INSIGHTS
Alarm monitoring is one of the oldest security businesses. When away from one’s home or business, alarm monitoring offers the reassurance of knowing someone is vigilantly standing by. Should the worst happen — fire, broken window or intrusion — professionals will have taken the appropriate response. The right authorities will be notified by alarm-monitoring operators, providing peace of mind. Global security monitoring revenues totaled about US$40 billion, according to First Research in a July report. This encompasses residential and commercial alarm monitoring. Europe and the U.S. are the largest security system markets, dominated by ADT Security Services, Securitas and G4S. Effective alarm monitoring requires a stable infrastructure, robust enough to not miss a single signal. However, wired or wireless transmission media provide unique benefits and drawbacks. Redundancy depends on multiple technologies. Signal priority makes sense of which alarms are most important. The majority of alarms are false, wasting the time and resources of law enforcement and other first responders. Newer systems have the infrastructure to support audio or video monitoring as secondary verification. However, these systems require more bandwidth or a complete system overhaul, as more customers rely on mobile devices.
Alarm Monitoring Improves Awareness Through More Services
Date: 2011/09/15
Source: a&s International
Training
As commercial alarm monitoring does more, it increases the learning curve for operators. Large customers with a national presence are moving toward IP, which provides more information. “They can more specifically tie down when an alarm was activated, which tends to be much more descriptive,” White said. “They use it for more than security.”
“With the offering of the ‘added services,' dealers are talking about having problems with training their staff,” Lamont said. “The majority of the problem reportedly is more in terms of retraining the sales staff to better understand a company's new offering, allowing the sales teams to present the services to a customer in an effective manner.”
Continuous learning is required to keep up with new technology. “Operators have to be trained on how to use a new operating system; engineers have to learn how to integrate different hardware platforms and tech support people have to learn a new way of thinking about problems in the field,” Perlin said. “Even the installers might sometimes have to learn an entire new set of hardware to do a simple service call.”
Different management levels will require different amounts of training. “Operator training is not a big deal; the more challenging area is administrator training,” Kelly said. “It's like having a business management system like SAP — you go through a process of the software vendor asking what you want to do.”
Generating Profit
Cutting down on false alarms is a big cost saver for managing infrastructure costs. “Some customers are quite high-risk, such as travel agents or betting offices, where they hold cash,” Kelly said. “They get attacked on a daily basis and need to make sure the system works.”
Another way to recoup investments is through environmental monitoring to save energy on lighting and HVAC. “If a building has no people in it, there is legislation written to reduce lighting and heat,” Kelly said. “Switching those devices off could be a cost saver.”
The right mix of people, processes and technology makes the difference between a good and great alarm-monitoring solution. At the top of the list is connectivity, with redundancy built-in, to make sure no alarm is unanswered. A robust platform prioritizes the most urgent alarms, allowing operators to understand what is happening. Finally, dispatching the right people to respond means a clear process is needed.
In the next article, we explore the residential alarm-monitoring market and its migration toward home automation.