For all the convenience and ‘cool’ factors IoT can bring, one of the more important uses of the technology is safety and security. With the advent of exciting IoT-enabled applications like smart keys and home alarm systems, businesses and residences are more secure than ever.
One obstacle companies providing security services on a wide-scale platform face is managing the many carriers necessary to provide connectivity to operate their systems. Consider the challenge faced by an integration service provider based in Southern California offering cutting-edge security systems for large housing developments.
The Challenge
The company designs and installs high quality video, barrier arm gates, traffic control, and RFID systems, requiring extensive connectivity solutions. As is the case for many organizations, traditional wired lines aren’t available in all areas, making cellular network connectivity a very necessary secondary option by allowing for flexibility of remote install locations. To ensure the appropriate coverage, the company – as is commonplace in the industry—pursued direct relationships with a handful of mobile network operators, resulting in multiple contracts, all managed separately.
The company found that governing all of their connections across multiple networks was a time-consuming process. Making matters more difficult, each operator had a separate management platform, complete with its own processes for provisioning, reporting, and invoicing – not to mention different outlets for support. The cross-training of employees on each operator was also a time-consuming and costly burden.
The Solution
Solving the connectivity issue required assistance from outside the company’s four walls to consolidate multiple vendor relationships into one. By seeking a partner that could facilitate the management of all their connections through a single, cloud-based platform, the company was able to provision, report on, and monitor all of their connections across carriers in one central location, as well as address their support needs with one contact number.
By simplifying the supply chain and day-to-day training operations, security solution providers are able to further focus their resources on growing the business, instead of dealing with counter-productive tasks.
And Beyond
As we move forward, security companies are finding more value in consolidation of services – beyond just connectivity management. Turnkey bundled IoT solutions – comprised of secure connectivity, device management, hardware, professional services and other offerings – are becoming more prevalent, further reducing the number of relationships organizations have to manage.
Consolidated services also allow security companies to scale with new offerings that can be quickly implemented. The end result is the ability to maintain the high level of service security companies require in a streamlined and cost effective manner.
Learn more about how KORE can help your organization through a wide variety of IoT offerings, including consolidated carrier management.