Security Dealer & Integrator

JAN 2014

Find news and information for the executive corporate security director, CSO, facility manager and assets protection manager on issues of policy, products, incidents, risk management, threat assessments and preparedness.

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SPECIAL FOCUS: STATE OF THE INDUSTRY By Larry Folsom Finding RMR in Video Verifcation Enhancing your alarm offering with video is a key to more profits V ideo verification is an opportunity to differentiate your alarm company from your competitors and create additional recurring revenue. For my commercially oriented alarm company, for example, the number-one source of new RMR is video verifica- By offering commercial-grade monitoring with video verification, you can avoid being lumped in with the other commoditized burglar alarm providers, author Larry Folsom says. tion. If you want to gain additional RMR from the work you are already doing, then include video verification in your proposals and sales presentations every time. How do you get started? Simple — get focused. Pick a specific market segment, with a specific assembly, and go to work. You can stand out in your market by including video verification. Barriers to Widespread Adoption One factor that has been presented as a major barrier to adopting video verification is 30 that we could be creating two tiers of customers with this type of service. I do not think this is an effective argument, because we all have many tiers of customers and service offerings. At my alarm company, we overcame this by presenting video verification as an enhancement or add-on to our existing and new clients. Another barrier is that video verification has been hard to provide — it required expensive gear, lots of bandwidth, and the central stations did not easily integrate with the offerings. This is no longer true, and the dealer has many opportunities to add video verification to the work they are already doing for their clients. Whether it is a dedicated video verification system, such as Videofied (easy to install and to add to existing installations) or adding video verification services to DVRs, NVRs or IP cameras, it is now simple to add, is bandwidthfriendly and is cost-effective to provide. I think the more complex barrier to adoption has been the mindset of our industry. As I have attended industry meetings over the years, you could almost see the imaginary pitchforks as people described their feelings on this topic in the past; however, I no longer experience this in my travels and I think that our industry is on the verge of a new era of alarm verification. I believe this will lead to more RMR for the dealer, faster alarm response, less property loss and safer clients. www.SecurityInfoWatch.com | SD&I; | January 2014

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