Allstate Security Industries + Evolon

Allstate Security Industries is the largest and oldest locally-owned life safety and security company serving customers in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. In business for just shy of a century, Allstate is listed to install, service, monitor, and issue U.L. certificates for both burglary and fire alarm systems. The company also recently embarked on a new business endeavor: providing remote video monitoring and remote guard services to clients.

The challenge that Allstate faced in entering this competitive space was how to effectively manage video signal traffic, known to cause frequent false alarms, without degrading the quality of service the company has always prided itself on providing to its traditional monitoring customers. In the past, the company would be forced to turn down large video monitoring projects, usually do to the fact that the sites did not have video equipment sophisticated enough to adequately manage signal traffic while simultaneously detecting potential threats.

As video surveillance has exploded in the security the market, the sheer number of false alarms coming into central monitoring stations has had a paralyzing effect on both growth and margins. Advancements in artificial intelligence and analytics offered a way to dramatically reduce those false positives, but only if the proper hardware was already in place in the form of advanced cameras at the edge, routing genuine alarms to the monitoring station. The problem Allstate faced with this approach was that many customers of its did not have advanced cameras in place or did not have the budget to include them in the quantities required to monitor large facilities like car dealerships, construction sites or storage facilities. Allstate knew it could not allow alarms triggered by simple motion detection cameras to be an acceptable solution for its monitoring operations, but it couldn’t force customers make expensive hardware upgrades.

Allstate’s in-house central monitoring station utilizes the Immix CS platform for managed and monitored video services. In 2020, the most significant development that Immix made to its software platform was the addition of its embedded AI Link to enable AI Verification on video alarm clips being routed to the Immix platform.

Immix AI Link is powered by Evolon’s best-in-class AI algorithms, providing a layered detection and classification approach that turned out to be the one-two punch that allowed Allstate to cultivate a thriving video monitoring business while keeping customers’ up-front hardware costs under control.

AI Verification is the process by which Immix receives a video clip triggered by any form of video detection or other alarming device that includes video footage. That clip is then pushed to Evolon Verify, an AI-based video analytics system that identifies, classifies, and verifies potential security threats based on preset thresholds selected by Allstate. If the necessary criteria are met, Immix delivers that alarm and associated video to the Immix alarm queue for an Allstate operator to review and act upon.

This was an absolute game changer for Allstate when it came to building a hugely successful video monitoring business, said Allstate president Randall Renfroe. It has helped us grow in two ways: First, by being able to keep up-front hardware costs in line for customers, it allows us to more than make up for it on the back end with enhanced service levels that create more RMR and elongated contract terms. Secondly, it has allowed us to gain new reseller partners by helping to bridge the IT and technology inefficiencies faced by some smaller integrators. At least five new partners have come on board to resell our video guarding services because of the Immix/Evolon AI Link.

Renfroe estimates his center has likely seen a 75% reduction in false and nuisance alarms since deploying the Evolon AI Link solution. He cites one example in which the Immix AI Link processed 1,026 alarms in a one-hour period and deemed 987 of them to be false alarms that were never presented to an operator for processing.

Allstate was recently awarded a contract to monitor 28 car dealerships, a success story that Renfroe attributes completely to the capabilities of the Immix/Evolon AI Link solution.

This deal was worked out in partnership with some of our local competitors who simply could not provide an effective solution to service these dealerships. Thanks to the Immix/Evolon solution, we were able to dramatically cut installation costs and do all the camera detection adjustments remotely, reducing truck rolls for the integrator, saving time and money, and allowing them to focus their people on other areas where they are needed.

The Immix/Evolon AI Link solution enables margin uplift for central stations by reducing signal traffic and labor costs while enhancing operational efficiencies in the centerall of which can be leveraged to offer new services to an existing client base.

In addition, the solution has proven to help with labor retention and job satisfaction for command center personnel. With dramatically increased accuracy, there is far less alarm fatigue at high-volume video monitoring centers. Allstate staffers are only evaluating actionable activity, making for a greater feeling of impact.

AI Link has changed my business on an order of magnitude, said Renfroe. The solution is literally the difference between me adding thousands of cameras to my business every month instead of hundreds.