UCC completes Stages conversion, mobile app for dealers

SAN ANTONIO—The big milestone early in 2014 for United Central Control, a wholesale monitoring provider based here, is the now-complete conversion to Stages, a technology platform from Secure Global Systems that Tracey Ritchie, vice president and general manager of UCC, calls an “investment towards the future.”

The completed adoption of the platform caps off a complex, three-year process—one of which was spent implementing and then troubleshooting the system to ensure it ran smoothly upon going live for the company's 600 dealers and 200,000 accounts.

UCC Dealers, Ritchie said, are now ready to reap the rewards.

“The accessibility of the system has been appreciated by the dealers,” said Ritchie, lead project manager for the implementation. “There's more information available at their fingertips and lot of capabilities for them on our website.”

The mobile app was among the most sought-after functionalities for dealers, Mark Matlock, senior vice president of sales and marketing, told Security Systems News. “Delivering that app to dealers has been really high on our priority list,” he said.

The app allows dealers to view history and place accounts on test. Matlock added that customers can also now access recordings in the account history of the website.

“When they want to hear it, they want to hear it, and dealers can get it instantaneously now,” Matlock said.
 
In addition to the Stages conversion and the mobile app, UCC is working on another initiative expected to come to fruition in the near future: A technical support service that dealers will be able to use after hours for tier one technical issues.

“Historically we've just given those calls to dealers as service calls, but we're now looking at hiring a staff to answer those calls and provide technical support directly to consumers for dealers that want it,” Matlock said. “That's something we're looking to do pretty much right away.”