No two dealers of security, fire, medical alarms, or IoT alarm systems are alike. From their standard operating procedures to the tools and technologies they use; from the services they offer to their overall business management practices and organizational structure. These differences can make migrating accounts from one central station to another a monumentally complicated process.
AvantGuard – A Becklar Company, is the fastest-growing alarm and event monitoring service provider across North America, with years of organic growth as well as material expansion through recent acquisitions. This extensive hands-on experience has enabled AvantGuard and its dedicated conversion teams to simplify and streamline partner processes for efficient, accurate, and smooth transition of System Integrator accounts to AvantGuard Monitoring Centers.
Mountain Alarm is an industry leading aggregator of dealer accounts that provide security solutions with proprietary monitoring services across the United States. In 2021, Mountain Alarm merged with the Pye-Barker Corporation, a full-service provider of fire protection, life safety and security products and services for commercial and residential customers.
Since the merger, Mountain Alarm has experienced tremendous growth by acquiring new fire and security dealers and facilitating a quick and efficient transition of accounts from smaller proprietary monitoring centers to a wholesale professional monitoring center. Their monitoring center of choice is AvantGuard Monitoring. Mountain Alarm and AvantGuard have established a unique partnership of trust, having worked together for decades. As synergistic partners, the two organizations facilitate a turn-key
solution to help dealers migrate their accounts to AvantGuard Monitoring Centers and enjoy peace-of-mind through the process knowing that their accounts will receive the most comprehensive, caring monitoring service available.
When Mountain Alarm acquires a dealer with proprietary monitoring, their monitored accounts are converted to AvantGuard Monitoring. This guarantees every dealer within the Mountain Alarm network uniformity in their monitoring service, tools, and reporting. Their new dealer partners appreciate that their valued subscribers will be monitored by AvantGuard, the industry leader in monitoring innovation and service, and recently named ‘Monitoring Center of the Year’ by The Monitoring Association.
AvantGuard engages a dedicated team of conversion experts to guide aggregators like Mountain Alarm and their dealer partners through a clearly defined account migration process. AvantGuard utilizes a set of dedicated standard operating procedures (SOPs) specifically prepared for dealers acquired by Mountain Alarm. These new dealers know exactly what is needed to facilitate a successful migration and what to expect during the process.
AvantGuard develops and follows a similar process for each aggregator partner they work with to understand their business and that of their dealers, to standardize the process for a swift, accurate, and replicable conversion of accounts. AvantGuard dedicates a team of specialists to meet with each converting business to gain a deep understanding of their operational structure and their accounts. These specialists also help to familiarize the converting business with AvantGuard’s mission, culture, tools, and services to build a lasting partnership of trust.
AvantGuard provides each migrating business with a dedicated account manager to serve as the point of contact during and after the conversion process. That commitment ensures all pre-conversion questions are answered and the needsfor exceptional service delivery, deal efficiency and value are met. That’s AvantGuard’s pledge to exceptional service and embodies the AvantGuard ‘We Care F.I.R.S.T.’ culture in all they do.
“We view AvantGuard as a critical part of our process and team when doing migrations. Mountain Alarm has a dedicated account manager from AvantGuard. She is basically available to us 24/7. If we have any operational challenges with any migrating customer, we call our account AvantGuard manager, and they immediately get to work on a solution to ensure that every of the business is cared for and on the same page.” Shantel Summers, Director of Operations at Mountain Alarm.
One of the many reasons Pye Barker chose AvantGuard as their premier partner is their continuous investment in their award-winning AI and operational technologies that ensure the fastest response times in the industry. Aggregators, like Pye Barker, who work with AvantGuard reap the benefits of integrating this award-winning technology into their subsidiary businesses, helping them grow.
AvantGuard leverages two key technological advancements that contribute to the fastest call answer times in the industry. First, AvantGuard leverages the Becklar Engage Platform, an AI-powered platform used to immediately answer incoming calls. This platform uses machine learning to either confirm an emergency requiring a live operator or handle the call automatically if it is a routine or test call that doesn’t have the same urgency. Emergency calls are always bumped to the top of the call queue for quicker service from an operator. The Becklar Engage Platform has processed over two million inbound alarms on hundreds of thousands of devices with subscribers since June 2020, primarily in the mPERS industry, with exceptional results:
Next is the dealer chat tool, AvantGuard Chat. This is a powerful tool that allows an account’s contact group to communicate via text messages on a secure platform to validate a signal without having to answer phone calls. This helps customers quickly verify the validity of an alarm and make better informed decisions to decrease costs from false dispatches and significantly improve dispatch times for valid alarms. The result is improved overall safety for a dealer’s subscribers.
During 2022 alone, the combination of the engage platform and AvantGuard Chat diverted 847,346 false alarms, saving tens of thousands of dollars in potential fines to dealers and their customers, and enabling live operators to respond immediately to legitimate emergency signals, resulting in the fastest possible dispatches and the best possible outcomes.
AvantGuard also provides aggregators with real-time data via the AvantGuard Dealer Dashboard. By leveraging this data, dealers can improve account efficiency, increasing their RMR and the overall profitability of their business. For example, in 2022, Mountain Alarm discovered a downed phone tower that was affecting service for customers on the east coast. Thanks to the real-time data provided by the Dealer Dashboard, they determined which customers were affected and resolved any related issues quickly and efficiently.
Mountain Alarm, along with AvantGuard’s other aggregator partners and their customers, also greatly benefit from AvantGuard’s after-hours support. When a customer calls into Mountain Alarm after business hours, an AvantGuard operator answers and records all the information from the call. The AvantGuard operator then texts the applicable technician with all the information regarding the customer’s equipment or service issue allowing the technician to decide how to best handle the scenario. If the technician doesn’t get the message until the next morning, they have all the necessary information to act then. This keeps Mountain Alarm from rolling trucks for scenarios that can be handled with a simple phone call. It also gives customers timely help regarding their issues while saving them money on service and technician fees.
With years of experience migrating dealers of all sizes – small dealers with minimal accounts to exceptionally large dealers with 100,000+ subscribers – AvantGuard manages the conversion process quickly and effectively. 
AvantGuard provides the fastest, highest quality, and most innovative wholesales monitoring solutions available in North America, which helps us deliver an average conversion time for Mountain Alarm dealers of less than 30 days. Through AvantGuard’s refined processes, innovative technologies, and a passion for building relationships of trust, conversions take place efficiently and effectively with minimal disruptions. This process leads to high degrees of synergy between dealers and AvantGuard and sets the stage for a smooth migration of accounts, improved safety and service for subscribers, and a future of growth for all stakeholders.
