While a UL listing is a significant achievement for an alarm monitoring service, simply following the listing guidelines of Underwriters Laboratories can be an expensive, time-consuming process. As an option, UL offers a service that evaluates a company’s operations with recommendations to facilitate the process. Having experienced it, I can say the UL service to assist the process is essential. Their recommendations saved us a considerable amount of time and money in obtaining our listing. Now the question becomes, “Was it worth it?†or “What is it worth?â€
Our monitoring service was established in 1989 as a division of our security guard company. With a commitment to offer only monitoring services – and not compete with installation companies – we operated out of a guard station with the simplest of equipment, software, and phone service. We developed a program through an equipment distributor whereby installation companies receive a year’s free monitoring service with equipment purchases. Through this process, many companies have been able to quickly grow and prosper. At the same time, we have grown from that guardhouse operation to a 2,000-sq.-ft. facility with the sophistication and professionalism of any monitoring service.