After decades providing dedicated monitoring service to alarm providers across the country, the Chetta family, owners of GMS, have decided the time is right to exit the monitoring industry and to find a new owner with the vision and energy for the future. Through an exhaustive search for the right acquirer, one was identified and passed the vetting process.
AvantGuard Monitoring Centers was selected as a buyer willing to continue the employment of the GMS team, to honor the current dealer agreements, and continue business uninterrupted. AvantGuard brings decades of wholesale monitoring experience to the relationship as well as a history of innovation, technical leadership, growth, services expansion, and a focus on dealer relationships. AvantGuard’s reputation in the industry is one of exceptional service, quality, and consistency. They were named the 2022 Monitoring Center of the Year (enterprise) by The Monitoring Association and have the fastest average response times in the industry.
In the short term, we will be phasing out the GMS name to favor the nationwide AvantGuard brand. Richard Drew, along with the current GMS team will continue to lead and support the monitoring operations in California. In the medium term, we look forward to enhancing the capabilities offered to the GMS dealers including:
· Facility, signal path, and people redundancy among the AvantGuard monitoring centers (Ogden, UT, Rexburg, ID, Cedar City, UT, Sarasota, FL)
· Access to AvantGuard’s award winning dealer tools including a technician app for iPhone and Android, web portals for account management, reporting, and attrition reducing insights
· Subscriber interaction tools including SMS and AG Chat
· Complete Alarm.com integration
· AI enabled conversational voice capabilities to prioritize inbound and outbound calling.
To learn more about the coming capabilities, visit https://www.agmonitoring.com/services/professional-monitoring.
What is changing?
Any time a change in ownership occurs, everyone wonders what is going to change. In addition to access to the above capabilities once we are able to align our software platforms, we feel you should be aware of the following:
· No pricing changes are planned
· The same team you have worked with at GMS today will be working with you tomorrow
· The same operators who handle your alarms today will be handling your alarms tomorrow
Over time we will be integrating the GMS team into the AvantGuard leadership, organizational, and operational structure which will bring the features and redundancies we are committed to provide all dealers.
The biggest changes that will come in the next 5-7 months will be the implementation of data and signal redundancy among our existing AvantGuard monitoring locations. Doing so will ensure the interruption of circuits due to vendor issues, or problems at an entire location, will not impact our ability to receive and respond to alarms whether they are coming via IP, cellular, phone lines, etc.
We welcome you to the AvantGuard Monitoring Centers family!