Quick Response: swift to better serve integrators

CLEVELAND--Quick Response, a regional monitoring provider in the Midwest, has begun incorporating access control monitoring, recently obtained Five Diamond Certification for its dispatchers and looks forward to adding video monitoring. The central, like others, is noticing that more of their customers are systems integrators. "This is part of the target market that we are going toward," said Jeff Cohen, Quick Response president. "The traditional alarm dealer is right now our life blood, but as we have gotten into these alternative technologies like monitoring access control we are finding that we are being attracted toward more of those systems integrators." Integrators tend to have bigger customers with multiple locations, so an opportunity to centralize access control monitoring can minimize time and cost, Cohen said, noting the potential for recurring revenue. The access control monitoring is provided from central station software company Dice, with HID's card access panel and program. Currently, the central has well over 100 access control monitoring accounts, "considering this is a brand new way of doing things. It's pretty good," Cohen said. This is a niche service in the monitoring market that Cohen believes not many of the large central stations will be offering. "I don't think it will be a huge volume business compared to what basic alarm monitoring is." Slowly but surely the central is making strides to add video monitoring capabilities, too. However, Cohen said, "It could just be the function of the region, but it's very slow moving. I'm not sure why. You don't have many municipalities pounding it into us, yet." To pick up the pace, the central has offered video monitoring seminars for dealers with various manufacturers. With a technology such as this, Quick Response sales manager Andy Ramos said the dealers might feel there are a lot of unknowns. "By educating we will help create a sense of urgency and also work outside of our dealers' market." One goal during the seminars is for Quick Response's business partners to expand their horizons: "We all have our comfort zone we like staying in," said Ramos, "but to be successful in business and to stay head, you have to got to try to think out side of the box, try to learn new things, so that becomes your comfort zone." When the central became Five Diamond Certification in November 2005, both the training and the certification were valuable, said Cohen, as "Ohio has no formal training requirement for alarm dispatchers." Although the central has had their own internal training program, "an external program benefited us first and foremost, hopefully by improving the quality of our existing training, as well as provide us with a national recognized standard with which other companies are also participating," he said.