With the tumultuous changes taking place in the monitoring sector of the security industry over recent years, alarm professionals have been forced to make one of two choices: Either stay the course with their current monitoring provider whose level of service has often declined, or seek a new monitoring partner with whom they have no prior history. Regardless of the decision, their choice will have dramatic consequences for their business.

Affiliated Central offers numerous services and offerings for the independent alarm professional seeking a true monitoring partner. Along with a strong focus on placing the necessary tools at the dealer’s disposal for increased growth and customer retention, comes a superior technological environment that allows the dealer necessary flexibility and quick handling of critical issues.

In the last few months, the SurGard System III receiver — with virtual line groups and redundant processors — has been added to the vast array of equipment to be found in the Affiliated environment. This innovative product has the ability to receive more than 199 different transmission formats, customize signal profiling by individual dealer and telephone number, and memorize the customer “handshake” for faster alarm handling and reduced processing time. This addition to our lineup has revolutionized the alarm professional’s programming capabilities and offerings.

In addition to the flexibility gained by the System III, two recent improvements to our Operations Department have vastly enhanced our performance. The first upgrade has been the implementation of a Document Management System, whereby all incoming paperwork is scanned and indexed not only by dealer’s identification number but also by account number for instantaneous retrieval. Gone are the days of rifling through stuffed file cabinets to locate critical information. The second upgrade, which involved the replacement of our previous system, is the installation of a Digital Voice Recording System that records all conversations involving our Monitoring Center personnel. Before this recording scenario, any past conversations might have required hours of research with an analog system to locate a particular incident with a cassette tape being produced to send to the dealer. With digital recording, Operations personnel can locate a specific conversation within seconds and can play the recording with the dealer on the phone or e-mail the ‘.wav‘ file for the dealer's utilization.

With the continuous upheaval in the alarm monitoring marketplace, choose the provider who has the best interests of you and your customers at heart, with the technology to meet your evolving needs.