COPS Monitoring Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Redundant Facility
COPS opened its second monitoring center in Scottsdale, Ariz., a decade ago this month.
WILLIAMSTOWN, N.J. – COPS Monitoring, a 36-year-old company that bills itself as the largest independently owned wholesale monitoring provider in the United States, is marking its 10-year anniversary this month for providing redundant alarm monitoring.
“The commitment to help safeguard the lives and property of our dealers’ customers means that a central station must be operational 24/7/365,” says Jim McMullen, president and COO of COPS Monitoring, based here. “It is unquestionable that complying with the UL, FM and IQ certification helps us achieve a certain level of technical integrity and reliability.”
And yet, because all physical structures including central stations are vulnerable to events that can result in catastrophic failure or even complete destruction of a single facility, contingency plans are needed to ensure the continuity of monitoring services. This sense of duty to its customers compelled COPS Monitoring to be a pioneer in redundant monitoring by opening its second central station in Scottsdale, Ariz., a decade ago, McMullen says.
COPS has since steadily increased its network of central stations. Today the company operates six strategically located hot redundant central stations that serve 1.3 million monitored customers across the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.
“In addition to providing enhanced disaster preparedness and recovery, there are several other benefits to operating multiple sites,” McMullen says. “First, maintaining a team of over 450 qualified staff members is challenging in a single marketplace. Having locations in different geographical areas, gives us the unique ability to attract the most talented and professional candidates in different areas across the U.S.”
Secondly, he says, where other monitoring companies struggle to maintain acceptable lifesaving response times during severe weather, COPS has consistently been able to maintain desirable response times by overstaffing its locations outside the affected areas because each location actively shares in the signal handling.
“Finally, our six sites give us the ability to become more involved in various local and regional industry associations and to create more opportunities for face-to-face interaction with our dealers at the training and dealer meetings frequently hosted at each of our sites throughout the year,” he says.
COPS services the residential and commercial markets with intrusion, fire, PERS, two-way voice, hold-up, environmental, industrial, institutional, and other critical event monitoring. Along with its New Jersey headquarters and the Arizona facility, the company operates monitoring centers in Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Maryland.
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