Monitoring Roundtable: Leading Providers on Overcoming Pandemic, Supply Chain Issues & More
Having proven their mettle maintaining services during the pandemic, wholesale central stations are continuing to bring security dealers evermore value and revenue opportunities. Leaders from the industry’s top providers explain how. Also find SSI’s new monitoring provider directory.
Acadian Monitoring Services is among the 12 leading central stations SSI spoke to in this year’s Monitoring Roundtable. (Courtesy of Acadian)
In what ways do you help contracted security dealers increase RMR?
Ron Bowden, Director of Sales & Dealer Development, UCC: UCC has an entire business development team that works with our dealers to provide them “real-world” ways to grow their business, increase their sales, lessen attrition and increase their RMR with both new and existing subscribers — all with spending little or no money. This is accomplished both in one-on-one sessions with our dealers, organized webinars and in more than 30 “Grow Your Business” in-person seminars throughout the country.
Andrawos: The pandemic forced us to think of business continuity from a broader perspective. We learned that we needed to enhance our ability to respond and plan for unanticipated situations to ensure our business continues to be in an ideal position to support our dealers during these situations in the future. There is no question that the relationship with our dealers has evolved, and it will have a lasting impact on how we conduct business in the future.
To serve our security dealers better, we are committed to helping them retain customers and find new opportunities simultaneously. NMC has always prided itself on being a long-term, supportive partner to our dealers — the pandemic allowed us to reflect on how we can further improve and elevate our collaboration.
Hertel: Rapid focuses in two areas. First is to be the one-stop shop for all their monitoring needs. We literally do it all, so they don’t have to break up who is doing what. We support all the current panels and platforms with the most integrations into them than anyone else out there and we have all the UL and regulatory boxes checked. Second is our nonmonitoring service offerings. One example is our cybersecurity and identity theft program powered by one of the largest and recognized insurance companies in the world. Dealers can enroll their customers right from our secure dealer portal, RapidWeb. These offerings not only help with attrition, but also add directly to dealers’ bottom line.
Brandon Niles, Director of Operations, Acadian Monitoring Services: We provide a wide range of video services that we can customize to our dealers. Additionally, we resell equipment and software to our dealer partners to help them gain as much margin as possible in dealing with their customers. We are emphasizing our video services and putting greater priority to higher RMR services such as video concierge and gate management.
Matthew Brandon, Director of Sales, AvantGuard: First and foremost, AG is committed to providing the industry’s premier monitoring service, with caring operators and dealer support representatives at the core of our offering. If our dealers and customers are well served, our dealer partners will grow and succeed. Also, our suite of dealer tools, dealer dashboard, and dealer services are constantly being updated and improved to help dealers be more effective and more efficient.
Mayer: EMERgency24 seeks to constantly add new services our dealers can monetize. We support the CHeKT platform, which is tremendously flexible as it works with any ONVIF-compliant camera. This is great for retrofits and new installations, no matter how complex. We now support the Ajax product line. Our PSAP Services program is a unique service we are now talking about on the national stage.
In northeast Illinois, several communities passed ordinances requiring a single source for commercial fire alarm signal management. PSAP Services enables efficiencies for the 911 center, which improves life safety in the community. We’ve been able to reduce PSAP calls, which enables PSAP call-takers to focus on critical life-safety signals. We are also able to provide real-time reporting to the AHJ regarding systems on test or systems that are generating high volumes of signals. At any time, the AHJ can know the pulse of their community.
Our strategic partnership with BluePoint Alert Solutions is probably the most profitable service our dealers can offer. This is a rapid emergency response system running on our software that EM24 monitors. Most of the installation is wireless and there is no code driving installations. Plus, you gain an RMR that is higher than commercial fire.
What are the other top challenges for your monitoring center and how are you managing them?
Andrawos: The monitoring market is changing at a quicker pace than ever before. Many products and services have changed rather rapidly over the past five years. Today’s customers are looking for products that provide higher levels of protection with greater connectivity and give them more significant control over their home or business security systems. The emergence of new services, such as verified alarm management or remote guard response to unverified alarms, will be something to watch to see its impact on our industry.
In addition, competitiveness has grown, offering homeowners and businesses more options and pushing dealers to adopt emerging technologies that will drive more interest and revenue. We think security dealers have an excellent opportunity to offer their customers additional services and value-adds to their monitoring service. NMC is in a great position to provide our dealers with the services that will increase the RMR and reduce attrition.
Rozgonyi: Swissguard’s offsite guarding service is a new solution as for decades the security market has been built on two main pillars: CCTV alarm monitoring and onsite manned guarding. Introduction of a new guarding solution takes time and requires an enormous effort to make it understood and to build trust in our solution. And companies are so busy with core activities they are challenged to dedicate attention to new solutions, even those with substantial benefits.
The other big challenge is effectively communicating the difference among CCTV alarm monitoring, onsite manned guarding and Swissguard’s remote live guarding solution. This is because market players heavily oversell and characterize their services as live monitoring when it actually is not. CCTV alarm monitoring services monitor the systems and their signals whereas our solution monitors the site’s live feeds. Live monitoring is proactive and thus preventive; CCTV alarm monitoring is reactive and more of a forensic tool for crime or damage after the fact.
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About the Author
Scott Goldfine
Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].
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