XL-BYG Fog combats shoplifting and improves operational efficiency with Synology Surveillance Solutions

For more than a century, XL-BYG Fog has built a reputation as one of Denmark's leading retailers of building materials, garden centres, and DIY home improvement products. Across nine locations, maintaining secure stores and efficient operations is critical to delivering the customer experience the business is known for.

As the business expanded, its surveillance infrastructure became increasingly fragmented, with multiple systems deployed across locations and a total of 600+ cameras across the organisation. The camera estate included third-party IP cameras and legacy analogue cameras connected through video converters. While this approach had evolved over time, it made centralised management increasingly difficult and added complexity to everyday operations.

By 2023, XL-BYG Fog recognised that the existing environment could no longer support its evolving requirements. Like many retailers, the company faced growing pressure from organised shoplifting, credit fraud and other types of fraud - making reliable surveillance and faster investigations more important than ever. At the same time, it wanted to modernise its video platform to unlock AI-powered analytics, automation and future operational insights while protecting its existing camera investments.

XL-BYG Fog deployed a standardised surveillance platform built around Synology Surveillance Station using ten Synology systems across its nine locations.

The business makes extensive use of Surveillance Station's Centralised Management System (CMS), allowing operators at headquarters to monitor all locations through a single interface. IT and security teams can centrally manage notifications, firmware updates and surveillance policies, significantly reducing day-to-day administration.

CMS has also improved operational resilience. If a local system becomes unavailable, cameras can temporarily fail over to headquarters, allowing recording and monitoring to continue while the issue is resolved.

The platform also strengthens theft prevention through shared ANPR watchlists. When a flagged vehicle is detected at any location, security teams and store management can be alerted immediately, enabling faster and more coordinated responses. By integrating AI analytics, ANPR and video surveillance within a single Synology-managed platform, administrators benefit from simplified deployment, centralised management and ongoing administration, replacing the need to manage separate systems.

A key requirement for XL-BYG Fog was to avoid a costly replacement project. Existing third-party IP cameras and legacy analogue cameras were integrated into Surveillance Station, allowing the business to modernise its surveillance infrastructure without replacing functioning hardware.

The migration also improved the user experience. Following deployment, many employees assumed cameras had been upgraded due to the improved streaming performance, despite the majority of devices remaining unchanged.

At the same time, XL-BYG Fog wanted a platform that could support future AI and analytics initiatives

To achieve this, the business has begun selectively introducing Synology cameras, including the bullet and turrent 500 series camera range and the FC600 fisheye camera, in locations where additional intelligence delivers the greatest operational value. Built-in edge analytics process events directly on the cameras, enabling capabilities such as people counting and license plate recognition while reducing server workloads.

In warehouse collection areas, the FC600 fisheye camera has proved particularly effective, providing wide-area coverage that replaces multiple conventional cameras while maintaining visibility across large spaces.

Together with open APIs and integration capabilities, the platform provides a foundation for connecting surveillance with wider business systems and supporting future operational analytics as business requirements evolve.

As XL-BYG Fog continues to modernise its surveillance environment, Synology Surveillance365 offer a streamlined way to extend coverage to distributed warehouses and remote locations where minimal on-site infrastructure is preferred. Cameras can be provisioned, managed and monitored remotely, reducing installation effort and simplifying the rollout of new locations while supporting the business's long-term growth.

Reliable footage and intuitive search tools have helped streamline day-to-day security operations, allowing teams to locate relevant recordings more quickly and respond to incidents with greater confidence. Combined with faster review workflows and straightforward export capabilities, Surveillance Station reduces the time and effort required to investigate theft, resolve customer disputes and review operational exceptions.

Synology Evidence Integrity Authenticator provides an additional layer of assurance by enabling exported footage to be verified as untampered when required for evidentiary purposes.

Beyond simplifying platform management, the new solution has improved collaboration across the organisation. Shared ANPR watchlists enable vehicle information to be distributed more quickly between sites, supporting earlier identification of repeat offenders and helping security teams and store management respond proactively.

Centralised administration, simplified software updates and support for existing third-party and analogue cameras have reduced routine management overhead, while the platform's scalable architecture provides a foundation for future expansion through additional cameras, storage, analytics and AI-enabled capabilities as operational requirements evolve.