Recurring Monthly Revenues (RMR) a key topic at PSA-Tec

For many of the integrators attending the show, the RMR model helps with financial and strategic planning, making it easier to forecast growth and identify areas and regions that need extra resource. It can also be appealing to investors who appreciate the security of this future revenue source and can offer some resilience to shorter-term economic problems.

By Ewan Lamont, Analyst, Security Services, IMS Research June 3, 2011

Last week I attended the PSA-Tec show in Westminster, Colorado. The event brings together integrators from all over the USA to host educational sessions, encourage networking and share best practices from all aspects of the systems integration business.

One of the main topics of the week was the value of introducing the RMR (Recurring Monthly Revenue) sales model to systems integration. For many of the integrators attending the show, the RMR model helps with financial and strategic planning, making it easier to forecast growth and identify areas and regions that need extra resource. It can also be appealing to investors who appreciate the security of this future revenue source and can offer some resilience to shorter-term economic problems.

In a related industry, the remote monitoring services market, the RMR model has also helped improve another core element of the business: customer service. Historically, security has been a reluctant “spend” and interaction between the central monitoring station and the customer was either the result of a burglary or to upgrade of replace some security equipment.

However, as central stations have looked to increase the revenue generated from each customer, more and more are offering new services which can be billed monthly. These include remote viewing of video surveillance cameras on mobile devices and monthly security reports for the security manager. This regular customer contact is helping to build relationships, increase communication and should, in the long-term, increase the potential for up-selling. In the short-term, it will be interesting to see whether these benefits can translate to the systems integration market.