A Remote Control

What can you do with a remote set of eyes on site?

• By Tom Heiser
• Oct 03, 2006

The Edwin Holmes Co. created the central station intrusion alarm monitoring business model in Boston, in the 1850s. This durable business model has survived and thrived into the 21st century, essentially unchanged. But now, pursuing growth and trying to reduce account attrition, security alarm dealers have recognized that offering customers the benefits of remote monitoring and access control capabilities represents a large, incremental business opportunity.

But now, pursuing growth and trying to reduce account attrition, security alarm dealers have recognized that offering customers the benefits of remote monitoring and access control capabilities represents a large, incremental business opportunity.

A significant threat to any remotely managed and monitored intrusion alert service, end-user attrition results from a number of causes, not the least of which is low to virtually non-existent switching costs. In this very competitive arena, accounts are switched on a regular basis due to poor service or cost-cutting competitors. So, providers are continually looking for additional service offerings to create customer loyalty and make it difficult to be displaced from accounts.

In the past, innovations like adding access control were seen to be too complicated and expensive to become a mainstream offering. This service is now becoming more accepted as a baseline in the current business climate.

Flowing From Intrusion to Access Control
Central station operators need to continue to find innovative ways to offer more services to their customer bases to increase its recurring monthly revenue business. A potential solution to combating the problem of attrition lies in getting customers to embrace creative applications. Applications include access control, video, concierge services and GPS for fleet management. Still, many businesses do not have the vision to recognize the potential applications of the additional services.

The competitive law of the jungle demands that central station owners get more creative in their level and variety of service offerings, or experience flat or negative growth.

Better Value Proposition
Dealers that offer remote monitoring and access control services can benefit from substantial incremental revenue by selling remotely managed and monitored access control while providing installation and recurring support services. This represents a large market that has been virtually untapped, until now. The opportunity applies to both the current customer base and for new customers. For current customers, a remote monitoring capability solution is a valuable add-on to any existing system. Alarm dealers can call-on and upgrade virtually any existing customer.

For new customers, providing remote monitoring and access control offers dealers a competitive advantage when competing for new contracts. A proposal that includes cost-effective, full-featured access control and remote monitoring capabilities has more value than one that does not. In addition, central station operators provide a valuable service to customers by shielding them from the responsibilities (and associated costs) of managing their own access control and security.

Push or Pull?
Who is pushing the need for creative remote monitoring applications? Are customers demanding them, or are central station operators trying to push them onto the customers? It's a chicken-or-the-egg question.

External environment drives innovations in service provision. The law enforcement community's response to false alarms illustrates this point nicely. Years ago, when false alarm rates skyrocketed, police departments implemented no-response policies. Security companies needed to provide alarm verification, and using video is one of the potential solutions to reduce uncertainty. Using an integrated access control panel and central station system with video capabilities, law enforcement officials or private security agencies are only dispatched when absolutely necessary.

Technology enables creative remote monitoring applications. The alarm industry is following technology trends, in step with the service orientation of today's business dynamic. In order to combat growing attrition rates, leaders in the security industry have used enhanced capabilities to enable creativity of service offerings to customers, pushing the envelope of remote monitoring and access control.

Business-driven remote monitoring applications. Additionally, technology's role in providing competitive advantage has played a part in the expansion of creative service offerings demanded by end users. One company, often an industry leader, looks to technological applications for a competitive advantage to address a specific business-driven need. Once the technology is applied and the model is in use, copycats are quick to follow, selling the same service to other companies in the same field or with similar needs.

Remote Monitoring Applications
End users can turn a security application into a competitive advantage for customers and the business.

Banks. A bank identified the need to make ATM lobbies a safer environment from loitering and threats, but given the size of the job, it would not be economical to have bank personnel monitoring cameras 24/7. The bank worked with a central station operator to monitor ATMs with cameras and two-way audio in each of its ATM lobbies. Remote monitoring enabled the central station to tell potential trouble makers that they are being watched and to move on.

Property Management. Creative central station operators have provided property managers with an additional way to drive revenue and cost allocation using access control applications. When a tenant needs to work after hours or on weekends, using power in the office for air conditioning and other functions an access control card is swiped by a reader that turns on the air conditioning for a predetermined amount of time. With that act, data is collected by the central station, providing a report to the property manager, who can then bill the tenant's company for the electricity usage.

The property management company is able to pass on after-hours energy management costs to tenants through the use of access control cards. The service is provided by the central station and becomes a service the property manager can provide to building tenants. The property manager does not have to manage the access control -- it is controlled by the central station.

Restaurant franchises. A restaurant franchise owner had a host of regular tasks to monitor in a number of franchise locations. It was impossible for the owner to be in all locations at one time, and he wanted a reliable and accountable record of the status of the tasks. It would have been prohibitively expensive to do this, so he contracted with a central station provider to have video monitoring of several areas in and around the restaurant locations. Central station monitoring provided the owner with a daily report of fulfillment of these responsibilities, and now the restaurants run more smoothly.

Another restaurant owner noticed that food deliveries were arriving during peak hours, and the trucks were blocking drive-through access and parking lots. To remedy this situation, the owner decided to receive deliveries after hours, but there were no employees on site to confirm receipt of delivery. Remote monitoring was applied so that when the driver arrives, he can call the central station, who remotely unlocks the receiving door and watch the delivery, confirming the delivery took place and ensuring the driver took nothing from the restaurant.

Data center. In the case of one retail bank's data center, the company had two shifts of weekend guards on payroll at the data center. For one shift, on both Saturdays and Sundays, the guard's sole responsibility was to let in the weekend package delivery guy. Having two shifts of guards, 52 weekends per year for the sole purpose of letting in the delivery guy was not an efficient use of resources.

A remote monitor access control service provider was able to provide a cost-effective concierge service solution, enabling the bank to accomplish the same result at less than half what the company paid the underused guard.

Creative use of video monitoring can play a critical role in reducing operational costs and certifying regulatory compliance.

Food processing. In this case, a meat packaging company was able to automate one of the critical steps in its health and regulatory compliance. Using random video monitoring of meat cleaning and preparation, the plant ensures compliance to strict USDA livestock preparation standards and provides a third-party report with video verification, on a daily basis, confirming that its operations are up to specification. This customer-driven use of remote monitoring was motivated by a business operations need, but was satisfied by access control and central station video monitoring capabilities.

Creative use of central station monitoring capabilities can work toward keeping business assets under observation, in their most efficient use and out of harm's way.

Fleet management. Anyone who has ever managed a fleet of delivery trucks understands that trying to keep a handle on routes can be challenging under the best of circumstances. But what if the drivers are not trustworthy? What if their level of commitment is not up to management's expectations? Perhaps some of the merchandise is missing?

GPS monitoring can alert a fleet manager to instances when a driver goes out of the expected area, alerting potential hazards or delays in arrival times. Now, overlay central station monitoring capabilities on the route check and the ability to manage this system can be much more tightly controlled. What happens when the driver goes outside the route? Send it to a central station -- they can respond to it.

Monitoring What?
Central station operators and remote monitors are always looking for new ways to increase recurring, monthly revenue and to decrease attrition. Future growth will come from those that are able to see beyond the traditional capabilities of central stations and move toward creative applications for remote management and monitoring.

Some feel the term central station is outdated because the services it provides are now more comparable to those of a data center, providing business information services to end users. Today's more creative remote monitoring uses are not necessarily security driven -- instead, alarm central stations can expand their business and customer bases by offering traditional and non-traditional services. Look around the building, down the hallways, into the front office?24/7 remote monitoring provides a level of control demanded by the ultracompetitive business dynamic.

Not Your Typical Central Station
The creative central station operator can expand its involvement with customers, and therefore, its recurring monthly revenue -- and reduce -- the likelihood of attrition.

Innovative companies will be the ones that lead the growth. The challenge for remote monitors and central station operators is to think outside the box. What other services can you offer because you have a remote set of eyes on your customer's business? Business operations information, auditing services, what else can you do with it?

These are the questions that tomorrow's remote monitoring leaders are asking today.