where to start

[Guest wayneradford]

i own a manned guarding company in the south yorkshire area, and as a result of the huge jump in technology and innovations we have become a victim on more than one occasion of technology in one way or another.

therefore the scenario comes in to force where if you can`t beat em join em so we are looking at setting up an electronic arm to facilitate, cctv, alarm access control etc fitment, servicing maitainance etc, as the pinned post suggested you need to talk to people in the know and not just chuck some cash a any old idea.

we have no knowledge of this type industry except for the odd dealing, no fitment or set up experience, we have a salesman who currently obviously sells our guarding services but in the past has sold a little amount of cctv, but his knowledge base is not up to date and would not compete in the modern day cctv sales arena, the options are do we search for a company up for sale and buy it?? or do we invest that money in our own people?? or do we sell and subcontract the work??.

option1, if we buy a small company where does the back up come from if we have problems as we have no idea about cctv, what are the chances of finding a suitable company within our operating region, are the staff up to the job, are they technically profitiant enough and on and on

option2, would be my favourite as we currently service over 80 clients that have cctv or alarm systems in place we fancy the chances of converting these potentials in to clients of the technology arm of the business, the problems arise when setting on employees etc what amount of capitol is required what systems do we aim for etc etc i suppose the list goes on

option3, has a lot of pluses if you can verify the subcontractors work and referances but there is always the fear your are letting some one into your realm as it were

also we operate a 24 control room so we would also like to look into monitoring alarms and cctv, has any one else had any similar dealings or experiences, if so i would be interesting to know your thoughts and any problems you had, sorry for going on but there is so much to consider before making the next stage.

[norman]

Hello and welcome Wayne,

I owned and sold a company offering all the usual intruder CCTV etc, this was then later sold to a manned guarding company in Yorkshire, I speak to someone who is in regular contact with their Senior Engineer/Manager, and I am led to believe that the company has found it difficult to integrate (4 engineers) the disciplines and rely heavily on the aforementioned Engineer to run the electronic side of things. I would tread carefully and not become too reliant on 1 person to run thing's, you need to find out yourself asap so you are not held to ransom.

[bri]

Welcome to the pleasuredome .....

Its alawys difficult to make these decisions, what does your gut feeling tell you? Thats often a good meter

I recently did some works for a semi friend who has several other busnisses and decided he's always wanted a security company, he's a mechanical engineer.Now instead of setting up the business properly he took on three projects via a security salesman friend of his.The salesman had the gab and the labour. Both soon let him down, yours truly gets roped in. I end up running around two of the projects,one of which was started and totally screwed up by him and I get the lovely task of getting them out of the mire only to have my name dragged in the mud too cos the job went past the deadline. Meanwhile I was starting to be the whipping boy and gopher for them whilst a)He had his own business to attend to b)the salesman had his job with yellow hex to carry on with. I stated my reservations with this commitment and I too had my own company to run which was starting to take a back seat.I did the last project with them and went back to catch up with my own work.

The moral here is you want something done properly, do it yourself.

As long as you control the company directly from the top there is no reason why you shouldnt start an electronic arm of your business. Monteey is right get someone in technically to work for you though as it is a minefield regulatory wise, nothing you cant learn yourself though. Your sales guy can adapt to cross seling then as that side of the business grows take on more staff.

As for poaching, we gotta put food on the table and if you can persuade your 80 customers that you are doing everything in house now thats 80 extra bits of revenue without trying too hard. It will only be counterproductive if you start using your guards to press buttons, customers get very twitchy about that.

If you use subbies then vet them like you said, get them to sign a disclosure agreement protecting you from them poaching, it hardly ever means anything but its a bit of paper you can use if push comes to shove.

[jb-eye]

This may come over as a bit rude but the intention is to help. You are in a guarding situation a job that requires little training and a job any one of us on here can do. Guards are historically paid low wages working long hours. You will need to adapt to bigger wages and shorter hours as well as providing perks. You will also be required to work towards a technical appraisal and once proving yourself you will need to be accepted by an inspectorate. You will also be required to invest in monitoring equipment and although you could use your existing people to man this, the inspectorate route and compliance with the building alterations and standby generator situation as well as partnering with another monitoring centre for disaster management would also have to be taken into account. Each service engineer will require at least 200 service contracts to make employment viable as well as a backup engineer for on call work so a minimum of three engineers to cover the holiday periods. I rekon you haven

[Zak]

I would forget the idea of setting up an ARC completely. If you had a few thousand clients then maybe it will be worth it. Basically as Jeff said.

This is one of the most regulated industries and very specialised. If anything, I would look to buy an existing company. It won't be hard to see what expertise they have - and any company who is qualified to install alarms, access control and CCTV will have the means to spec for any job under those disciplines.

Also, then you will enjoy immediate income from their existing contracts (topay off your investment). Just because you have 80 clients with alarms and CCTV doesn't mean that they will want to give them to you anyway. Also, most of them could be more trouble than they are worth. Some panels could be obsolete, wiring ****, several different types of control panels - your engineers are unlikley to know how to work on all of them so for every minor problem with a system your engineers could be spending an undue amount of time resolving it because they don't know the system.

I am not trying to be negative but 80 potential clients is not enough of a reason to set up your own alarm company.

[Zak]

BTW, when I mentioned an ARC above I was referring to alarm systems, not CCTV. If you were installing a specific type of CCTV kit to your clients you could monitor them yourselves, although again, there are standards that should be adhered to.

Your option 3 would not work very well (for alarms) - normally when a company uses sub contractors, they do the install but you do the servicing and maintenance. You would therefore have to set yourselves up as a regulated SSAIB/NSI company and have a sufficient number of staff to deal with day to day problems. You could then grow and take on more engineers as time goes on depending on how you grow.

There is a lot to learn and to think about.

[secboy]

Without saying to much on the open forem I am very close to the situation you are in you have recognised the the movement in electronic security and the manned guarding customers need to bring down his man guarding costs.

This is being led by their rethinking the needs for the No's of guard hours and their deployment during day and night shift patterns,this can only mean one thing for yourselves if you do not offer an electronic alternative you will lose ALL of the revenue from the reductions which they impose on you,many of the large man guarding companies out there have already recognised this situation and made changes to offer an electronic alternative where appropriate whilst still retaining the revenue as the supplier of this alternative, the main areas where electronic systems can reduce man hours are as you have said;

1.CCTV

2.Intruder

3.Access control

Cctv can be used to monitor areas helping man guarding as an extra pair of eyes.

Intruder can inform of access to a building when none should be present.

Access control will prevent free access to ares unless authorised by the customer.

All these points can be covered by a guard but after initial outlay at a cheaper cost usually with electronic systems.

Now to the crux of your problem,you must comply to regulations applicable to all three of these systems and that is not only difficult in house but very expensive.

I could go on but to cut a long story short I sugest you invest in a consultation with an independant electronic consultant and get him to produce a document detailing all the options and pros and cons this should also give you expected costs etc.

As you can see from the other replys this area is a minefield get the best advise at the start and you can use the correct bussiness plan for your company without wasting cash. Hope this has been helpful? if it has and I can help more please post again.Paul.

[Zak]

I could go on but to cut a long story short I sugest you invest in a consultation with an independant electronic consultant and get him to produce a document detailing all the options and pros and cons this should also give you expected costs etc.

67143[/snapback]

I agree. Did you have anyone in mind though?

[secboy]

I think it will need to be some one near to his location! do you know anyone up there with the sheep Zak?

[Guest wayneradford]

i can see where your coming from and agree, the fundamentals regarding legislation and set up etc need a bit more in depth analysis rather than just jumping in at the deep end, i have emailed a guy on here close to me and i will have a chat with him to see where we can go and what we can do, if any one else has any advice etc i would be pleased to hear from them,

thanks for your comments

can any one point me in the direction of where i can find out about currrent legislation etc, governing bodies accredatations etc etc