Alarm monitoring sales generally keep pace with new sales of monitored systems. That means that in the current era of sluggish growth in alarm system sales, savvy central station alarm companies are looking for new opportunities outside their traditional monitoring business. Although some of these are niche opportunities, they are likely to grow in importance in coming years — and often provide significantly greater margins than alarm companies are accustomed to seeing on the monitoring side.
In this article, SDM profiles five alarm companies that have successfully branched out into new lines of business. This article also explores the economics and potential returns involved with these new offerings.