Monitoring News
Every month our Managing Director, Steve Kimber, fills us in on the latest monitoring news.
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Below is an archive of the previous year's monthly columns or click here for earlier news columns.
| March 12 | February 12 | January 12 |
| December 11 | November 11 | October 11 |
| September 11 | August 11 | July 11 |
| June 11 | May 11 | April 11 |
Connections
June 2007
Hello Again,
For those who attended the annual pilgrimage to the NEC during May, you could not have helped noticing the changes in signalling technology toward the further integration of alarms, CCTV and access control.
Over the last 5 years there has been a significant shift toward integrated systems. Installer activity has grown in CCTV and Access control work whilst Intruder Alarm growth has been mostly upgrades due to false alarms.
We are all in business, hopefully to make money. One off sales of high turnover delivers high returns this year for both the Company and the salesman, but what about next year? Are you willing to risk your business on continued sales growth without increasing your recurring revenue streams? If so, what values will that put on your business? Recurring revenue streams are what allow you to underpin installation activity should you wish to do so and they help cover those rainy days when sales are not so good. Many larger installers have gone through this evolution only to return to concentrating on recurring revenue.
IP signalling which is a very hot topic at the moment is not without issues, to the alarm industry which has traditionally designed systems down to a cost, the financials seems attractive. The training requirements for installers is very important as is the technical support and backup from the network providers, it really important that you consider the issues about maintaining service when the client changes ISP, routers and or network configuration. Your engineers will be called because your equipment either no longer works or their network no longer functions.
I previously mentioned that RedCare had terminated their contract with all the ARC’s as of 31st March and a new contract has been offered to the industry. It is apparent that some ARC’s have taken the conscious decision not to sign the new contract and probably will be changing their preference for receiving dual path signalling systems in conjunction with an increase on existing RedCare line rentals to installers, so don’t be surprised if you see some RedCare price increases from some ARC’s.
At Southern & Northern Monitoring we have embraced the changes enthusiastically and will continue to provide competitive prices for the RedCare product range, so no price increases from us. Furthermore we have great incentives in place for conversions as well as upgrade campaigns for both Fire & Security, where we pay you a commission for each successful upgrade. We do all the work, you sit back and enjoy the additional revenue stream and associated commission!
Bye for now,
Steve