COPS monitoring is considered to be the largest wholesale monitoring company in the United States. Their overwhelming subscriber count (2.7M) seems to be one of their greatest indicators of success. COPS' growth has come primarily through a single, large customer and through an aggressive acquisition of central stations. Their strategy has yielded impressive growth, but it results in unintended challenges.
Company Stability
While largely monitoring one type of account from a single customer provides significant benefits in terms of scalability and simplicity, concentration risk is a huge concern when evaluating the stability of a company. If their single large customer were to switch monitoring providers, a significant source of revenue would suddenly disappear, leaving far too much space for them to maintain the current monitoring infrastructure they have built.
Unique Dealer Benefits
COPS Monitoring has a unique offering, titled the “Grow Your Business Workshops.” These offer continuing education credits to dealers, but require people to visit the city they choose to present in. So, for dealers who don’t want to pay for a flight to a seminar, the workshops aren’t too helpful. This brick and mortar strategy seems confusing since technology has made it possible to provide remote access to learning resources, either by live video broadcast or in a recorded format. Their inefficient method of delivering helpful information does not translate well for the every-day dealer.
Apart from COPS' sparse educational material, their unique partnership with Netgear’s Arlo helps make a strong case for dealers who want to offer DIY cameras to consumers. This is a peculiar case since most manufacturers don’t create exclusive partnerships with any single monitoring center, rather they partner with all or most of them to get as much exposure possible. That is a partnership worth analyzing further for dealers interested in offering popular DIY security products.
Employment
A more controversial side to any wholesale monitoring provider is employment reviews. As fickle and unpredictable as they can be, reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Frustrated workers who don’t perform adequately will feel attacked, while the opposite is true of the over-enthusiastic. Working in a central station can be stressful and repetitive, so the manner in which companies combat that stigma can set them apart. According to the few online reviews that exist, COPS Monitoring seems to have big, lavish parties for employees, but fail to make the workplace enjoyable to be in. It would be important to consider how that affects subscribers on the other end of the phone. However, since there aren’t that many reviews, the truth of the matter is shielded behind the walls of their office buildings.
Click to see more employment reviews for COPS Monitoring
A Late Introduction To PERS Monitoring
A recent development in COPS' services is their newly-offered PERS monitoring. According to Jim McMullen, COPS Monitoring COO, “We’ve been studying the mPERS market for several years now.” Although monitored PERS devices hit the market in the 1980s, now must have been a better time than ever for them. Perhaps that is because of their historically-dedicated focus on security monitoring, and the work it takes to develop a functioning infrastructure across several central stations.
One potential motivator for the push to offer PERS monitoring is a push to diversify and reduce risk. Although their single, large security customer helped provide the means to invest in several new central stations, it also comes with the risk of losing it all.
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