Subscriber Discussion

What Products Should I Use To Drive RMR?

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Mar 07, 2014

I want to add a cloud-hosted offering to the mix - both to better serve the smaller market (and multi-location market) and to drive RMR.....what should I be focused on and worried about. Where have others failed and succeeded?

JH
John Honovich
Mar 07, 2014
IPVM

Good question.

I see 3 rough product categories for driving RMR:

  • Hosted Video
  • Management Video
  • Video Monitoring

Hosted Video

Lots of RMR opportunities but weak product offering / value proposition due to high costs of sending / storing video remotely as well as simplistic capabilities. You can sell it but I don't think you can make much of a business of it (unless you are bundling this with alarm services and just making the video an upsell - e.g., Alarm.com's Surging VSaaS Growth)

Managed Video

Not as many RMR opportunities but leverages more mature / established products with a better business case since video is stored locally / on-site. Products / offerings worth considering include March, NLSS, Eagle Eye (new managed video company with very low up front cost).

Problem with managed video offerings is that quite a number of budget / low end providers give cloud access / management away for free.

Video Remote Monitoring

To me, this is best case for RMR, though it is usually for bigger businesses. Some customers want video analytics or video alerts to be removed immediately to deal with theft, vandalism, etc. VideoIQ is often cited / used here (with 3rd party monitoring stations). See: Remote Surveillance Monitoring Recommendations.

JH
John Honovich
Mar 14, 2014
IPVM

Bump....

I know actually doing RMR in surveillance is challenging, but someone must have something else to add, no?

GK
George Karaolis
Mar 17, 2014

Take Video Remote monitoring and expand on it... Video Remote Monitoring adds an expense to whomever is paying for this service so try to give your customers a value added service that not only catches the bad guys, but a service that helps the business grow by increasing profits and being more efficient...

Depending on the vertical you are working on, you need to leverage other strategic partnerships and think outside the box...

A strategy like this lets you deal with non Loss Prevention departments within an organization... These are the people that decide how much of the budget is spent on LP who usually get the bare minimum of whatever is left over from the budget... If you are able to drive sales/increase profits/improve efficiencies, camera budget is now a priority in any organization and is no longer viewed as a necessary evil...

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Virgil Reed
Mar 14, 2014

How about Technical Support Plans and I.T. Services?

We are not large enough to have a full time I.T. guy so I thought I would see how much it would cost to have a company on standby in the event we needed additional help.

$500 to come and assess our needs which is refundable when we sign onto a monthly support plan. We have 20 PC's/laptops and 10 phones.

$500 a month for standby support = $6000 a year which includes same/next business day service via remote log in or site visit.

We didn't sign up. We are now modifying our business so we can offer the I.T. services with similar plans and rates.

KW
Kris W
Mar 16, 2014

We require remote support of $5 per camera per month on all our ip camera systems.

What they get is, remote technical assistance over the phone or with gotoassist. We also pay Citrix to notify us if the server is online and we have the server email us if there are any cameras that go out or health issues. We are mostly highend residential or smaller commercial.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #2
Mar 17, 2014

Take Video Remote monitoring and expand on it... Video Remote Monitoring adds an expense to whomever is paying for this service so try to give your customers a value added service that not only catches the bad guys, but a service that helps the business grow by increasing profits and being more efficient...

Depending on the vertical you are working on, you need to leverage other strategic partnerships and think outside the box...

A strategy like this lets you deal with non Loss Prevention departments within an organization... These are the people that decide how much of the budget is spent on LP who usually get the bare minimum of whatever is left over from the budget... If you are able to drive sales/increase profits/improve efficiencies, camera budget is now a priority in any organization and is no longer viewed as a necessary evil...

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