Growth and expansions coming to UCC

SAN ANTONIO—United Central Control, a wholesale monitoring center based here, is planning to build an out-of-state back-up central station, possibly in Nashville, Tenn., Mark Matlock, company SVP, told Security Systems News. That news comes alongside other growth developments at the company.

UCC currently has a staffed back-up facility here, but Matlock said that an out-of-state back-up station is a company goal. Once the new facility is up and running, the current back-up station would be dismantled.

“When you start talking to bigger prospects, they really want you to have an out-of-state back-up central station,” Matlock said. “That's a challenge when you live in Texas, because that means—especially when you're in the middle of the state like we are—that means you have to go a long way.”

Tennessee is being considered for its “geographic stability. They don't get a lot of hurricanes, tornadoes [or] inclement weather.”

Matlock predicted that the facility would be about 6,000 square feet, smaller than the company's 14,000 square-foot headquarters. Construction is expected to be completed early spring in 2016, he said.

This year “is just turning out to be a dynamite year for us,” Matlock said. The company reached $1 million in RMR at the beginning of the year and has added $100,000 in RMR since.

The company expanded its portfolio of UL-2050 accounts—doubling the company's government level portfolio. “We've always been active in it, but this year we've added several new UL-2050 dealers,” Matlock said. “I think it raises our stature in the industry. … We expect to see that portfolio grow.”

UCC incorporated I-View Now's video monitoring platform into its central station in April. Matlock said UCC liked the fact that I-View Now is integrated with UCC's current automation platform, Stages, and that the platform is cloud-based.

Matlock is also a fan of I-View Now's Videofied app. “Videofied's our No. 1 video technology, so that definitely had an impact on our decision in choosing them,” Matlock said.

Matlock said the company is looking at six different CRMs and will choose two or three to integrate with the central's automation platform. “Those integrations would probably be finished by mid-July,” he said.

Also new in UCC's dealer offerings is the company's recent agreement to be an Icontrol reseller. “We are excited to be able to offer this to our dealer base,” Ron Bowden, UCC's director of dealer development, told SSN.

Much of UCC's growth has been organic, with the company only completing two acquisitions in its 33 years. Now approaching the one-year anniversary of UCC acquiring Red Hawk Monitoring's wholesale accounts, Matlock said that the acquisition and transition of accounts and dealers went very well.

The Red Hawk deal brought UCC 20,000 accounts and 150 dealers. UCC has a total of 230,000 accounts and 800 dealers.