ISC West 2019 - Qolsys Commercial - Jeremy McLerran, Director of Marketing, Qolsys, Inc.

Hi, DIYers. We're back in ISC West 2019. We're here with Qolsys. And we're specifically going to be looking at their new commercial platform through a software update, and their use of their DSC PowerG long-range sensors. Alarm Grid, as a company, we're going to be moving more to strictly residential into a kind of small, medium, even larger industrial-sized spaces through the use of this existing IQ2 plus panel. So I want to let Qolsys do a little bit of talking-- Jeremy, here-- around the hardware expansion module, two wire smokes, and PowerG. Thank you very much. I think, if you're thinking about your business right now, chances are, you've got an old rubber button to keypad on the wall. It's probably yellow. Let's be honest. It's an old, yellow rubber button keypad on the wall. Maybe you touch it, maybe you don't. I'm guessing that you arm it automatically. And probably, most of your employees are scared to use it because they know it's going to be a big noise-maker. They're afraid of creating a false alarm. Those days are over. And I think there's a lot of business owners-- probably like yourself-- who are out there thinking, I'd like to get something new, but I don't know where to start. We can take a lot of that guesswork out for you. One of the things that, if you look at the type of alarms you have-- and maybe you know it, maybe you don't. But if you've got an old hard-wired system, and that generally means you've got a big you know gray or black can or box somewhere in your office. And all the wires go to it. and that's why the security system works. We can take all those wires out of that box, plug in a little module that converts all those wired signals into a wireless signal. And those wireless signals now go to a beautiful 7 inch HD touchscreen with a built-in 5 megapixel camera packed with features that are really going to help you to do some amazing things in your business, and stay more connected to your business than ever before. And just to add a little detail there, so other brands have done this-- Honeywell, et cetera. However, all of them are legacy RF, non-encrypted. Qolsys is the only company to have this encrypted level of wireless transmission from a wired translator. Also, with 16-F, which is the newest 16 zone version, there's a two wire smoke compatibility, right? So the thing that we've come across in commercial and even residential applications, moving from a wired system to wireless is, do you have wired smokes? And if they do, they're generally scrapping those smokes. They're investing in wireless smokes, which in some cases, people are willing to swallow. But in others, they're not. It can be expensive. Yeah. So this two wire smoke ability, and the fact that it's encrypted, working with this panel that is already supporting PowerG-- And it's a hybrid solution, too. So maybe you've got, let's call it, 10 zones or 10 doorways or contacts that are protected. Maybe you've got four or five smoke detectors all throughout your building. But you also know that there's other things you want to do. You don't have to feel limited because this is going to take over those existing devices. But then, you can add to it. We've already talked about having a built-in camera there. And we can mention some of the features that are associated with that. But if you want to add in a smart lock, if you want to add in smart lighting, if you want to add in a smart thermostat, just imagine the money you'll save by having the thermostat turn itself off right everyday when you leave the building. And do that automatically. When you arm the system, it turns off automatically and resumes again when you come back in in the morning. So traditionally, at least from my perspective on the support side is, residential panels are built for fancy stuff-- home automation, things like that. And traditionally, commercial systems have been very vanilla, basic, stripped down security systems. The fact that this now does commercial means that you still have all the features of built-in camera snapshots and disarms and all this automation bells and whistles you have, except you have the long range PowerG and wired integration. And PowerG is a pretty important one. PowerG is a long range wireless technology that allows you to go four or five times farther than any other wireless technology before. It's got the industry's best encryption. It automatically changes channels when interference is detected. I mean, think about this, we live in an increasingly wireless world. There are a lot of different things coming in creating interference, devices that are creating interference. PowerG is smart enough that when it detects interference, it automatically changes channels, just like a radio station. Most technologies only have a single radio station to interact with. This one has 50 to choose from. And it automatically switches to a different channel to make sure that your signal is always clear. The other thing it does is it's smart enough to know how far it needs to transmit. So you know the old analogy where you're in a school. And maybe you're in an auditorium. And the professor is down in the front of the room. And if you're in the back of the room, you have to yell to have that professor hear you. If you're the front of the room, you only have to whisper and the professor can hear you when you ask a question. PowerG is the same way. The panel is the professor. PowerG knows how far away it is from the panel, because it's using two way communication. The panel communicates to the sensor. The sensor communicates back to the panel. They know where each other are. So now, not only can the device really scream loud and broadcast far to get that distance, but on the sensors that are really close, if you've got a sensor that's very, very close, it only needs to sip its battery life because it can broadcast more quickly. So it doesn't affect battery life. So you can get up to eight years of battery life on a PowerG sensor if it's placed close to the panel. And on the ones that are really far away, yeah, maybe you have to change the batteries every once in a while. But you're actually going to get a sensor on it. You're going to get a range that you would never get with any other sensor. And from a cost perspective, to come in and have someone wire a sensor that's 1,400 feet away is very expensive. that's a lot of pulling wire, ladders, renting scissor lifts, things like that-- all sorts of things. If you've got a business that has a sensor that needs to be placed a far distance away, it used to not be able to be done wirelessly. And now it can. Right. And with our model-- just circling this back to us at Alarm Grid-- we are a DIY company, for the most part. So the idea of running these long distance wires it's not real. And you know, in some cases in a commercial platform, they might be able to contract services for that. But it's just not worth it. With these sensors-- and I'm somebody that when I first came into the industry six, seven years ago, I did believe in wired over wireless. And over the years, it's proven itself with reliability. Years ago, wireless wasn't reliable enough. Right. Exactly. That margin of error is literally like 1/2% now. So our support desk has more issues with wired systems than wireless. I mean, I can look at the raw numbers because they just work. And there's no problems. Yeah. So anyways, it's exciting. It's an exciting time. I want to talk for a second about some of the features specific to you, as a business owner, that are going to be really, really, really important. The first one, and probably the one that I use the most is disarm photos. When my employees get into the office at the beginning of the day, they get in before I do. The first thing I get is a text message. Whitney got to the office at 8:01 AM. I know when she got there. I can see whether she's alone or not. In fact, I'm going to show you an example of this. I'm going to pull up, on my phone, the last disarm photo I got from our office. Now, Whitney didn't do it today because she's here. But when Whitney arrives, you'll get a kick out of this one. Here's Whitney making a face for me. I see a couple of things. Number one, I see she's in a good mood. I see not only that she's in a good mood, but I see she's with someone. She arrived to work with someone. Also, when I do this-- go back out of the photo-- I can see she arrived at 7:47 AM. She got to work early that day. I know what time she disarmed. I know that she's OK. I know that she turned on the lights and got everything started for the day. It gives me a lot of intelligence as a business manager. So these disarm photos are critical. Now, if any time during the business day you want to peek in, go to your app and say, peek in now. Or peek in the next time it detects motion. The camera turns into a motion detector. And it will peek in the next time someone walks in front of it. And you can get a little picture of what's going on in your business. I had one business owner tell me he put this on his desk instead of mounting it permanently somewhere. In a nice DIY fashion, he simply plugged into the wall, mounted this on his desk. And he has cameras all throughout the business. If he ever wants to check out the business, he doesn't have to get up and walk around. He literally goes in and gives this live view to look at the cameras all throughout the business. He could check on the register. He could check on the store room. He could check on the break room. And he could see it all from his desk. Helps him manage more effectively without having to leave his desk. Now, I do think you should get up and walk around a little bit. We're not trying to turn you guys into lazy people. But the connectivity here is unparalleled. And that same connectivity that exists on the panel's 7 inch HD screen exists on the mobile app. So whether you're at ISC West 2019 in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, or at your office just taking a nice little day off and walking through the mall or whatever it is, you're going to be able to have that connectivity. And it's going to keep you connected, no matter what. And just to clarify that, you have Qolsys making all this equipment. You have them partnered with alarm.com, right? We are alarm.com dealers. Alarm.com has an entire suite of business tools that they can use for event logs and scheduled arming/disarmings-- Open and close reports. You'll get a report that lets you know was the business opened every day on time? Was it closed early ever? Things like that. You can see that kind of information. You can see the status if you've got multiple locations. Maybe you've got four or five different branches. You can see within one report, the status of all your branches. Is the security armed? Is the door unlocked or locked? All this kind of stuff. Really powerful, powerful analytics for you. Cool. Well, we took up enough of your time, I think, at this point. It's been wonderful. Thank you. We're very excited to be selling more Qolsys equipment, moving into the commercial space with PowerG. And yeah, we're just looking forward to the future. And if you guys need more information, certainly go to their website. They've got lots on there. They work closely with us to help them with all their marketing needs. And we've got a lot of commercials, a lot of videos that we can share with you to make sure that you can understand maybe a little bit more. Maybe you're more of a visual person, you want to see it in action. Well, there's a lot of that stuff available online. So don't hesitate to go on the website. And to be clear, that's www.alarmgrid.com. You can always email us at support@alarmgrid.com for tech support questions. And I think that about wraps it up. Thank you for that. Thank you. Yeah. Have a good one. Thanks a lot.