reveals whether that new digital sign in the lobby is attracting attention. Retailers use this to test promotions; hotels can test lobby redesigns; universities can measure open day attendance without clickers at the door.
- Operations: Cameras spot bottlenecks. If queues at reception top ten people, staff can be redeployed instantly. In warehouses, analytics highlight inefficient routes. Over time, this data helps redesign workflows.
- Security (supercharged): Security still matters, but AI makes it proactive. False alarms are filtered, loitering is flagged, and number plates can be read without special cameras. Multi-sensor devices now cover entire car parks where once three or four cameras were needed.
Each department benefits differently, but the common thread is the same: better data, fewer blind spots.
The UK’s Slow Dance with Cloud CCTV
If this sounds like a no-brainer, why isn’t every building doing it? Because the UK market is, frankly, a bit stuck. Cloud CCTV penetration here is estimated at under 1% – despite our reputation for loving surveillance.
The reasons are familiar:
- Legacy systems: Many sites still run on DVRs installed a decade ago. They work, so they stay.
- Installer inertia: Traditional security integrators make money on hardware sales and maintenance contracts, not on SaaS subscriptions.
- Cloud scepticism: Many facilities managers worry about sending footage offsite, even though cloud providers typically encrypt and back up more reliably than on-prem boxes.
- Fragmentation: Buildings often have CCTV from one vendor, access control from another, and alarms from a third. None of them talk to each other, so managers are left juggling multiple dashboards.
The result: lots of cameras, little intelligence.
A Unified Platform: One Interface to Rule Them All (No Rip-and-Replace Required)
This is where Nexora and similar platforms come in. The vision: unify CCTV, access control, alarms, and analytics behind one cloud interface, without making clients rip out existing hardware.
The Nexora approach is vendor-agnostic, leaning on standards like ONVIF for cameras and open APIs for other systems. In practice, that means your existing IP cameras can often be integrated out of the box. No forklift upgrade required.
The benefits stack up:
- Simplicity: One login, one dashboard, instead of four.
- Flexibility: Add or remove devices instantly, no procurement circus.
- Cost: Predictable subscription fees instead of surprise maintenance bills. Nexora estimates customers can cut total costs by 30–50% over five years compared with legacy systems.
- Scalability: Whether you run ten cameras or a thousand, cloud management handles it without additional racks of hardware.
This matters because even the leaders in cloud access and CCTV tend to solve half the problem each. Some excel at access, some at video, but you end up toggling between them. Nexora’s bet is that facilities managers want all of it in one place.
Integration without Aggravation: Tips for Upgrading
For those considering the leap, a few practical lessons:
- Check ONVIF compliance: If your cameras support it, integration is straightforward. If not, bridges can cloud-enable them.
- Don’t rip everything at once: Pilot the system in one site or on one floor. Prove the ROI, then expand.
- Choose forward-thinking partners: Some integrators are cloud-savvy, others aren’t. Look for those certified with modern platforms and comfortable with SaaS.
- Win hearts and minds: Bring your IT and security teams along. Show them how false alarms drop, and remote access makes life easier. Adoption sticks when staff see direct benefits.
Some CCTV providers are cloud enabled, as are some access control manufacturers. Some offer dashboards for each but platforms like Nexora exist to make it seamless for managers who don’t want to have to stitch it together themselves.
The Quiet Revolution in Your Lobby
CCTV used to be about catching shoplifters and the odd dodgy staff lunch break. Now it’s about saving energy, guiding cleaning crews, optimising space, helping marketing test signage, and giving operations managers real-time bottleneck alerts.
In other words, cameras are no longer just watching. They’re running the show quietly in the background.
For UK facilities managers, the message is clear: don’t see CCTV as a sunk cost. See it as infrastructure waiting to be leveraged. And while the UK has been slow to move (with less than 1% of systems cloud-based) the direction of travel is obvious.
So next time you glance at that little black dome in the ceiling, remember; it might not only be keeping you safe. It could also be deciding whether to turn down the heating, summon the cleaners, or flag that Bob from Marketing keeps sneaking in without his pass.
And if you’d like to know how to make your cameras work harder without working you harder, companies like Nexora are building exactly that.
