If you are an ardent student of the alarm and integrator industries, you’ve probably picked up some information about the likely future of the wholesale monitoring side of the industry. Usually, we refer to this as a monitoring center.
Before we dive any further into any aspect of that subject, please note that I have never been an operator, and I have little current knowledge about that side of the industry. However, I certainly read a lot about what is being developed — usually opinions of entrepreneurs in our industry today and what they will be using in the near future.
If you visit any commercial central station in the industry — any of them will do — you will find a fairly significant discussion among the people who own central stations, the people who manage central stations, the operators upon whom we depend, the technical people who keep them running and so forth.
A Unique Group of People
Monitoring center operators are a unique group of people. Most of them have recent certificates of completion of courses that they have successfully completed. Some of them come from standalone central stations; others come from a multilevel hierarchy.
I’m not smart enough to be able to identify or recognize what is a state-of-the-art monitoring facility. Is it composed of equipment? Is it composed of equipment and people? Is there any one technical protocol that is used by more than just a smattering of operators?
And that’s only the beginning of the questions. These queries are also worth asking: Is there a limitation on how many people central stations can absorb? How modern must the telephonic equipment be in order to be effective?
And finally, who will make the decisions on the kind of equipment to buy and how much is the buyer willing to pay for the equipment? It goes on and on.
Keep in mind that virtually any new application, any new equipment and virtually every decision that central station people will have to make will have ramifications, and they may have to live with those ramifications for many years to come.
It is likely that some manufacturers will be able to set up equipment and start operations in a very short period of time. Others, however, might have to wait for users to become totally knowledgeable about what their equipment is and can do.
Are You Ready for What’s Next in Monitoring Centers?
That invites a whole new series of questions: Is your company ready for equipment onboarding? How similar will the new equipment look as compared to the old equipment? How much will it cost? What does a checklist of all decisions that need to be made look like?
And those, my friends, are just a small handful of the questions that you will need to answer. As I understand it, the process that everyone will go through entails a huge allocation of time, money and human resources just to be able to do any kind of satisfactory job.
Every new element of building a standalone central station will require answering questions. The ones that I’ve laid out in this article are just a few. And I know for certain that every question has to be answered to get to the next question, and so forth.
Is your company ready to undertake such a large business effort? If the commitment is not solid, then the results will also not be solid. This will be one of the most complex projects any alarm business will have to absorb going forward.
Welcome to the future!
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