Latin America. From SoftGuard they wonder if it is possible to enhance and multiply the efficiency in the sale of monitoring services, in an adverse framework where the technology points directly to self-management and DIY (do it yourself) and answer yes, specifically because they specifically design verticalizable systems and because they have many success stories that sustain it.
Daniel G. Banda, President & CEO of SoftGuard Technologies Corporation asserts that if you are not a multinational with wide availability of human and material resources, ready to face the daily task of individual marketing of monitoring accounts, in an "old school" sales policy, house by house, installation by installation, without a doubt, the recipe to implement is to work the so-called "vertical markets", which is neither more nor less than concentrating your efforts on sets of users, where all the negotiation and contractual agreement for an extended period of services, such as 2 or 3 years, even renewable, is carried out with a single interlocutor, payer of the entire service together.
The first big change in monitored security comes from the hand of the smartphone (smart cell phone), since with it, a giant break is generated when going from talking about the security of the areas, to refocusing on the safety of people.
With the level of technology we live with, it is almost ridiculous to think that the security we provide should be limited to the residence, the office or even the car. This electronic device that has already been formed as part of the human body burst in massively and we must, without excuses, make it count as the means for our client to be and feel safer, hiring human monitoring services, not only for him or her but for the entire family, business or any organization group.
I am a compulsive browser of the websites of security and monitoring companies, in the desire to provide them with constructive criticism regarding the message they provide and the real relationship with the services they offer a posteriori.
They are the most common elements, happy family photos, with children and the dog, on the home page of the site, but then reading we clearly see that the services they offer, do not take care of people or pets, only take care of what the client does perceive and we call "empty walls".
In the Hispanic American market, in less than 15% of alarmed homes, users sleep with the monitored alarm activated and only use it when they are absent from their residences or businesses. So yes, we take care of empty walls of what really matters and what we sell is the same as an insurance policy covers.
The smartphone with its specific APP for human monitoring, came to change this situation at its root, which the client has already warned.
We have the element: smartphone, always with the customer, always connected, always powered.
We need to set the strategy and in that we are going to deepen, following the line of vertical markets or sets, to maximize our sales impact, first with an example of cost-benefit of the time consumed in an example sales operation and then getting fully into many of the verticals at your fingertips.
The time and effort for the sale of a monitoring service with a family, where we focus on a house or residence, for a security system of the kit type and on the other hand with an administrator of a building or condominium, with say 30 functional units distributed in 10 floors of 3 apartments each, it is almost the same, but the result goes if it is different.
In the first case, we will generate an IMR (Recurring Monthly Income), consisting of alarm system subscription, plus a human monitoring service with APPs for a typical family of 4 people. Typical market value of dollars $ 40 / month. In the second case, of the real estate complex, we could point to a virtual goalkeeping system (which we will detail later), individual alarm systems and personal security APPs, worth $ 1500 / month.
It is likely that this closing will require some additional meetings, and make concessions to the sale price of the service for the volume, but surely the effort to be made will never be proportional to the net profit of the recurring operation that we are signing.
To this we must add the multiplicative effect of dealing with managers who normally develop that work with multiple real estate complexes and a concrete and effective solution, will be used in several or all other buildings managed by him.
A condominium or apartment building, is in our proposed scale, the first step in the chain of sets or vertical markets that we recommend to explore and develop, coinciding with the expansion of the virtual goalkeeping as a security system and that we will now detail:
MONITORED VIRTUAL GATE
In this specific market, which by the way began to explode in the last two years, there is a situation of migration from the figure of the guard or guard, with the presence of 24 hours or night time, to an electronic security environment that covers and protects all the common areas of the condominium and its pedestrian or vehicular accesses.
Although the typical sale price of the service could be calculated as a proportional part of the functional units that make up the condominium, it happens that we find more cases in which it is raised as a strong saving for common expenses by removing the surveillance personnel reducing its impact to 20 or 25% of the value that the human presence had in the place. This makes the amount to be received more interesting, focusing on the win-win concept and not so much on the specific cost of provision.
While as a concept in itself it is vague in specifications, industry and good art aim for a system whose 4 elements should be:
- Alarm/intrusion panel with its specific motion/door and gate opening sensors
- Access control panel, aimed at completely eliminating metal keys and replacing them with electronic keys of the RFID type or even by biometric methods
- IP video surveillance system with cameras deployed in accesses and common areas and local and remote transmission and recording capacity
- Assisted human safety APPs connected to monitoring for the double effect of panic security inside and outside the condominium and immediate notification for any novelty that must generate alert in its population.
There are always different ways to develop the provision of services, with more or less human component, but for obvious reasons here we will describe those highly efficient, where the quality of the provision is never limited to human resources applied to actions where technology is more effective.
In the Virtual Goal designed with this in mind, the user must always validate himself when entering from the outside or from the inside of his home, to the common areas, to disarm the anti-intrusion system connected to the receiver and in case of not doing so any individual, will generate an alarm that will be immediately visualized in the operations center, with access to video verification and audio verification. Subsequently, the emergency will be dispatched to the response or security forces and the details communicated to alert by PUSH to the APPs of the condominiums, as well as any novelty in the progress of the event that they must know, for example to request them not to leave their units and secure their doors or not to enter the building if they were about to do so.
Virtual Goalkeeping is the main niche of new businesses where monitoring companies aim their developments for the coming years and promises to more than compensate for the decline in services in the monitored residential segment.
ASSOCIATIONS – CLUBS – TRADE UNIONS – PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
Usually this type of organizations generate their income by paying a social or membership fee, monthly or at least periodical, which guarantees the provision of services axis of their nature.
It is also true that always with the desire to avoid the loss of subscribers, modernity demands to renew the benefits, including other complementary ones, in order to retain the associate, to make him feel that he evolves and grows with the services at the same time that the user encounters that milestone that will make him in no way think about leaving the service.
This is another concrete example in which your sales force will reach a single interlocutor, knowledgeable about what it means to serve a community of users and eager for palpable benefits for them. Achieving a long-term, durable agreement will be simple if the basic benefits compatible with what these agencies do are clearly defined and if a cost formula well tuned to the value of the membership that adherents pay is defined.
The concrete need of these agencies to add services is real and if specifically one that aims to take care of the life and integrity of the members of each family will be especially valued.
EDUCATIONAL ENTITIES (COLLEGES – UNIVERSITIES)
There are almost innumerable cases that are heard or read daily, about specific security problems in students, on the way from their homes to the educational entity, within it and on the return home.
We also have to read about scourges such as sexual harassment, bullying, the sale-distribution of drugs and other severe issues that threaten our children in this era.
In some markets where SoftGuard operates with customers of this type, there are high risks of class attendance by students co-opted by criminal or terrorist organizations, to make use of firearms or knives, generating massacres and chaos in itself.
The educational entities are warning that beyond requiring the public force its presence to act reactively, they must establish efficient methods of prevention and collaboration to minimize these disasters and this is being demanded by the community of students-parents. One cannot remain oblivious to this reality and to the proposal of solutions or palliatives.
Whether or not there is a security area or office in each school or university, whether or not there is a campus where extra-curricular activities are developed or there is even accommodation for students with a pension regime, the community can be provided with comprehensive personal security APPs connected to monitoring, which provide coverage in the round trips and within the entity and that at the same time respond to parents and families on concrete actions to improve what is failing, which is the communication platform of security and emergency events.
These projects generally target student communities of several hundred to several thousand. But there is always the effect that tends to be extended to all members of their families who notice the usefulness of the service that the educational entity provides to the student but wish to add it for the rest of the members, multiplying by 3 or 4 times the APPs initially deployed, and even projecting the services well beyond the end of the school cycle or studies in each case.
TELCOS – ISP – TV POR CABLE
Raising the exit wall of the users, so that they remain with the trunk services, is a task that these companies develop strategically.
The triple-play has been developed with that idea in mind, which implies offerings all the services that the modern home requires, for a unique link and by the way that security is undoubtedly a new element that is added to this provision, in the search to retain the user with the so-called "added values" that make it difficult to leave the service simply acting in response to a cheaper offer for equal provision.
In general, triple-play companies are not companies that are going to set up their own monitoring center or enter security services which they do not know. On the contrary, they will have to interact in joint-venture agreements with companies providing private security services equipped with the means and processes of response to events and connections with the security forces to properly meet the needs of users in the matter.
The typical portfolios of these verticals are among tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of customers and in some cases with portfolios of millions of users, because a cost-effective strategy could provide a millionaire turnover of very high profitability.
INSURANCE COMPANIES
I will refer to my particular case to be clear. I have a major cost life insurance policy, at least for my economy. I am no stranger to the reality that I travel something like half the year, through various countries and that I have perhaps an above-average risk. Therefore, this policy attends to the need to cover my loved ones with some quick economic assistance in the event of an eventuality.
Even with that conviction, there are many times that I rethink if that high investment that is debited from my credit card month after month and that flashes for the amount in the purchase summary, could be replaced by a minor or eliminated appealing to good luck or beliefs.
This that said in some "joking" way on my part is something that reveals to insurance companies that see volatile portfolios because of this and other evils, which we can call "difficulty to materialize the benefit".
They are months and months and years and years of paying for something that we do not see as a benefit and that if it happens on the day it materializes, we will no longer be to enjoy.
At the same time and analyzing the mathematical question of premiums and prizes that make up an insurance policy, it is a no-brainer that the insurer does not want anything to happen to you, because it does not want to pay but that it is not doing things that it could do to minimize the risk, such as, for example, improve the security of the insured in direct relation and give him the benefit of improving the security of his own, indirectly, all positive to take care of and retain the client and the policy.
The payment of the monthly policy fees, thus allow to have a security service in APPs for the client and his family, or the client and all the staff of the company that directs and at the same time the insurer reduces the economic risk in the future.
If the policy also has a scoring associated with it, the use of the APP by the insured allows to validate that there is an effective compliance with the guidelines reported by the insured, since to graph it, he has informed that on weekends his activity was to "write books" and the insurer finds that the real one is "skydiving".
Insurers can also add family and personal protection monitored with APPs for their comprehensive commercial and family combination insurance policies that include theft at home.
These companies can typically raise thousands or tens of thousands of beneficiaries to join the service.
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS (MUNICIPALITIES – TOWN HALLS – MAYORS)
Officials in charge of jurisdictional governments have been investing in technology to improve public safety for quite some time now.
In the cities of the most advanced countries, it is almost impossible to visualize too many police on the streets but everything works so well that in the face of the slightest crime, response forces appear promptly from all directions, equipped with accurate information to counteract threats, provided by complex camera systems and recognition of vehicles by their license plates and people by video analysis techniques.
Currently, the most concrete focus of technological development in these organizations is to provide citizens with APPs to notify emergencies based on a pre-established set of panic buttons and georeferenced alerts, that is, it provides the exact location of the event and that also allow as in the case of SmartPanics, to adhere to the report a complete set of multimedia integrated by photos, audio, text and video clips, essential when it comes to dispatching a concrete response to such threats, minimizing it in the face of false alarms and also creating concrete evidence for the investigation of criminal cases of criminals.
We adhere in all this development to the policy of "smartcities", developing the area of security related to this evolution that aims at smart cities where citizens are a collaborative part of the prevention and alert process and not mere customers of the state that fails to solve the problems that in reality we all generate.
In this segment of local governments, it is usually the area of urban monitoring or public security, who develop the activity of monitoring and interaction with the private security company could be given more than anything by the contribution of technology and cloud services of SmartPanics monitoring and it is typical that these projects contribute tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and up to several million end users.
IT'S YOUR TIME TO WIN
Throughout our SoftGuard tour of this final half of 2018, in each of the SmartBiz Summit and in the expos and meetings, we talk about scalability, we ask you if your business or the service of your organization is scalable or not, and we refer specifically to this.
The question is whether you have already managed to focus vertical markets, of sets, that allow you the maximum result, with the minimum effort of resources.
We are convinced that an efficient redirection of your human sales force or call-center to these vertical markets, which obviously require dedicated management, investment in the potential client in order to achieve something large and massive and on the other hand leaving in the hands of automated sales supported in social networks, such as Facebook or Instagram or enhanced in search engines such as Google Adwords and in the exploitation of the The sale of services to end users, such as family residences and small businesses, is the most appropriate and successful.
You have in your hand a new service, which does not require you to provide hardware to the client, which does not require you to finance the loan of the same, which does not depend on installing absolutely anything in your home, which does not force you to provide a technical service or update equipment, because the end user does it by himself, buying , repairing and updating your cell phone.
You have a new service that the client buys on the web, adheres and pays electronically and is instantly active and that user will spread to his family, friends, co-workers and his entire environment.
You are placing the logo of your company / organization before the eyes of your client, every day of his life, hour after hour on his cell phone, because your service will depend to manage the safety of his family and all his routes, alarms and emergencies, to track his movements, those of his vehicles and to see his video cameras as well as to notify himself of any matter that requires his knowledge.
You are facing something of enormous magnitude, which completely redefines the monitored security and the business behind it.
It's your time to win!
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