Vendor Insight: Alarm Monitoring Conversion Made Easy

By Greg DeTardo, NuTech National

Converting alarm monitoring for retailers has gotten simpler, with little or no cost. When the loss prevention (LP) department works with the IT department, in many cases the end result is the reduction of phone lines and associated costs (between $30 to $50 per store).

In fact, in some cases, the IT department may be able to increase the bandwidth by using the cost of the old phone line that was dedicated to alarm equipment. This is a win for all groups in that converting the alarms to communicate over the broadband increases the security from the old existing single phone line to your corporate WAN that can be and in most cases is already constantly monitored by the IT department. The actual traffic over the network is so nominal (6k); this is an effortless issue for your IT department. But, it is an instant add to bottom-line profit or reduction to store operating costs.