Specialty monitoring alerts customers to changes in critical environments that take those environments out of desired/normal conditions. These changes typically involve temperature, water, humidity, pressure, flow, and power. In order to offer specialty monitoring successfully, experienced dealers and integrators recommend “thinking inside the box.” Think about what else you can tie to your security alarm panel box that will provide more value for your customer and more revenue for you.

“When our sales people walk through a facility, they look around and ask what would happen if this freezer, conveyor belt, or other piece of equipment failed?” says David Bitton, vice president and chief technology officer, Supreme Security Systems, Union N.J. “If you’re selling burglary, access control, fire, and CCTV, you should be selling environmental and industrial process monitoring. Often, customers say they didn’t know we could do that for them.”

David Smith, director of marketing and communications at COPS Monitoring, a third-party monitoring firm headquartered in New Jersey, states, “The monitoring possibilities are endless.” COPS monitors, among other things, elevator emergency phones, blood banks, wastewater recycling plants/pumping stations, cooling/storage systems, boiler temperatures, fish egg hatching plants, and power for critical home health care equipment.

All-Guard Alarm Systems, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay area near the heart of California’s wine country, provides environmental monitoring to help wineries protect their inventories. “They may have millions of dollars of perishable product in their cellars,” notes Sean Cooke, branch manager. “Temperature and humidity are the major concerns.” Cooke adds that the company also monitors wine cellars in higher-end homes.

Sonitrol Pacific monitors for water in the USS Blueback, the submarine featured in the film “The Hunt for Red October” that is a floating exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The integrator also monitors freezer temperatures that store human brains for Alzheimer’s research. “We have found that water or temperature damage can have a devastating effect on a business or homeowner,” says Jim Payne, vice president of sales and marketing for this Washington-based integrator.

Installation Considerations

Specialty monitoring products are available from many manufacturers, including Advantech, APS-UPS, Enviro Alert, Flair, FLIR, Honeywell, Pelco, System Sensor, Tyco, and Winland. “We select products based on the application,” says Bass United President Brad Higdon. “In most cases, we combine products to create a complete system. If you have a knowledgeable, experienced technical staff, they’ll find most products easy to install. UL-mandated manuals also are so informative now that, if you can read, you can usually get products installed and operating properly.”

Higdon adds that it is important to match the product to the application, especially industrial applications. “When we’re called in for a repair or update, we often find that someone had installed an over-the-counter product that couldn’t hold up to the tough conditions of that industrial setting,” he describes.

“Ninety percent of installations are not technical,” states John Lutz, general manager, Guardian Protection Services, Warrendale, Pa. “We don’t place as much emphasis on sensor technology as we do on what’s provided by the customer’s equipment manufacturer. Commercial coolers and freezers, data center HVAC units, and other equipment often have critical limit outputs. We bring those contacts into our standard security control panel as a monitored zone. We almost always use wireless communication because landline failure is likely to accompany environmental failure.

“If customers ask us to create the means of monitoring, however, installation gets considerably more complicated and increases risk and liability. In these cases, such as setting up moisture detection monitoring for a multi-million dollar data center, we don’t scrimp on the installation. We’ll use multiple sensors, build in redundancy, and increase testing frequency intervals to, perhaps, every six hours.” Lutz adds that Guardian is “very particular” about handling water detection applications. “Water can be so damaging that we tend to shy away from it,” he comments. “When we do it, we’ll overdo it, putting in lots of sensing cable under the floor of a computer room, for example, to catch conditions early.”

Very low temperature freezers are one of the biggest installation challenges. “We won’t make the penetration for the probe,” says Sonitrol Pacific’s Payne, “because we don’t know where the refrigeration lines are in the freezer walls. But we will work with the freezer supplier to get the penetration and proper sealing.”

Supreme Security’s Bitton comments that, “we install our own hardware only when ambient temperature sensors are needed inside freezers or buildings. Most of the time, our customers tell us where we need to put our wires. We don’t get involved in industry-specific process equipment. We come in, know where we’re going to tie into customer systems, and pull wires to where they need to be.”

All-Guard’s Cooke says monitoring products are easy to install and integrate with most alarm panels. “Wireless technology makes it easier to get wires to devices in harder to reach places like wine cellars,” he says. “Easy installation means lower installation cost, too, which contributes to profitability.”

Central stations handle specialty alarms the same way they handle security alarms, but may prioritize those alarms differently. Dispatch on a fire alarm, for example, may be given higher priority than a low-temperature alarm, but “we’re talking a difference of seconds, not minutes,” says Lutz.

Pricing Points

Specialty monitoring can increase monthly RMR. Sonitrol Pacific adds a fee to its base monitoring fee for environmental monitoring, plus a charge for each device monitored. “We’d be hard-pressed to build a business strictly around environmental monitoring as a standalone service,” says Payne, “but it is a great addition to our security monitoring because customers perceive it as an added value of doing business with us.” Payne estimates that about 35 percent of Sonitrol Pacific’s intrusion monitoring accounts also use environmental monitoring.

“This work isn’t necessarily hugely profitable, but it will absolutely differentiate you from your competition,” Lutz states. “Customer risk isn’t limited to burglary and fire. There’s also financial risk when equipment is down. Helping customers avoid these problems is a win-win. They no longer look at us as someone they just buy an alarm from, but as a partner in their profitability. As a result, we typically don’t lose these customers to attrition.”

According to COPS’ Smith, “Unless there is higher signal traffic or greater time involvement, the dealer/integrator cost for critical process monitoring is comparable to security and fire alarm monitoring. That way it can be a profitable business for them and for COPS.”

To sell specialty monitoring, just let existing customers know you offer it. “When you’re talking with customers about burglary and fire, you’re talking about security systems they may never have had to use,” advises Guardian’s Lutz. “But odds are good that they’ve had an HVAC shutdown or a cooler failure. Monitoring that equipment may be even more important to them than burg and fire.” Lutz recommends talking with customers abut risk generally and asking questions to find out where their “heartburn” is. “Go beyond security,” he says. “Talk to all the major stakeholders — IT, facilities, engineering. They may provide the key to getting the sale.”

Regulations & Requirements

There are myriad codes, regulations and laws impacting environmental and industrial processes. In the food industry, any facility that manufactures, processes, handles, or stores perishable products must have a Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan that includes establishing critical limits and monitoring procedures. Do dealers and integrators need to learn about HACCP and other industries’ requirements?

Not according to Supreme Security’s Bitton. “I don’t make it a point to know what conditions are good or bad for my customers’ business. That’s not our core competency and we don’t want to be held responsible for determining what is an off-normal condition. Just tell me where to put my wires so we can send notification of off-normal conditions to the central station.”

Sonitrol Pacific’s Payne says it’s not practical to try to keep up with each industry’s specific regulations, but he tries to maintain at least a basic understanding of those affecting his customers by reading industry blogs, communicating with vendors, and talking regularly with customers. “We always ask customers to tell us about changes in their industry and any new requirements we should be aware of when we meet with them,” he says.

“There’s a lot of business out there,” concludes Bass United’s Higdon, “and I think many integrators are missing the boat by not pursuing it. The RMR potential is there. Today, it’s cash flow — not profit — that enables you to make better business decisions. Your customers will hand you the business if you present it to them. It’s not hard. Just send a quote.”