Where did it all go right

 

After far too many years to remember in the security Industry Michael Grayson, a founder member of the aim team took retirement in 2008 to enjoy life in the slow lane! I took us nearly 3 months to catch up with him as he always seems to be on holiday, when we finally caught him between trips to Austria and America we asked him to give us a potted history of aim.


Michael Grayson Writes

AIM the early years

As Mike Sutcliffe highlighted last month aim has been providing monitoring services to installers for over a decade.

In 1997 three of the largest security system installers, Modern alarms, Thorn and ADT merged and it soon became obvious that having 12 alarm receiving centres spread across the country was uneconomic , inefficient and in need of rationalisation.

By 1999 this number had reduced to one in Birmingham and two in Manchester. With the reorganisation, all the independent alarm monitoring that the various centres had been carrying out for other installers was grouped together.

John Cottam, who had worked for the company since 1976 and had been the manager at the arc in Salford between 1987 and 1994 with a deep understanding of alarm monitoring, was put in charge with the remit of maintaining and supporting the existing business.

The senior management of the new company decided that this part of the business should expand and it was agreed that the new enterprise should be christened Advanced Independent Monitoring or aim, a name suggested by John Cottam and Mike Sutcliffe.

In 1999 Mike Grayson who had worked for Modern Alarms in various positions since 1969 and was currently sales manager at their Leeds operation joined the team as sales manager, he and John set about the task of convincing installers across the country that it would be a good idea to use aim

Launches at Hamden Park the Scottish National stadium in Glasgow and Villa Park the home of Aston Villa FC in Birmingham enabled us to meet a good number of installers and showcase the many services we had to offer.

Right from the beginning the ethos of aim was to provide good service and customer support combined with a very competitive pricing structure

Working closely with equipment manufactures and service providers we were) and still are) at the forefront of all the latest technologies and assisted with many field trials of equipment which have since become industry standards.

In 2000 Mike McHale who was at that time a shift supervisor in the alarm receiving centre asked if there were any vacancies in the aim team, but unfortunately there were non available at the time.

Those of you who know Mike will understand that this did not deter him one iota and he spent many of his “off shift” days visiting installers with Mick Grayson.

His tenacity paid off in late 2000 he was given the position of Area Manager and let loose on unsuspecting installers.

Travelling the length and breadth of the British Isles (including Northern Ireland) the small team visited many Nacoss registered installers and also many of those registered with the SSAIB clocking up over 100,000 miles a year between them.

This hard work started to pay off as a number of installers started to use aim and recommendations from them and our existing installers meant that others heard too and numbers started to significantly increase.

Over the past decade the number of systems we monitor has risen from 25,000 in 1999 to some 45,000 With the increase in business it became obvious that to have the personal account management that our installers were asking for we needed to expand our numbers and in 2005 Nigel Ingoldsby joined the team to manage the southern area leaving Mike McHale to concentrate on the north.

In 2008 Mick Grayson took early retirement to continue his many hobbies but chiefly walking and going on holiday. His role was taken over by Steve Riley who continued to manage the growth of aim until in 2009 James Gribben took over as Operations Manager.

In the same year Simon Middleton and Mark McMaster joined the team as area managers continuing the tradition of close account managing and support that has been the hallmark of aim from its beginnings

The fact that companies such as MP alarms in Yorkshire, Keyways Security in Manchester , Standard Security services, Northumberland and Britannic Security Systems, Birmingham to name but a few have been with us from the beginning and are still connecting new systems weekly shows that the plan not only worked but is still working.

Here’s to the next decade

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