Thanks a lot. The version was the issue.
Ok..so situation as I found it is the organisation runs SEP 12.1.671.4971 and each new client machine gets SEP installed on it as an unmanaged installation.
With the rise in clients...definitely not ideal..and not ideal for me either since I can't tell the health of each without going round. So I've installed SEPM and want to connect all the clients to SEPM. I had originally tried sylink replacer but it didn't work. I've worked with it before a number of time so it was my first solution for this.
I've also noticed that the SEPM is not activated. Could this be a problem?