COPS buys 128,000 wholesale accounts from SAI

BOCA RATON, Fla.--COPS Monitoring on July 18 completed the purchase of substantially all of Security Associates International’s wholesale monitoring accounts, about 128,000 in total, making it COPS’ largest purchase to date. “We are definitely in acquisition mode,” said Jim McMullen, president of COPS. “There aren’t a lot of wholesale monitoring companies for sale out there … We’re a strong company, both from a management and financial point of view, so we can take on these larger deals and successfully integrate them into our system.” The purchase will expand COPS’ market share and presence in Florida, he said. McMullen estimates it will take the company about 90 days to move operations, including some of SAI’s employees, from SAI’s Pompano, Fla., facility to COPS’ Boca Raton central station, which is currently undergoing $500,000 in renovations. It will likely take COPS about six months to fully transition accounts over from SAI’s MAS platform to its proprietary software, McMullen said. McMullen said the two companies have been “talking for years” about a potential sale and the timing was right for SAI to shed the wholesale monitoring aspect of its business. Ray Gross, chief executive officer of SAI, said the company was selling its wholesale monitoring accounts in order to concentrate on other aspects of its business. “This move allows us to focus available resources on our primary strategy, which is the retail side of our business,” said Gross. “We are focusing more on the retail, full-service type of accounts and since we weren’t devoting a substantial amount of resources to our wholesale base, it made sense for us and our dealers and customers to find them a good company to provide monitoring and COPS is arguably the best in the industry.” SAI will continue to monitor accounts purchased from its dealers. “We offer a full range of services and will provide monitoring as part of our full suite of services for our 100,000 retail accounts,” he said. In addition to monitoring services, SAI also offers customer billing, inbound customer service and field services. In addition to its Florida location, SAI also has a central station in Arlington Heights, Ill.